I Can't Believe It's Not Melodrama

It was witnessed last night with awed stupefaction while watching a rerun of the Kirsten Dunst-hosted "SNL" on E! It was, as best as I can describe, a promotional gimmick for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter featuring a Flash-animated murder mystery centered around a personified bottle of said faux butter substance. Named "Spraychel," the feminine protagonist is apparently trying to prove her innocence in the untimely death of "Buttricia," a personified stick of butter.

[ link: Free-Spraychel.com ]

"Things really heat up when the refrigerator lights go down." The mystery will unravel through a series of webisodes in the series "The Sprays of Her Life," which sounds like golden shower porn. (And would a golden shower joke really be out of place in universe centering around spray butter?) Supporting characters include Nurse Lardis, a gay strip of bacon named Kevin, and Dr. Brock, who looks suspiciously like David Cross.

I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. The dialogue is surprisingly salacious, full of double entendres like this one, spoken by Spraychel about Buttricia: "I don't mean to squeeze my own tube, but I taste just like her." Whoever came up with the idea of marketing a soap opera heroine with the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter pump sticking out of her head deserves a raise, then to be fired — in whatever order best suits the people at Unilever. In short, not nearly as good as that talking tub of Parkay, but infinitely better than Fabio. (The latter, by the way, is referenced in the Spraychel universe by the heroine's lawyer, a talking corn cob named "Cobbio.")

Note: If I had seen this commercial on E rather than on E!, I probably would have liked it a lot more.