What's she just seen that's so off-putting?

April 3, 2017 5:51 AM

Scene three of this TV ad (starting at 0:11) has me baffled. The daughter of the house has had a bath or a shower, and is about to dry her hair. She opens the door to what I assume is her own bedroom, sees candles, ties and bathrobes there, reacts with horror and steps straight outside again. The suggestion is that she's seen something disturbing in there, and wants to avoid a closer encounter with it. Perhaps I'm just being dim, but I do not understand what situation we're supposed to infer from this scene.

The ad's theme is the small misadventures of family life, but how does that apply here? Are the lit candles supposed to indicate an unwelcome attempt at seduction? Sexual activity between her parents? Or something else entirely? Why the tie rack? What are we supposed to conclude from the bathrobes? Figuring out Lost was a doddle compared to this puppy.

posted by Paul Slade to Media & Arts (34 answers total)

Her parents in the act.
posted by blackzinfandel at 5:55 AM on April 3, 2017 [10 favorites]

I think the implication is that she has accidentally opened the door to her parents' bedroom, and that they are inside having a romantic moment.
posted by d. z. wang at 5:55 AM on April 3, 2017 [6 favorites]

Daughter walks into parents' room, where an amorous scene is either set up or in progress. Probably the latter.
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:57 AM on April 3, 2017

The room isn't her own. The pictures on the mantle are of her parents, as are the clothing. Agree with the above, the candles are indicating romance.
posted by Karaage at 5:57 AM on April 3, 2017

Thirding parents. The ties on the suit rack make it not her own room.
posted by achrise at 5:57 AM on April 3, 2017

Response by poster: You're right about the ties, and the parents idea did occur to me, but why would she be going into their bedroom to dry her hair?

Maybe she needs to borrow some hair-related item from her mother. But, if that was the idea, wouldn't scripting a simple call of "Mum?" as she opened the door have made the situation clear? Or adding some faintly amorous noises from beyond her field of vision? Thirty-second TV ads are usually the exemplar of clear, concise storytelling, but this scene seems to be lacking a crucial detail to me.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:15 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

You're right about the ties, and the parents idea did occur to me, but why would she be going into their bedroom to dry her hair?

Bathrooms in the UK often don't have power plugs (or at least power plugs rated for hair dryers) due to idiosyncratic building codes, so going into another room for hair drying is not as weird as it would be in other countries.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:20 AM on April 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

You're right about the ties, and the parents idea did occur to me, but why would she be going into their bedroom to dry her hair?

I don't see why there needs to be a special reason? What's unusual about it?

(There are, in theory, any number of reasons. Maybe she thinks she'll be undisturbed in there. Maybe her mom's dresser has a good mirror. Maybe the room's got the nearest outlet, aside from the one in the hallway. But all of these strike me as overthinking it. You might as well ask why the one boy casually knocks down the other's giant lego tower with a tennis racket, or why the dad was trying to drill through a closet door, or why the kid would be crawling through the pet door.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 6:39 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

But, if that was the idea, wouldn't scripting a simple call of "Mum?" as she opened the door have made the situation clear?

I believe teenagers are notorious for barging into rooms without announcing/knocking and borrowing things without asking.

Source: I was once a teenage girl who dried her hair in the parents' room because I had long hair and could sit in front of the mirror.
posted by kimberussell at 6:42 AM on April 3, 2017 [7 favorites]

The TinyURL link isn't working for me (and is unneccesary anyway, just link directly so people can see where they're going), but a) yes it is absolutely normal for a daughter to go to her parents' room to borrow the hair dryer, b) bathrooms in the UK do indeed only have plug sockets for shavers or electric toothbrushes, to avoid hairdryer-in-bath-electrocution incidents, and c) I don't know what TV you've been watching but "clear, concise storytelling" is definitely not how I'd describe most TV ads.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:42 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

In my experience, teenage girls very often go in their parents' bedrooms and drying your hair there is very common. Add in the lack of outlets and this seems very normal to me.

(But if you were raised male in American houses with lots of outlets, I can see why you'd be confused.)
posted by epanalepsis at 6:47 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

Maybe it is a US/UK thing. Drying hair in the bathroom is pretty much universal among people I know in real life. I mean, I can't say I've never, ever used a blow-dryer in the bedroom, but not so often that if somebody saw me do it they wouldn't question why.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:21 AM on April 3, 2017

Even if she could dry her hair in the bathroom, she ties it up and she has two brothers that NEED TO USE IT RIGHT NOW!! MOOOOOOOM!!!! MUDDGIRL WON'T GET OUT OF THE BATHROOM!!!!

