How To Bring The Family Together?

The commercial has a familiar theme and set up.

Mom says to the kids, "See ya later," and each of the kids, like caricatures of busy executives, rattles off the intense afternoon schedules that will make getting together later undoable. The littleist kid says that she can move some things around to make a 3:45 get-together possible.

Cute. Innocuous. Mom will see that they're doing the scheduled, fragmented life too much, and she's going to put a stop to it. We're going to be sold something that promotes family togetherness. I was suspecting some sort of quick, easy comfort food: mom could say, "There's always time for X," and X would be a convenient and irresistible breakfast item. Or soup.

I wasn't expecting what the product turned out to be.

A new model of flat-screen TV, from Panasonic.

After we see the product, we see the whole family sitting down in front of the new screen, all smiling together at the same program.

I think we've passed some sort of milestone here.

I remember a campaign for one new season of ABC's fall programming; the concept was that you should watch more TV because it was good for you. And it was obviously tongue-in-cheek. We all knew that TV wasn't good for you, and it was funny for a TV network to make the Joe Isuzu-ish claim that it was.

But there was no evidence that this Panasonic ad was meant to be funny at all. The idea that a busy family can be pulled from its hectic routines by the warm, fuzzy glow of a new TV is apparently to be taken completely at face value. "Bring your family together with television!" I might have expected that in 1951, but now?

Maybe we're supposed to be taken by the charming naivete of the suggestion that a husband, wife, and three kids ranging from toddler to teen would all find suitable entertainment on a single screen rather than scattering to their respective satellite niches, video games, DVDs, chat rooms and text messaging.