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Television

Detroiters S2E9, “Little Caesars”

I’ll admit, it boggles my mind a little that we’ve now gone three weeks without a single scene set at the Cramblin-Duvet offices, especially so in an episode that just has the single A-plot and actually is about Cramblin-Duvet advertising.

We start with a cold open at a charity event, featuring a delightful appearance from Jim Harbaugh; the event is something called “fowling” (rhymes with “foal”, not “foul”), which is basically “bowling by throwing a football at the pins”). Tim and Sam see an opportunity to schmooze with Little Caesars and try to win them over as a client… and then an angry throw from Harbaugh hits Sam in the back of the head.

The moment is caught on video and goes viral; this leads Little Caesars to set up a meeting Cramblin-Duvet for their services. The rest of the episode has Sam and Tim dealing with their Pyrrhic victory: They’ve landed one of their dream accounts… but Little Caesars doesn’t want to hear any pitches or ideas from them; they just want to use “Sam getting hit in the back of the head and saying ‘pizza pizza’ in a commercial.” So they’re torn between getting the account of their dreams and having absolutely no input on that account. (It’s not helped by the director Little Caesars hired for the commercial berating them on the set and then kicking them out.)

Flash-forward six months, though, and it’s time once again for the D Awards (ref. the season 1 finale). In a gag similar to last year’s awards, all the ads except the Cramblin-Duvet ad use the same song… but this time, Cramblin-Duvet wins, and all Tim and Sam’s talk that they didn’t really earn it goes right out the window.

I’m just gonna go ahead and apologize now for an absurdly short write-up; the last two weeks have been a time of transition for me, and also I failed to take good notes this time around. I just wanted to pound this out before the season finale (which I really hope is not the series finale). That one I’ll get up sooner!

STRAY TAG LINES

  • Tim and Sam scoff at the suggested donation of $100 for the charity event; then they learn there’s an open bar. “Oh, you’re going to lose money on that.”
  • The Jim Harbaugh appearance is even funnier when you remember he’s not just the wildly intense University of Michigan head coach; he’s also a former NFL quarterback, having earned the name “Captain Comeback” during his time in the league. He is, however, the worst frowler at the event.
  • That’s Maribeth Monroe as Reilly Clair, Little Caesars VP of Marketing.
  • Tim and Sam approach Reilly with giant pepperoni slices stuck to their faces, which reminds me of the Kids in the Hall sketch where the boss has food on his face. (I can’t find a clip, which also means I can’t remember if it was Bruce McCulloch playing the boss or if it was the usual AT&Love pairing of Scott Thompson as Danny Husk and Dave Foley as the boss.
  • Little Caesars R&D department is very bad at keeping their research secret. But it looks like they’ve made a lot of strides with the Pizza Ball!
  • Just as last year’s D Awards were hosted by “Al from Home Improvement,” this year’s are hosted by “Cole from Martin!”
  • “Now, even though we actually never filmed Martin in Detroit, every time I would see all those beautiful exterior shots, I would think, ‘Damn, such a nice place.'”
  • I couldn’t figure out what song was being used for the other commercials.
  • Oh, also, this episode as a weird runner where one of the Little Caesars ad execs used to work for Big Tim at Cramblin Advertising, and is talking way too much and in way too much detail about how he used to change Tim’s diapers. This plot ends in predictable (and slightly alarming) fashion, but is no less funny for it.