Source: I have a brother and we shared a bathroom.
posted by muddgirl at 7:43 AM on April 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

I walked into my mom's room without knocking so frequently, and with so little cause, that I didn't even think of the dryer as being the reason for the intrusion. She walked in because she was young enough to have no concept of personal space.

What was there might have been the maximum that could have gotten past the censors.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:21 AM on April 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't think she's necessarily looking to dry her hair in her parents' room, so much as to probably borrow something, and stumbling into a romantic moment. Kids walk into parents' rooms unannounced all the time.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:31 AM on April 3, 2017

Response by poster: OK: One more pass at this, then I'll let it go.

My point was not that she's using her parents' bedroom instead of the bathroom, but that she's using it instead of her own bedroom. The issue of whether or not the bathroom socket would take a hairdryer plug is therefore irrelevant. I'm sorry my tinyurl faux pas stopped you watching the ad, EndsOfInvention, but if you'd been able to do so you'd have seen she can't have been going into the bedroom to borrow a hairdryer because she's already holding one in her hand.

I agree that teenagers in real life sometimes behave in all the ways people mention here. But this isn't real life - it's an expensive, scripted TV ad for a major client, which would have been worked on by a team of expert creatives and signed off by a reasonably senior Tesco Mobile executive. I still find it odd that all these people were content to leave the scene in such a state of puzzling ambiguity (at least to me) when a simple fix could have made it as admirably clear as all the ad's other scenes. In my view, the scene as it stands raises a question it doesn't answer - and surely that, in the context of the 30 second TV ad, is bad storytelling.

The most plausible hypothesis I can see is that - just as tchemgrrl suggests - the original edit included some clarifying giggles on the soundtrack as she opened the door, but that someone got cold feet and insisted they be removed.

All that said, everyone else seems able to grasp the scene without any of that clarification anyway, so I shall now, as promised, let it go.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:44 AM on April 3, 2017

As the mother of a current 16 year old girl, I'm going to posit that the girl in the commercial left her hair brush in her parents' room and there is no "because..." for the simple reason that 16-year-olds (even my 16-year-old, who is the most organized person I know) leave. shit. EVERYWHERE.
posted by cooker girl at 10:02 AM on April 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

but that she's using it instead of her own bedroom.

I've never thought to dry my hair in my bedroom (or any bedroom) because water would get everywhere.
posted by littlesq at 10:08 AM on April 3, 2017

My daughter likes my hair dryer better than her own. I have trouble keeping it in my room when she is around. Totally believable that she would head in there after it.

The only thing odd about this scene is that the parents did not lock the stupid door.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:21 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

As a former long haired teenage girl, I also say she goes into her parents bedroom instead of her own because that's where the hair dryer is kept. US, not UK, but that is where the good/working/maintained by an adult hair dryer was kept in my parents' house when I was a teen. (Even in the US there are bathrooms without outlets, and houses without enough bathrooms for multiple longhaired teens and adults to shower and dry hair and everything else in the bathroom.)
posted by sputzie at 10:48 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

The only thing odd about this scene is that the parents did not lock the stupid door.

I haven't lived in a house with locks on the bedroom or bathroom doors since about 2001.
posted by TinWhistle at 12:30 PM on April 3, 2017

It might help you to look at it from a different approach. They wanted a "parents caught in the act" scene in their ad and had to concoct a halfway believable situation that would explain the daughter entering her parents' bedroom & that was immediately obvious without any setup or dialogue. "Towel on head + hairdryer in hand" leaves no doubt as to her intentions. Ultimately it doesn't matter why she's not using her own bedroom - no mirror? worse lighting? mum has good hair products? (And the ties make it obvious it is the parents' room.)
posted by ClarissaWAM at 12:37 PM on April 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's simply not baffling enough to require an explanation. "Why are they having breakfast in the living room instead of the kitchen?" "Why is she taking a shower in the evening?" These are just things people do.

