Hit the mute button! No, change channels!

Having spent much of my adult life in and around the advertising business, I typically find the whole thing about best and worst commercials kind of boring. I see a commercial, understand what they're trying to communicate, decide if they did a good job or not, laugh if there's something funny, and move on.

I do, however, feel the need to call out one of the Chevy ads than ran repeatedly during the Olympics (and is now running on the execrable Gas Station TV which is why I even thought about it), which was so stupid and offensive that it requires noting.

It's the one where the man and woman are in the sales guy's office and in a purposely meaningful-sounding voice he says some thing like, "I'm going to pass you a number that's what I'm willing to pay." And he passes the price tag over to the sales guy, who notes that this is everyone's price and eventually they agree.

What's so offensive? OK, where do I start? I understand the point is to drive home the point that Chevy has what is commonly known as "no-haggle pricing," where the price offered is the actual selling price. This has been a slow-moving trend in the auto business for a while, as online car shopping services have eroded dealers' ability to fool some customers into paying more than others. I'm glad Chevy's on board with this trend, though I'm sure they were dragged into it kicking a screaming. It's not necessary for them to mention the kicking and screaming part in the commercial.

So the question is, which character in the commercial is the most offensive? The oblivious/incompetent husband/father character has been ubiquitous on TV in sitcoms and commercials for as long as I can remember. It makes for cheap laughs, which is sometimes the goal. But this is beyond oblivious. This is just plain stupid and whatever cleverness is contained in the concept is drowned by the heavyhandedness of the execution. He just sounds like a moron and there's no way I'm buying the same car as that moron.

But what really makes my skin crawl is the adoring wife/girlfriend/mistress/love slave sitting next to the guy and gazing adoringly at him as he humiliates himself. Guys can be dumb, and I mean really dumb. Women, however, are supposed to have a hint of common sense about them. So not only is the guy a moron but the partner think's he's awesome? And actual awe-inspiring awesome, not girls' gymnastics awesome.

When the sales manager accepts the offer of his own offer, she smiles blissfully and says "good job honey." Maybe she's really thinking that the guy is a complete loser who can only manage his life if he can pay the listed price for Chevy. And somehow his getting the Chevy is the culmination of her plan to eliminate him and escape their miserable lives, because Chevys are so boring and anonymous that when she severs his head and limbs and stuffs him in the trunk and leaves the car somewhere, nobody will notice a Chevy sitting there with body parts in the trunk until she's on the beach on the Cayman Islands with the money she got from selling the other 12 Chevys that he'd bought in the same fashion earlier that day.

But probably not. Probably she's the dumb wife or parodying the dumb wife so ineffectively that we don't know it's a parody. And I'm sure the guys who did the commercial would say they were just poking fun at the whole thing. But guys? Next time you try that, try adding some fun because in it's current form it's nothing but repeated poking.