Now I’ve seen everything! Just now I was enjoying a fine episode of The View on Hulu when an ad started playing, as will often happen when I’m trying to watch online videos. I was prepared to lower the volume and look away to avoid being subjected to yet another car ad when suddenly I spotted out of the corner of my eye something I really didn’t expect.

The ad in question was for Coffee Mate, which I find to be delicious. But the scene in question, just a brief shot (around the 14 second mark), was not of a thirty-something woman cuddling up with a cat or sipping her coffee thoughtfully in a bay window. No, it was a direct reference to one of my favorite scenes in the influential French New Wave film Band of Outsiders (French title: Bande à part) by Jean-Luc Godard! If you’ve seen the film, you’ll remember the notable scene where the trio of protagonists performs a choreographed dance in a café while the narrator discusses what they’re thinking about. Well, here they are dancing the exact same dance and dressed in period outfits, and the actress playing the Anna Karina role really does resemble her! But why are there two people and not three? Oh well, can’t win ‘em all. Maybe the threesome implications of the film were too daring for modern audiences?

Anyway, here is the ad, and below it the original scene.

Everyone’s favorite Cootie Queen, the actress whose name I believe is Jessie Meriwether, was memorable in her very important role as the mistress in the Orbit Gum ad, as well as her catch phrase, “you lint licker!” I’ve pasted the commercial below in case your memory is as as gin-soaked as mine.

Now this sassy Southern belle has returned in a role as a woman stuck in traffic in the latest commercial for the annoying search engine Bing. I’m not sure why I felt the need to point this out, but it’s always weird when commercial people are in other commercials. It’s like if Flo from Progressive was in another commercial. I’d feel betrayed.

I am not really sure what SNY is, but I think it has something to do with television and sports. Whatever it is, they have been using stereotypical Indian shopkeepers to sell their product (service?) for some time now, but their latest commercial is, dare I say it, brazen. Spoiler: it’s about balls.