Bianca DeGroat; You've Ruined My Life

My wife watches children's television.


Now, before you comment on this blog urging me to begin involuntary psychiatric committal papers, let me blogsplain.


For three years, Mrs. Apron taught pre-school at a small, Quaker, everybody-hold-hands and everybody-wins-at-soccer-games type school. She was young(er) and it was a wonderful, happy life. She was paid once a month in coins fashioned out of molded dirt, but we didn't care. We were poor as hell, but, when you're young and retarded, you don't know you're poor. We still went to the theatre and to concerts and got Chinese food once every two weeks like the nouveau riche do.


In order to effectively socialize with pre-school children, it's generally a good idea to watch some children's television. I mean, if some gap-toothed little munchkin in overalls waddles up to you on the playground and starts talking about Arthur the talking, bespectacled Aardvark and his little sister, D.W., you'd better know what that's all about or you might think the kid's addicted to smack.


And so my wife's 4:00-5:00 televisual diet consisted in those days of heavy doses of PBS Kids programming. Because we get multiple PBS stations at our house, the programming schedule changes frequently, and so, at any given time, Mrs. Apron could be watching any combination of the following:


Arthur


Fetch! (with Ruff Ruffman)


Zoom!


Curious George


Maya & Miguel


Word Girl


Her favorite, I think, is Arthur. But, a close second is Cyberchase. In case you, um, don't watch kids television, Cyberchase is a math-related program that follows the exploits of a cluster of choppily animated tweens and their parrot (voiced by the ever-grating and obnoxious Gilbert Gottfried) as they do battle with The Hacker (the miraculously not-institutionalized-yet Christopher Lloyd) and his moronic henchmen, Buzz & Delete, one of whose voices sounds just like Roger Rabbit, the other one sounds like a truck-driver from Camden.


Like all children's shows, every episode is the same: The Hacker decides to take over the world or some shit and the kids try to stop him, and succeed in doing so, but only after laboriously solving some rudimentary math-related problem in a way that teaches children to laboriously solve math-related problems.


For a while, I was under the delusion that my watching Cyberchase would help me study for the Praxis exam which I never took. Mostly, I'll sit down after walking through the door after a long, soul-eviscerating day at work because I get to cuddle up next to my wife, because I find Christopher Lloyd's voice oddly entertaining, and because the Cyberchase... (For Real) segments are enjoyable.


Cyberchase... (For Real) is a usually five minute live action segment that features one of two young, promising actors who act out in sketches that reinforce the episode's banal and heavy-handed math lesson in a more vibrant, humorous way, and are more related to "real life" rather than defeating a huge, green, broad-chinned villain voiced by Doc. The actors are Matthew Wilson, who mopes around in huge black plastic glasses, loud shirts and fucked up hair and generally behaves in a comically inept way.


The other actress is Bianca DeGroat, a pretty, sprightly, peppy, wide-eyed, bushy-haired actress approximately my middle sister's age, whose misadventures include babysitting gone amiss and her birthday going amiss and meeting up with a friend going amiss and things generally going amiss.


My wife loves Bianca DeGroat and, while I admit that I find her attractive and wouldn't particularly mind living across the street from her and then purchasing an expensive, Israeli-manufactured nightvision telescope, I certainly don't jump up and down on the couch and squeal "IT'S BIANCA!" when I see her on a McDonalds commercial. Like my wife does.


But that's okay-- we all express ourselves differently, and that's what makes us special.


Anyway, Bianca has carved out a pretty successful niche for herself in commercials, which is funny since she's most noted for her recurring role on "commercial-free" public television. She's certainly a talented actress, and she must have a super-aggressive and effective agent/manager because it seems like, every time there's a commercial on TV, my wife is squealing.


Currently, as far as I can tell, Bianca has scored B.F.D. national commercials for:


McDonalds (she's having a bum office day until a coworker brings her a McCafe bullshit drink and she lights up like a Chernobyl reactor)


Ford (she gets handed the keys to a brand new Focus and she lights up like a Chernobyl reactor)

And...

Post Cereal (there are Chernobyl-reactor-style reactions after said actress places a small quantity of Honey Bunches of Oats (with Pecan bunches) into her mouth)

Now, this is the commercial that really gets my goat-- or should I say my DeGroat:

The portion of the commercial where Bianca, standing next to some white chick who nobody cares about and eats the cereal and energetically proclaims something like, "This is REALLY GOOD!" is shot outdoors on a sunny day by what looks like a roadside taste-testing station-- the kind I've never actually seen in real life but commercial television has led us to believe supposedly exist throughout the country when companies are doing product testing.

We've all seen these commercials before-- Coke vs Pepsi at an outdoor table. Kraft Original Ranch dressing vs Evander Holyfield's ejaculate at an outdoor table. Pampers diapers vs a doll-sized straight-jacket at an outdoor table. Activia yogurt vs infant vomit at an outdoor table. Claussen kosher dill pickle halves vs Henry Kissinger at an outdoor table, etc, etc, etc. People line up and ooh and aah over the product manufactured by whatever company is paying for the commercial. Now, I, being a world-renowned snark-oozing cynic of course knew that the undesirable reactions proffered by the taste-testing idiots simply are not used in the finished product commercial. I mean, Coke obviously isn't going to put together a 30-second commercial with 3 people choosing Coke and one person choosing a blowjob, even though eleven out of thirteen osteopaths prefer blowjobs over Coke in clinical trials.

I mean, I'm not stupid or anything.

But, seeing Bianca DeGroat in what is obviously a completely staged taste-test, at the outdoor table scenario that was made specifically to mislead the public into thinking, "Oh, she's just some pretty, articulate woman in her early thirties that we pulled over here to shove some cereal into her mouth" quite frankly ruined my life.

Now my innocence is gone.

If Post Cereal can pay Bianca DeGroat lots of money to pretend she's just a random cereal-eating person, then where does it end? What else are they not telling us? Is the buck-toothed git in the hardhat at the Post Cereal factory who screams, "PEE-CANS!" and the annoying, bug-eyed woman in the hardhat at the Post Cereal factory who immediately thereafter screams, "PI-CAHNS!" fake, too? Are those two people actors, too? And, if they are, what the hell kind of actors are they? Surely they weren't trained in Alexander Technique.

I mean, I don't think I was either. Or, maybe I was-- I don't really remember.

I guess, in the end, what I'm saying is: I'm crushed. Every time I see that Post Cereal commercial, a little part of my innocence dies. But my wife still jumps up and down on the sofa.