Amazon Prime users are mad at Will Ferrell for talking over their damn Rose Parade
There’s an interesting phenomenon happening in the seemingly middle-of-the-road reviews for Amazon’s recent New Years Day streaming offering, The 2018 Rose Parade Hosted By Cord & Tish. Rather than the “Sure, that’s fine” response you might expect from a two-hour Funny Or Die send-up of vapid parade-day commentary, complete with Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon as the program’s cheerfully angry hosts, the streaming special’s current 3.3. user rating actually reflects a much more polarized response, with almost every review falling in the 5-star or 1-star category. As it turns out, people either really loved (53 percent) or really hated (39 percent) Cord and Tish, and the haters have been extremely vocal about their feelings about the way the duo got in the way of their expected parade-watching experience.
Admittedly, some people simply didn’t get that the special was a goof, presumably because they exist outside the demographic that’s been raised from birth to check whether any weird, tall white guy with unearned confidence and bad hair is secretly Will Ferrell in disguise. Others, though, understood the basic concept, but were still vocally pissed that there was very little regular parade coverage in this comedy spoof of regular parade coverage. Some were mad about the satirical tone of the commentary, which included somewhat mean-spirited commentary on John Lennon, America’s military, and SNL mainstay Tim Meadows. Others recounted their efforts to make the best of things by muting their TVs, as they desperately tried to catch glimpses of the actual event from in between Ferrell and Shannon’s talking heads. “And,” one 1-star review damningly notes, “They gave no interesting information whatsoever about the floats.”
The suggestion here is that Amazon actually missed a pretty key demographic with its decision to go funny with its coverage of the event: cord-cutters who would sincerely still like to watch the Rose Parade without needing a TV. We wish no ill-will toward Shannon or Ferrell, of course, but one wonders if a bonus, Tish-less version of the actual parade might quiet some of the angrier voices when next year’s New Years comes around.