"I'm a little irregular today"

Did you know that eating some yogurt for at least two weeks can keep you regular? Forget bran muffins, television commercials are now trying to tell us just how much fun life can be once your digestive system is in tip-top shape again. And that is, I'm sure, no easy task for the writers of the commercial. And sometimes, I don't think they necessarily succeed.

Say a producer comes up to you and says that he wants two women discussing irregularity in a natural, believable context. After the what has my life come to? thoughts clear up, you jot down numerous ideas for this commercial. And your final idea, which gets approved, is two women lounging around a pool, discussing their digestive systems. One woman asks the other to go for a little swim. The other person responds:

"I'm a little irregular today."

And the commercial gets made. With very high production values, a celebrity endorser (Jamie Lee Curtis) and expensive graphics.

I understand that commercials often have to resort to stereotypes, or even hyper-stereotypes, to quickly get their point across. And they used the "women will talk about anything!" stereotype. But there is something so terribly blunt about the "I'm a little irregular today" revelation that strikes me as somewhat startling, if not teetering on the brink of hilarious. The commercials casual seriousness betrays the awkward and forced dialogue.

I should add a paragraph of clarification: I think it is fine to talk about irregularity. I hold nothing against this product. I still think Jamie Lee Curtis is terrific in her own way. But I think that the bluntness of that dialogue, and the sheer weirdness of that dialogue, makes this commercial very, very weird.