Hasta La Creative!

Rhett & Link will slake your thirst for goofy, brand-inspired comedy in the “Ultimate Water Taste Test,” a wonderfully wet episode of their “Good Mythical Morning” YouTube show.

The guys, best known for their brilliantly bad local commercials, compete against each other to identify seven varieties of water. They sample five brands: Dasani, Evian, Fiji, Smart Water and Blk Water. (“It’s not from a river in Alabama,” Rhett quips, but infused with fulvic powder, “whatever that is.”) There’s also pond water from Echo Park in Los Angeles and H2O straight from the tap.

The duo don a dual-action water-tasting apparatus—basically hardhats and two hoses for drinking—that actually connects their heads, making them look, Link notes, “like two construction workers talked into doing some kind of scuba trust exercise.”

Once the blind water taste test begins, the snark pours forth.

“It’s got a flowed-down-through-snow-in-the-Alps kind of a feel to it.”
“There’s an elevation in this taste—this is from up high, not from down below.”
“Tastes like clouds.”
“I can taste vapor distillation.”
“If somebody’s selling this, they need to stop immediately.”

You’ll have to watch the 15-minute segment—streaming rapidly toward 1 million YouTube views in just two days—to see how many of the seven they correctly identify. Be sure to hang in for the refreshingly honest “Neither Water” spoof commercial at the end, which drives home the point that, when you’re truly parched, branding doesn’t matter.

"Feed me, or I will shoot you and burn down your establishment." How many times have I shouted that at Carl's Jr. and still had to wait for service? The line doesn't work any better for the cowboy in Rhett & Link's commercial for Frontier Wok, a Wild West-themed Chinese eatery in Burbank, Calif. The guy winds up on the losing end of a quick-draw food shootout with the restaurant's manager, felled by the Kung POW! chicken. "That is some tasty Kung POW! chicken. I'm glad I had my last meal at the Frontier Wok," the cowboy says as he expires. Frontier Wok's entrees probably aren't deadly in real life, though the place does promise "Chinese food so good, it'll blow you away," so you never know. The spot sends up both Westerns and Asian martial-arts movies with out-of-sync dubbed dialogue, which is horribly cliched at this point, but still funny. At the end, the manager rides off into the sunset on a small pony, determined no doubt to set up a franchise in the British Isles.

Just a few weeks after making the most awkward transmission-repair ad ever, Rhett & Link are back with another goofy local commercial—this one for the Ryan Lee Chiropractic Center in Los Angeles. It stars the eponymous practitioner, who twists, turns and otherwise contorts the bodies of his patients until their skeletons emit rather sickening crunching sounds. It only gets worse as the ad goes on. The tagline is "Gentle. Comfortable. Professional"—although if that's true, it's not totally clear what's going on at 0:41.

It should be the quintessential YouTube video: Funny Baby Panda Kiss. But when you tried to watch it, all you got was an infinite pre-roll ad loop. Because Rhett and Link wanted to trick you for April Fools' Day. The gag ads take what should be a nightmare scenario of never-ending, low-budget marketing and turn it into a good comedy bit. South Carolina's tourism board, for example, wants you to come pan a river for loose change and teeth in "the underbelly of North Carolina." Or if you're a lonely widower in your golden years, forget finding a late-life companion. Get a roommate with benefits at the Silver Manor retirement home. Because fake commercials are usually more honest than real ones.