Antiquing

[Paul]

Antique sales is a tough business...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptk5tLtldxE

[Clypheous]

His customers react exactly the way I do to antiques. Why would anyone want to spend money on someone else's old stuff? If it was in the family and was a memento or something, old stuff is fine, but otherwise? I guess I just don't really get it.

The desperation though might have been a little too close to reality for modern retail in general though, I've seen that look at stores that I find have closed a few weeks later.

[AdmiralMemo]

I kind of liked it.

[Omega Lairon]

Sad but true... you really have to be super interested in antiques to justify spending more than the minimum cost for essentially "fancy furniture". That said, it was probably the wrong location for 2 antique stores... GAP? Pottery Barn? Yeah, that's probably not the kind of classy, expensive area you'd do a lot of business in.

[ritchards]

I noticed a certain... BSG theme to the street names there...

[Master Gunner]

There's an antiques store near where I live that's a small old building surrounded by a large, fenced-in yard/"parking lot", on a prime piece of land on a major street that's seeing strip malls and mini-plazas going up all over the place, and I've never seen anybody go into it in the 15 years I've lived here.

Definitely a front for something. Maybe Robert should have looked down that route.

[SoldieroFortune]

Man, is it just me, or have some of the recent videos made you feel really, really bad for the protagonists?

Not that that's a bad thing, they're still really funny - I've just come away from the last couple vids saying, "Aww, poor Paul / Beej."

- Edit - Not talking about Punchr, but the one before that, the social anxiety one.

[kade_zero]

I love the character arc; you can really imagine this poor guy’s life falling apart between these commercials.

[RytelCSF]

After seeing the stinger and rewatching, that pause in "Barry, my ex-... designer" is a really nice touch.

[Re'ozul]

So who else is seriously intrigued about Fairbanks Antiques? Reilley apparently had a lot of stuff and really good service.
He still went under pretty fast.
Meanwhile Fairbanks is apparently not only holding on, but has enough success to hire Reilley's old employees.
I wanna know more about THAT apparently insanely fantastic store.

[Lord Hosk]

Paul, I imagine that all those commercials were shot over one really long day and it wasnt that the company was doing worse and worse but that the crew filming it were just pissing him off more and more with stupid questions and kept telling him these ideas like "well what if you give everyone a monster!" And then his staff kept watching this getting horrified and leaving as he melted down which he took as them quitting which was adding to his frustration.

[TheGeek]

At first I was expecting dueling commercials between him and Fairbanks Antiques but I liked the way it went.

[ocelotteranian]

I absolutely loved this one! You guys seem to have a knack for telling pretty complex comedic stories via commercial/infomercial, e.g. the Suspiciously Fast company, Dr. Greg, and so on.

Also just from the way Robert talked about Barry when he started to melt down, I was like "I feel like they were a couple" and then the stinger made ALL MY DREAMS come true. Love it!

[AdmiralMemo]

Interestingly, I didn't get any homosexual subtext on this until Beej mentioned it on-stream. I didn't even notice the hesitation between "ex" and "designer" and I took ""I gotta go back to my place and let Barry get his stuff" to mean that he stole Barry's stuff from the other store, and was keeping it at his place under ransom or something.

At this point, I wonder if Death of the Author comes into play.

[Master Gunner]

"Lovers" and "Roommates" popped onto my head simultaneously with the stinger, but then looking back at the rest of the video, the intention is clearly to point towards the former while still leaving it ambiguous.

[poopintheairtonight]

His customers react exactly the way I do to antiques. Why would anyone want to spend money on someone else's old stuff? If it was in the family and was a memento or something, old stuff is fine, but otherwise? I guess I just don't really get it.

The desperation though might have been a little too close to reality for modern retail in general though, I've seen that look at stores that I find have closed a few weeks later.

Oh Spoops you're right. I've seen a furniture store be the same way. Then again they needed to go out of business. Bedbugs suck.

There's an antiques store near where I live that's a small old building surrounded by a large, fenced-in yard/"parking lot", on a prime piece of land on a major street that's seeing strip malls and mini-plazas going up all over the place, and I've never seen anybody go into it in the 15 years I've lived here.

Definitely a front for something. Maybe Robert should have looked down that route.

Hrm. I'm thinking drugs, gambling, or the combination of the two and more, organized crime.

[steric hindrance]

His customers react exactly the way I do to antiques. Why would anyone want to spend money on someone else's old stuff? If it was in the family and was a memento or something, old stuff is fine, but otherwise? I guess I just don't really get it.

The desperation though might have been a little too close to reality for modern retail in general though, I've seen that look at stores that I find have closed a few weeks later.

Oh Spoops you're right. I've seen a furniture store be the same way. Then again they needed to go out of business. Bedbugs suck.

There's an antiques store near where I live that's a small old building surrounded by a large, fenced-in yard/"parking lot", on a prime piece of land on a major street that's seeing strip malls and mini-plazas going up all over the place, and I've never seen anybody go into it in the 15 years I've lived here.

Definitely a front for something. Maybe Robert should have looked down that route.

Hrm. I'm thinking drugs, gambling, or the combination of the two and more, organized crime.

"Come on down to Reilly's Casino and Antiques Emporium. Step right up and try a slot machine? Or maybe you want to purchase this crate of four hundred sixty-two brass doorknobs, no questions asked. A bag of drugs will be provided to the first hundred customers to walk in, whether you want it or not."

[empath]

Yeah, fantastic vid.

The only think I think might've been better would to have the stinger as the finish of the vid, and then the stinger be Robert speaking with the 'Dave's <thing> and <disparate thing> Emporium' advertiser, looking to *him* for help.

Dunno if it'd be better than what we had, but I'm curious about how it would've compared...

[interhawk]

Lapsang Souchong, there's your problem right there.
nope. nope. nope. nope.

[Bratmon]

Am I the only one who got a Cave Johnson vibe from this? Like, any line of his rant at the end could have been traded with any late Cave line, and it wouldn't have seemed out of place?