There's no reason to clarify the ambiguity.
posted by Omnomnom at 3:16 PM on April 3, 2017 [9 favorites]

Trust me, as someone who has been that creative who came up with the ad and then had to go through endless rounds of revisions with the agency, focus groups and the client, if this was at all ambiguous to even one person in the chain, that scene would never have aired like that. It would have been nuked from orbit. These ads are gone over with a fine tooth comb. Unfortunately, this means that you are the rare person who doesn't get it, not the other way around. Ads uses cliches like 'parents caught in the act' because it's like shorthand and doesn't require an explanation, so you can get on with the rest of the ad.
posted by Jubey at 3:55 PM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

same as sputzie - one-hairdryer household
posted by lokta at 4:17 PM on April 3, 2017

I always blowdried my hair in my parents' room because the outlet was only for a razor and my parents had a mirror and I didn't. Plus we all shared the blowdryer.

But I watched this ad and thought she was a parent who had just gone into her own room for the en suite, where she was hoping to have some spa time and instead saw that her children had made a disgusting mess *or* that her husband was shaving off his backhair or something in her tub. Or something like that. They use such young people in ads that I honestly thought I was supposed to think she was a parent.
posted by shockpoppet at 5:14 PM on April 3, 2017

The hairdryer in my childhood home belonged to my mother and therefore lived in her bedroom. If I wanted to use it I had to go in there, she didn't want me leaving it in my messy teenage bedroom.
posted by intensitymultiply at 7:15 PM on April 3, 2017

OP, I am 100% with you. That scenario makes NO sense to me in any way and the explanations above make me feel like I grew up on another planet . I feel ya.
posted by tristeza at 8:53 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

"Ads uses cliches like 'parents caught in the act' because it's like shorthand and doesn't require an explanation"

I dunno. The shock, the dismay, the candles - I just interpreted it as "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
posted by Chitownfats at 10:23 AM on April 4, 2017

Count me 100% in with you and tristeza, OP. It's not clear and should be better.

(I don't understand why so many are suggesting she's going for a hair dryer, when she has one in her hand--and after the OP specifically pointed this out. It doesn't seem likely she wants a different one--why is she carrying the one she doesn't want?)

When she opens the door, directly in front of her is the bathroom attached to her parents' bedroom. (You can see a lock on the inside of the bathroom door, and some reasonably bathroom-y shelves, and you already pointed out the bathrobes.) Her actual destination is that bathroom--not the bedroom itself--probably for mirror/power/hair products/other-bathroom-is-busy reasons. I agree it's not clear enough. But certainly the bathroom door would be extraneous to the scene if she wasn't going there. I think they underestimated how "background" the door is--the fire and tie rack overpower it in the shot even when the bathroom doorway is almost in the centre of the shot.
posted by lockedroomguy at 10:26 AM on April 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

I agree with you, OP - it's a bad advert. Weirdly, my hot take on it was that she was putting the hairdryer back after using it. Which clearly makes no sense, as she has her hair in a towel still.

But yeah, her parents are Doing It and she is rightfully horrified.
posted by citands at 11:56 AM on April 4, 2017

it's an expensive, scripted TV ad for a major client, which would have been worked on by a team of expert creatives and signed off by a reasonably senior Tesco Mobile executive

Therefore, we can assume a lot of thought was put into this ad.

Perhaps the plan was to make it deliberately ambiguous so that people would remember the ad, puzzle over it, share the video online, and talk about the ad with others, thus helping to promote the company.

It seems to be working.

The company isn't spending all this money on advertising because they have some sort of grand ambition to engage in good storytelling. They have something to sell, and if good storytelling is going to get in the way of that they are perfectly happy to get rid of it.
posted by yohko at 12:28 PM on April 4, 2017

She catches a glimpse of something as she looks around the door. The look on her face as she closes the door is a stage-grimace, not disgust more "I wish I hadn't seen that", it could only be her parents on the bed kissing or cuddling. She has seen them but thinks they haven't seen her. What baffles and disturbs me is Frank Sinatra as the background music to an ad about British family life (probably where the ad budget went).
posted by epo at 12:56 PM on April 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

As someone who has been in the ad making industry, I understand the OP's point. Yes, the point of ads IS for them to be clear, concise, easily understandable, and memorable. Yes, ads are usually gone over with a fine tooth comb by several levels of management, but my experience was that this often made the ads worse - "too many cooks spoil the broth." It's also possible that the hair dryer - the prop that everyone is focusing so much on - was merely an afterthought. The script could have read, "girl walks in on parents in bed," and the prop director could have just gone, on set, "welp, let's give her a towel and a hairdryer. I don't know." Sometimes those types of things are tightly controlled, and sometimes they're not. But irregardless, the thing that is causing the trouble is the lack of obvious cues - and the way it was edited in post production. Better editing could have made the point clearer.
posted by quiet_musings at 2:13 PM on April 11, 2017