Note: This post contains major spoilers from Season 1, Episode 1 of And Just Like That.
It’s been a rough week for Peloton, following one of the company’s products being used to kill off a long-running television character in a deeply troubling way. The death at the end of the first episode of Sex and the City reboot/sequel And Just Like That also caused the company’s stock price to drop after the episode aired.
Now, Peloton has responded with a new ad, featuring Chris Noth, looking quite hale and hearty after his onscreen death in the episode in question. “I feel great,” Noth says, and double entendres follow. Rapid-fire narration at the end of the ad notes that regular exercise can, in fact, reduce your risk of heart disease. “He’s alive,” the narrator says as the commercial draws to a close.
You’ll note that a very familiar voice, that of Ryan Reynolds, is delivering the narration at the end. The ad was produced by Maximum Effort, the production company and marketing agency co-founded by Reynolds, channeling his inner Orson Welles here. And if the presence of Reynolds in a quickly-produced ad designed to address a controversy sounds familiar, it should.
You may recall that in the pre-pandemic days of 2019, a Peloton commercial went viral over criticism of its content — and Aviation Gin followed it up by casting the lead actress in that commercial in an ad of its own. (Note also that that earlier ad and this one share some of the same lines, albeit in a very different context.) And one of the owners of Aviation is — say it with me — Ryan Reynolds.
Which begs the question: is this all some sort of exercise equipment-related kayfabe? Do we need to trot out the Pepe Silvia meme? Will Ryan Reynolds make a cameo in future episodes of And Just Like That? These are strange times indeed.
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