Seinfeld, Gates try second commercial
Say you're Microsoft. You've just released a commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld that has been roundly panned. So much so that you actually have to issue a press release explaining the damn thing. So what else do you do to save face?
You double down.
Yet another Gates-Seinfeld collaboration has been released online, and if you thought "Shoe Circus" was weird, you ain't seen nothing yet. "New Family" is not only wacky, it's long. Four minutes 31 seconds to be exact, presumably an extended version of a cut-down TV commercial (Gizmodo and ZDNet say it ran during CBS' "Big Brother").
This time out, Gates and Seinfeld are shacking up with an average American family because, as the comedian explains, they're so wealthy they need to reconnect with "real people." Gates takes this nugget in as he squeezes that shoe he's seen doing same in "Circus," a defiant callback that tells the viewer: No, we're not ashamed of that last commercial.
With a premise not nearly as inscrutable as "Circus," "Family" may not get as vilified as the former spot. But it's still such a labored attempt at quirkiness one wonders whether Microsoft may just want to start from scratch.
