RockyRolled…

I’m sure most of you know about the phenomenon known as “RickRolling.” For those of you who are unfamiliar, it’s when someone posts a link on a blog or a website which is purported to be something interesting and enticing to click — but instead, it actually links to a video of actor Rick Schroeder on the set of “24″ engaged in a hot embrace with Kiefer Sutherland. The gimmick is clever — a ploy to get people to watch something that they never expected to see. There were many instances of RickRolling on April Fools Day.

And today, I have decided to coin a phrase based on experiences of the day: RockyRolling.

It all started at the beginning of last week when we received a call from a representative of an organization called “Audience Research.” I initially took the call, but they were looking for a woman over the age of 18 to view a pilot for a TV series and answer questions. Knowing how much the two of us love unaired television, I passed the phone off to socKs.

She was told that a DVD would arrive in the mail sometime that week. She was to open the package and fill out a questionaire, and then wait until Monday evening (yesterday) to watch the show on that DVD. The instructions were specific that she should watch it on a DVD player — not a computer. The prospect sounded exciting! We’ve seen unaired pilots which we’ve gleaned from the web, but have never been part of the official pilot testing process!

Yesterday came and went — but with no DVD sent in the mail. Oh well… Perhaps they chose another lucky 18-54 year old woman…

But today — as I was home combating a nasty case of allergies and a head full of snot, I heard a “thud” outside our front screen door. When I opened it, I found the coveted package — with said surveys and the DVD inside. socKs was instructed to follow the instructions but, as the non-recipient of such a package, I was not bound by these rules! Instead, I decided to break an entirely different rule and open this package. I put the DVD in the player, went through the menus and declared that it was yesterday’s date, and watched the content.

And there it was in all of its glory – the test pilot episode of The Rocky LaPorte show.

You may be wondering — who the hell is Rocky LaPorte? He’s a comedian who has been on Leno and some Comedy Central specials. He was also in the film The Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen. Perhaps you’ll be more familiar with him from this picture:

No? Still nothing? Oh well. Seems like a nice enough guy. As I determined from scouring the web, he’s been out to Iraq to entertain the troops, which I consider a noble step my positions on the administration’s policy notwithstanding. Oh — and he’s a former boxer. Not unlike Tony Danza, who shares a birthday with me. So we’re like mishpocha already.

I determined pretty early on why they want you watching on a DVD player rather than on a computer: they’ve disabled the controls to fast forward or rewind. They instruct you to watch from start to finish without skipping anything. You can pause, but that’s it. Oh — and there are commercials. So you’re stuck watching those as well. Sounds fine to me. I had more than a half hour to kill, my body riddled with over-the-counter antihistamine.

The sitcom was a lot like According to Jim. I’ve never watched an episode of ATJ, but I assume that the recipe is the same. Here’s this big, beefy blue-collar worker (LaPorte) married to a white-collar piece of ass (Ann Cusack) whom he probably couldn’t get in the real world. They have two kids — a popular teenage girl who hates it when the mom tries to bond with her, and a pre-pubescent son who is the stereotypical nerd whom they’re trying to get to be less wound-up.

There’s also the wacky best friend, Sean. (Played by a guy named Matthew Glave. I was trying to place why he looked so familiar, and later confirmed that he played the sleazy boyfriend / fiance to Drew Barrymore in The Wedding Singer.) Sean works as an attendant in an assisted-living facility — a location which brings most of the comedy to the sit-com. The elderly women politely flirt with him and he has to remind them of the anti-fraternization policy which exists “for their protection.”

The only two discernible differences between this show and According to Jim are that (a) I’ve watched exactly one more episode of this show than that of ATJ; and (b) if I were to watch ATJ I likely would have been able to fast-forward through the boring, predictable parts. Here was tonight’s episode in a nutshell. Rocky (yes, his character’s name is Rocky, too! Original…) needs to get his wife a gift for their fifteenth wedding anniversary. He consults Sean, his best friend, at the assisted-living facility. Due to the wisdom of a senior resident, they get an idea! Jewelry! They go forth to a jewelry shop to get a diamond for the wife.

But when they get there they realize that jewelry is expensive! Especially diamonds. There are the same padded jokes about the price of the ring he can’t afford and the minuscule diamond on the ring he can afford. But then Sean finds the cubic zirconium section! For $150, Rocky could buy something that looks like a diamond ring. But he feels bad for shelling out less than $1000 on a gift. So he gets a cubic zirconium ring the size of a doorknob. And is amazed when his daughter knows, right away, that it’s not a real diamond.

But — what is he supposed to do? The anniversary is tonight! He can’t give her this ring, knowing full well that his beloved wife will know it’s not a real diamond! She comes home, she gives him his present (Bears season tickets), and he stalls by trying to find a gift in the kitchen. (Ha! Maybe he could regift the blender! Ha!)

The next day, with Sean’s help, he gets the ring exchanged for one with a real diamond. But the real present is that he learns how to dance — and that action apparently is more important to his wife than anything else in the world. Oh — and he puts the new ring in her champagne glass and she downs the champagne without him knowing that she has already removed the ring from the glass, and… well, now I’m just being difficult.

So — why did I tell you the plot of this pilot? Why didn’t I keep any elements secret for when this hits the airwaves?

Because it never will hit the airwaves.

No. This wasn’t about the dumb-ass, shallow television show at all. It was about the commercials in between. The commercials that we weren’t allowed to skip. I was amazed at the age of some of these ads. Remember that Best Buy add with that marionette than comes in looking for a laptop — and, when told that the laptop has wireless capability, daydreams of running around string-free? That was one of them. Because wireless internet is such a novelty now, right? There were also ads for soup, cookies, storage bags and motor oil.

And, when the marketing folks called socKs this evening (she watched the show before they called on *gasp!* her computer!), they asked very, very few questions about the show and more questions about the commercials and brand loyalty. They kept her on the phone for a solid half hour! (Thete was, of course, the incentive of us winning a special prize possibly.) At one time they asked her to put the DVD back in and skip to a specific commercial. As Av was busy watching the “Cars” movie, that simply wasn’t going to happen right then and there. And somewhere in the phone call, she got hung up on. Goodbye, prize… But that wasn’t before she had been instructed to send back the DVD in the postage-paid envelope.

So — why did I coin the term RockyRolling?

Because I googled “Rocky LaPorte” and “Audience Studies” this evening. Guess what? They’ve been sending out this DVD for at least a year now. “Audience Studies” is a marketing firm that has been, in a way, RickRolling the general population for years. Instead of sending a pilot in the mail for people to think that they are a cog in the machine that decides what gets put on television, they’re being duped into watching commercials. And not fast forwarding through them.

And I have to admit — I was a sucker here, too. I was RockyRolled.

If you’re a glutton for punishment and feel like watching the Rocky LaPorte show — well, here you go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: