My Early Alzheimers

I can sometimes be absent-minded.

My wife keeps mentioning early Alzheimer's. Maybe that's so, because much like someone with Alzheimer's, I can't remember what I ate for dinner yesterday, but I have no problem at all remembering small details from nine or ten years ago.

Which is why, when I saw this spot, I thought "RockyMortonFoxSportsNet". (I really thought it like that... one long word with no spaces.)



But the spot was not directed by Rocky Morton, and it is not for Fox Sports Net. This one was...



...and so was this one.



The first spot, for the Game Show Network, is Shoot Online's "Top Spot of the Week".

By the way, is "Spot of the Week" not superlative enough that it needs to be modified with "Top"? Are there other spots of the week? I never got that.

Anyway, is it just me, or is this "Top Spot of the Week" really, really similar to the other (funnier) work?

I wrote a post in July about two spots with strikingly similar creative, wondering if it was possible that the same basic idea could be developed independently, without the second agency being aware of the work another agency had done before.

I guess it is possible.

This, however, is a blatant rip off, and it is executed in a painfully clumsy way. The tag line is exactly the same. I mean come on, at least change the words around a little.

What makes this even worse is that in an effort to make the plagiarism less obvious, the very thing that makes the joke work has been changed so that now there is no joke at all. In the Fox work, the protagonist is saved from a compromising situation by a sports question, hence the line, "If only every question was a sports question".

If only indeed. The sports question just saved a hapless slacker from explaining why Fluffy is licking his nipple and there's a boner in his pajamas.

In the GSN spot who would want the question to be a Newlywed Game question? The boss? Why? The employee? I don't think so... in the next scene she'll be getting written up by HR, wishing she'd never opened her mouth.

When you change the structure so that somebody doing something ordinary is asked a funny question the construct falls apart. Plus, the question isn't funny anyway.

So tell me, please, is there something about this spot that I am missing which makes it the "Top Spot of the Week" ?

No, I didn't think so.

For the love of God, if you're going to steal someone's creative, at least don't fuck it up.