2698: Bad Date

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Bad Date

Title text: "Even split between us, this will pay way better than the Jumanji sponsorship I came into the date with."

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a SPONSORSHIP - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Transcript

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[Cueball and Megan are sitting at a table in a restaurant.]

Megan: Psst -- this date is going so badly that the people around us are posting it live. Look. [She hands her cellphone to Cueball.]

[Cueball looks at cellphone, sees this video of them earlier on the date:]

Megan in video: Unbelievable - Have you even seen Jumanji?

[Video caption: "Date disaster" 252k following]

Cueball: Oh no.

Megan: But it's okay: I got us a sponsorship. You just need to play along...

Cueball: I could never go home with someone with such bad taste in mattresses. I need the soft support of the ProFirm 3000®.

Megan: Wait, I can order one! With same-day delivery, it can-

Cueball: You had your chance.

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Discussion

There was a time when just the fact that she was looking at her cellphone during the date would be evidence that it's not going well. Sadly, it's probably normal these days. Barmar (talk) 15:05, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1iH1hppneo 172.71.158.90 16:34, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

She went on a date with an Explainxkcd editor, obvs. 172.71.158.216 19:55, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

@Kynde, but more generally putting it out there: "For sure it is Megan who came into the date with jumanji. Else playing dumb by Cueball would not make sense, because Megan would likely not have mentioned Jumanji. How should Cueball mention it and then say that he don't know it?" - the aside that this refers to/removed was written to cover if Cueball had sneakily forced conversation about Jumanji by somehow steering the conversation towards ("No film has had a rhino charge through an American town", "I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a video-game character", ...) while pretending not to have seen it, or perhaps 'clearly' have not watched it correctly. All to incite the date (Megan) into being loudly enthused. Cueball's "Oh no" is more like how Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka would have said it (a cursory level of concern about how 'bad' things have gone, it actually being his plan all along to seed the events; but also perhaps instead some awkwardness that Megan picked up on the live-posting). Megan independently has her ideas and Cueball (as the usual voice of Randall) decides shifting to her newly acquired sponsor is worthwhile.
The alternative currently promoted is that Megan came with the Jumanji idea, somehow exasperatingly runs out of steam of how to promote "Jumanji: Deeper Into the Metaverse" (or whatever fictional/factual thing she's supposed to be spreading news of) and isn't happy that her outbursts are reaching the large audience (that would surely be so good for her attempt to put the word out, even if she was originally supposed to be individually advertising to just the one date at a time..?) and yet somehow gets the inspiration to spend precious moments breaking the (in-date) fourth wall to clue Cueball in on the fuss she has caused, find and accept an alternate backer, announce it as a new idea that Cueball should roll with (perhaps ruining the date more, such that he does play along but definitely hates Megan more than when she was irrationally going on about this 'Jumanji' thing) and then breaks the mood yet again by revealing that the interesting idea of a "sponsored conversation" was not necessarily an opportunistic turn of events, but had (in another form, for another sponsor) been her basic idea all along.
I'm still willing to believe it's Megan who says the title text (there's some possibility that it flows that way, in arguments that I haven't bothered to voice above), but I find the idea that it is Cueball to have more than a little attractiveness in various key ways. Definitely it isn't sure that it isn't him, and potentially quite confusing as to who it really is. 172.71.178.207 21:57, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I actually don't think it mattes who said the title text. But since the whole explanation is already overexplaining the comic it might not matter. --172.70.246.98 23:20, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

In Nathan For You S01E08, a scenario is engineered where they get someone on a date, but one of the participants has to give product endorsements for Quiznos. A Quiznos marketing rep is wired in to a hidden earpiece giving the marketing keywords to say while watching the date from a hidden camera. 172.70.93.37 11:53, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I feel like there ought to be some kind of thematic tie-in to the Jumanji franchise, e.g. about being sucked into a game, or maybe "sucked into the dating game." But I can't see one. Maybe it just isn't there, or I am not being sufficiently creative. JohnHawkinson (talk) 10:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)