If you ever catch basic cable after 10 PM or so, you’ve seen commercials that are just plain undignified. These sorts of commercials, catering to a male clientele that can probably be accurately  described as “desperate,” have been playing for decades and are nothing new. But there is a new one that has me a bit confused. It’s for a dating service… but one that specializes in “dating with women from Europe.” Assuming they *actually* bring over European women (as opposed to being a chat-line or something), it’d be my guess that they specialize in equally desperate women… probably refugees from Belarus or some such.

OK, sure, whatever. If you’ve watched late-night TV, you know the commercial. It’s on all the friggen’ time. But the question that has me stumped: the narrator is a guy reading a script pretending that he is a successful client, happy with his Woman From Europe. Ok, sure, whatever. But why is the narrator clearly a guy from *Europe?* He has an accent best described as “European trying to put on an American accent,” the result being sort of an aural uncanny valley, like listening to a subdued version of the “mid Atlantic” fake accent you hear from rich characters in old Marx Brothers movies.

So why would this be? If they are trying to appeal to American men, why would they use a European man as a model? My guess: the whole thing was actually produced in Europe, and the narrator was the best voice actor they could find who could put on an American accent… and to the producers European ears, the accent sounds convincingly American. But to at least *my* American ears, it sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

The end result is that it just doesn’t do the job of making me want to spend my money to bring over a European gold-digger woman.