OF BEAVERS AND BLIPVERTS

You've seen the TV commercial for Rozerem, haven't you? There's the guy who can't sleep so he goes down to the kitchen where he's confronted by three characters from his dream cycle: Abraham Lincoln, a guy in a diving bell suit, and a beaver who plays chess.

They tell him about Rozerem, the product that can help restore his REM cycle so that he can get back to sleep and play chess again. Even though "Honest" Abe cheats, according to the Beav.

But who exactly is the insomnia guy?

I honestly can't remember if the Beaver or Abe calls him by his given name or not; and in the item about the commercial at adweek.com (see the link to the left) he's only listed in the credits as "Insomnia Guy".

But that's... okay. Because that means we can make the claim that he's some other character played on Television by that actor, Kevin Berntson.

What especially helps is that Kevin Berntson has played a couple of characters who were nameless; any one of them could later be suffering from insomnia.

The first one was a character he played in 'ER' who was just listed as "Student #1" in the episode "They Treat Horses, Don't They?"

But I think we can eliminate this character as an option as he later shows up in another episode, "Masquerade", later the same year. But this time he's known as Willie Goldman.

I'm striving to keep things simple with the vast Toobworld concept, so why complicate matters with two Chicago residents running around on the same show with the same face? I don't see the need to drag the "identical cousins" chestnut out of the fire for this one.

Then there's the fifteenth episode of a show called 'Spyder Games', in which Berntson played a guy simply known as "Man at Laundromat". Perhaps that is the same guy suffering from insomnia in the Rozerem blipvert.

'Spyder Games' was a 65 episode soap opera on MTV about a family who made their fortune with a video game empire who all had dirty secrets.

"The town is called Fort Kent, but it's not anywhere specifically," said the producer Christian McLaughlin. "Actually, Fort Kent is a real town in Maine that my [Mom?] is from, and they're going to freak out when they see how dirty the show is."

The Rozerem ad could be combined with the episode of 'Reno 911' which dealt with the news that "Wiegel's Pregnant". In that episode, Berntson played a guy named Jim Mann.

If he was the guy who got Wiegel pregnant, then yeah, I guess he probably would be suffering from insomnia.

Finally, if the commercial is set in San Francisco, then we can combine his nameless character with the sports fan who was serving on a jury when "Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty". The travails of that experience, including the annoyance of being cooped up with 'Monk', not to mention being tied up by a killer, would keep anybody awake at night.

It's always best to combine such characters so that we don't have too many people wandering around with the exact same facial features.

Just imagine what it must have been like in Los Angeles back in the 1970s. With all of his different appearances on 'Columbo', there must have been at least ten guys who all looked like a very funny character actor named Vito Scotti!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby