Apparently the ad’s been out for about a month, but I saw it for the first time the other day.
The ad I’m talking about is for Verizon, the one in which Donnie Wahlberg raves about FiOS.
Okay, these days, he plays a New York City cop on TV (in Blue Bloods, a show in which his sister is played by Bridget Moynahan, the Tom Brady baby mama), but Donnie, he’s one of ours. (Pronunciation key: one a aahs.) He’s a Dot Rat* – that’s son of Dorchester to you, sonny – all the way.
Now, I don’t doubt for a New York Boston minute that Donnie is a stand up guy.
Why, here he is standing in Copley Square, in front of Trinity Church.
And there he is again, standing in some impressively townie place. Why, I do believe that’s Charlestown where Donnie is putting the “i” in FiOS for us.
All that’s missing is the scally cap, or some bit of sports gear – Red Sox World Championship 2013 would work – but, even without the gear, the minute Donnie opens his mouth, you know that, when it comes to representin’, he’s wicked pissah.
So when Donnie tells us, “this is New England, where people tell it straight; no phonies, no fakers, no shortcuts,” we get where he’s coming from. He’s a home town honey.
Although, is there any region in the country – other than, perhaps LA – that wouldn’t pride themselves on the same things.
Of course, in our case, we know it’s true.
Anyway, like any good Bostonian, Donnie can do a bit of trash talking. And the target of his trash talk in the Verizon ad is – no surprise here – Comcast.
Because Comcast, ya know, hasn’t put down all the cool fiber optic so that it can stream basketball games, Blue Bloods, and New Kids on the Block videos to us wicked fast.
“Comcast can talk all they want, but New Englander’s know the truth.”
Yes indeed-y. And the god’s honest truth is that there is no FiOS in Boston. And no plans to expand here, either.
The dirty little secret: if you live in the city of Boston, and you have high speed internet access, there’s a pretty good chance that it’s coming to you from Comcast.
We might not want to get taken to Xfinity and beyond, but we don’t actually have a ton of alternatives. (RCN, anyone?) And that ton of alternatives most decidedly does not include Verizon.
Since Donnie Wahlberg no longer lives here, he is perhaps not aware of this. But surely Verizon is. So why would they poke us in the eye with the sharp stick of Boston location shots, when there are perfectly beautiful non-Boston areas in Massachusetts (queue small town with white-steepled Congo church in autumn) that probably do get FiOS. Alas, they wouldn’t have been able to honestly substitute the triple-decker hills of Worcester for the townie shot because FiOS isn’t available in Worcester, either.
Donnie, Donnie, Donnie.
Let’s go New Englander to New Englander here, Dot Rat vs. Worcester girl. Let me tell it straight: I call BS on any Verizon FiOS ad from which one might infer that you can get FiOS if you actually live in the city.
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*One of those “you know you’re from Boston when…” things is knowing what a Dot Rat is. So I was watching a Red Sox game this summer, and the new pretty girl that NESN always has to hang out with the “real” announcers was reading off the tweets that were coming in. She came to one from a Twitterer going by the name “dotrat” and read it out as Do Trat.
Meanwhile, if you want to watch Donnie’s commercial, you can find it on The New Kids on the Block’s site.
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