This is a spot from the same campaign as the other Captain
Morgan commercial I love, where they’ve got a secret party going on in the
basement of a castle, and the captain uses a secret passageway to make off with
a date for himself. But in this ad, a maid, or a serving wench, as they might
have called her back then, accidentally drops and breaks a goblet while pouring
water into it, and Captain Morgan and his party guests all start knocking and
throwing their glasses to the floor to make her feel better. And then they get
feisty start breaking all the plates and stuff too. Well, this might make her
feel better in one way, but isn’t she
going to be the one who has to clean all this stuff up in the end? So while it
might make her feel less like a spaz, it’s really going to end up punishing her
worse in the end anyway. But what do you expect from a bunch of drunk pirates
anyway? They’re certainly not going to care about the inconvenience to her, the
smashed glasses and plates, her likely severe punishment, or anything else.
After all, they kill and steal and abduct women for a living, so how can we
expect them to behave like nice considerate people here? (I guess the message
of this spot is: “Get drunk and trash the place!”)
I like the sentiment and the carefree attitude displayed in this commercial, but
apparently nobody thought of what was going to happen to this young server
woman once the pirates left and she had to clean it all up and probably get
blamed and punished by her employers. And it’s this idea of people being harmed unintentionally by unthinking drunk people that is the inadvertent subtext of this ad,
and when we notice it, it reminds us of how inconsiderate and unwittingly destructive drunk people can be sometimes. But they could have solved this
problem if the captain and his cohorts had simply abducted this server girl on
their way out. Then, instead of being stuck cleaning the whole mess up, she
could be off singing: “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!” I mean, before
she was captured and executed with the rest of them by the British Navy the
following morning, when they’re all too hung-over to fight or escape. But at
least she wouldn’t have had to clean up all those broken glasses.
Here’s the smashing spot:
