For the most part, commercials are a nuisance. They interrupt a perfectly good show at what seem to be five-minute intervals. Just as the killer is about to strike, it happens. The entire crime scene disappears, and I’m looking at a car ad. Cut to commercial.
As a transcriptionist, I’ll admit that I find the medication commercials marginally interesting. I like seeing the name of a drug that I type routinely and announcing imperiously to my family, “Hey, I know that one.” This proclamation is met with uninterested stares as though I’d just announced the moon landing or the engagement of Prince William.
What is unsettling about those spots is the part they always save for last. You know what I mean.
The opening shot shows Mr. or Mrs. Average American, bowed, crippled, and suffering. As the golden-tongued narrator extols the virtues of the drug, we see the invalid receiving a pill in one trembling hand. We watch as he swallows slowly, holding our breath and hoping for a miracle.
What joy! In the next frame, he or she is hiking mountains, playing tennis, or gardening with great vitality. We rejoice. And that’s when the other shoe drops.
“Do not take this drug,” a smiling actor intones, “if you are pregnant, may become pregnant, have a thyroid, eat red meat, or have taken any other medications at all since 1976.” What?
“Taking this drug in combination with any other substances, including, but not limited to minerals, vitamin supplements, and organic bean sprouts, may cause your blood pressure to drop like a rock. That’s unsafe.
“It may, in rare instances, cause your kidneys to shut down or your carburetor to fall out. But don’t worry. That only happened to three patients in our lab in Houston
