I Binge Watched Infomercials While My Husband Fought Cancer
To cope with the sadness, I filled my days with Law & Order Marathons — and in turn got way too familiar with the sex-crazed Blue Chew girlies and the terrifying BRAND POWER lady.
By: Catherine Lowe
I was an out-of-work copy editor and a caregiver to my retired husband, who was kicking cancer’s ass — when it wasn’t kicking his. To counter my liminal state of existence, I watched a LOT of “Law & Order” marathons, which (blessedly) air across several channels most days of the week.
“Law & Order” never makes me cry. It has a sobering effect. Occasionally, I wonder how long I’d have to be on a beat before I could show up to crime scenes wearing a camel-hair coat and silk scarf, à la Dennis Farina. (To be clear, though, Jerry Orbach, in his no-nonsense pea coat, was the show’s best detective.) When Order takes over, I’m sweating Sam Waterston, whose ease in a suit influenced my taste in men, culminating in the one I’m married to.
My “Law & Order” marathons were traditionally interrupted by the BRAND POWER lady informing viewers about Massengill douche — which I didn’t think existed anymore! She is a paid spokesperson for timeworn brands and looks generic—trim button-down shirt, drab blowout, tight smile—on purpose. This way, she can pivot from douche to Bounty paper towels to Curel lotion without losing our trust.
The BRAND POWER lady tells us Massengill gets the job done but is impersonal about it. (For example, she is visible only from the waist up, so that viewers don’t start wondering about her vag.) But after seeing this commercial a hundred times, I did start to wonder, and arrived at a conclusion: It is clean for cleanliness’s sake. That’s as far as my curiosity went. Exactly as BRAND POWER intended.
The lady’s unsmiling authority sent a chill down my spine. She is so very white, and blonde, of course. I wish she were softer-bodied, or tongue-in-cheek. I might be more amenable to Poise incontinence pads if she said, “All I’m leaking is the information.” Instead, I felt like I was stuck in the kitchen with a hausfrau who limits ice cubes to two a glass and scrapes every last bit of mayonnaise out of the jar before opening a new one. Commercial breaks should not be for scolding. Yet there could be no “Law & Order” marathon without fusty BRAND POWER and its frosty shill, so I acquiesced.
Then the Blue Chew girlies came along.
Blue Chew is for guys who have difficulty getting or maintaining an erection. They are the Sons of Cialis, those bland homeowners who strum a guitar and later reach across their personal bathtub, improbably situated in a field, to hold the hand of their wife, who’s in her own, separate, bathtub.
Unlike their genial forebears, the Blue Chew dudes are nowhere to be found, at least during “Law & Order” marathons. Instead, it’s their supposed girlfriends, each recorded on a middling phone by an even worse director. The women are attractive via genetics, filters, and/or fillers. Like the BRAND POWER lady, they, too, are only visible from the waist up, but they transmit a powdery postcoital vibe that really throws me off my marathon vibes. Their breasts are full and high, unencumbered by a bra. There is bedhead in their blowouts. And they have one, and only one, thing to say:
“Blue Chew.”
TF? I was following homicides and suddenly eight or nine EmRata dupes were going “Blue Chew” over a shrill theme song.
One woman subtly shook her breasts as she said it. “Blue Chew” is their mantra, and “I’m having all the sex” is the message.
The first few times I saw the commercial, I forgot about the product altogether, focusing on their uniform hotness instead. Then there were the questions I had as a viewer, both sensible (side effects?) and superficial (does it turn the tongue blue? What shade of blue?) … none of which the commercials addressed.
The more I saw this commercial the more baffled I was. (Irritated, too: nary a Blue Chew girlie of color. There is a sassy Latina who goes off-script saying “Blue Chew, baby!” The stereotyping made me cringe, yet she’s the most convincing of the lot.)
Three years ago, the Blue Chew commercials featured guys in exaggerated goofy scenarios. But that must have not resonated enough with the ED crowd.
So even with the garbage production values—I’m certain this commercial cost less than a set of mid-range eyelash extensions to produce, the girls awkwardly product-voguing with the sealed package, and appearing to be edited by someone on their phone during their subway commute—the new Blue Chew rebrand is oddly genius. Lose the men, keep the women, and let them vouch for Blue Chew.
Sometimes we would joke that in our household, ED stands for “Experimental Drug,” which my husband took to fight his cancer. At 10 in the morning and 10 at night we would clink water bottles, and he took his ED while I took pills for my heart and blood pressure. In between, there was hiking, writing, immunotherapy, CT scans, blood draws, driving, dog-cuddling, “My Brilliant Friend.”
There was cooking, which he always did, and cleaning, so I could putter with purpose instead of sinking into a mantra of my own: F my life. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were good! (Please, God.)
Still, the BRAND POWER and Blue Chew spots aired relentlessly: About four times per “Law & Order” episode, and I would watch four episodes at a time. The women’s faces in both commercials became as familiar to me as S. Epatha Merkerson’s, it pains me to say. So I can’t not consider them and what they’re selling.
Ocassionally, my mind would take a morbid turn. During one BRAND POWER commercial, I thought, If my husband dies before me, I will die shortly afterward, of malnutrition. Looking back, it really was in these most mundane moments that I would find myself imagining life without him.