Take life in your hands!
Unedited Footage of a Bear is a 2014 short created by Alan Resnick and Wham City Comedy that aired as a part of the Infomercials series on [adult swim]. The short is exactly what you'd expect it to be...
...well, at first. The short does start with footage of a grizzly bear while the cameraman comments on the size of the bear's ears. However, the short interrupted by a commercial for a fictional drug called "Claridryl." Donna, the main protagonist, tells the audience about how much better her life is after she started taking the medication. As the short draws on, it quickly becomes clear that something is very wrong. What results is a downward spiral in to madness, anxiety, and much more.
Watch the short here
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Unedited Tropes of a Bear:
- Alternate Personality Punishment: Donna, who is addicted to the fictional drug Claridryl, has multiple "clones" running around during the short; the main one, who is depicted as cruel and abusive to her children, representing her addicted personality. She hits Donna with her own car and then leaves to torment the children, leaving Donna to crawl back home. When Donna makes it, it's clear she's too late to do anything, as flashing red and blue lights approach her. In her addictive state she'd at least hurt her kids, causing police intervention, but it's staged as though the sane and injured Donna is innocent and the cruel, abusive Donna clone is the criminal.Donna: "I don't have a gun... I don't have a gun..."
- Artifact Title: The title of Unedited Footage of a Bear gives no indication that said footage will be hijacked by an extended Claridryl commercial.
- Bait-and-Switch Comparison: The initial commercial for Claridryl portrays a mother suffering from seasonal allergies, intentionally giving one the impression that Claridryl is a medication for the springtime sniffles. At no point during the commercial, however, is it stated that it's allergy medication. The side effects, instead, make it very clear that Claridryl is intended as an anti-depressant medication of some sort, most likely an anti-depressant booster like Abilify. Reading between the lines to see the mother's true, stress-related symptoms makes this clearer.
- Big Bad: The evil Donna chasing around Donna to kill her, who may or may not be a manifestation of her drug addiction.
- Creator Cameo: Many Wham City regulars have quick scenes throughout the short.
- Alan Resnick voices the cameraman filming the bear.
- Ben O'Brien plays a detective at the crime scene and is the voiceover for the Claridryl commercial.
- Robby Rackleff plays an officer in tears at the sight of the crime scene and the head sticking out of the floor in the basement of the interactive house.
- Cricket Arrison plays one of the Donna clones.
- Dan Deacon plays the criminal investigator at the crime scene.
- Death of a Child: A Claridryl-addicted Donna murders her own children and is arrested for it.
- Disappeared Dad: The father is nowhere to be seen in the commercial. Various cluesnote indicate Donna is a single mom. One of the Donnas in the basement starts whispering to the walls about meeting a guy, indicating she's actively dating.
- Downer Ending: Donna's addiction to Claridryl likely leads to a psychotic episode in which she murders her own children. The last shot we see is of the original Donna, beaten and bloodied, resting against the stairs to her house while police surround the area, all while weakly whispering, "I don't have a gun."
- Drugs Are Bad: The whole short is implied to be about the dangers of prescription drug addiction. Donna, the woman in the commercial taking Claridryl, has entire boxes of it in the backseat of her van, and slowly goes insane as a result of what is implied to be the drug, with an evil doppelganger, possibly representing her addiction or a side effect caused by overusing the drug, coming after her. Ultimately, she winds up killing her children and doesn't seem to realize she did it.
- Easter Egg: Clicking enough times on the house on Claridryl's website opens an interactive version of the house seen in the short.
- Enemy Without: Possibly. Somehow, the negative aspects of Donna's addiction have manifested itself as an evil clone of Donna.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: If you're looking for unedited footage of a bear, you've come to the right place! If, that is, you want "raw" footage of a Mama Bear...
- Foreshadowing:
- Donna drives past a crime scene where it's heavily implied that the crazed rambling man seen being arrested murdered everyone inside and possibly murdered himself/his doppelganger, as seen by the fact that he and the corpse are wearing the same shoes.
- The first line of the commercial is "Sometimes being a mom is like having to be in two places at once," foreshadowing the appearance of evil Donna.
- Claridryl's slogan is "take Claridryl, and take life in your hands".
- The backseat of Donna's van is covered in boxes of Claridryl and her children are nowhere to be found. This shows how bad her addiction has gotten and foreshadows the children eventually being murdered.
- Freudian Trio:
- Evil Donna is the Id; being unable to speak in anything but screams, accompanied by primal music at all times and quite literally beating the other two into submission before wrecking havoc on the household.
- Injured Donna is the ego; being the one running her day to day life she loses control over everything due to her addiction to Claridryl
- Robotic Donna is the super ego; being the only sane woman tries to call Donna before everything starts and spends the entirety of the episode screaming for injured Donna's help, also looks incredibly run down by Donna's Claridryl addiction
- Gloomy Gray: The Claridryl ad starts with Donna's world being full of grey and muted colours, until she "stands her ground" with Claridryl and lights everything up. As the film is a parody of drug commercials, there are numerous hints that Donna is suffering from depression after the death of her husband, and the grayscale beginning of the commercial symbolizes this issue and how Claridryl helps her...with some side-effects.
- Injured Self-Drag: After Donna gets run over by her evil doppelganger, she's in horrible pain, bleeding in the street. For the duration of the short, we see her painfully dragging herself to her house, where the doppelganger is now tormenting her kids. She makes it to the front steps before the cops show up and arrest her, seemingly for something that happened to her kids in the meantime.
- Interface Screw:
- The bear footage gets interrupted by a YouTube ad, on television. During said commercial, the counter goes up instead of down.
- The fine print at the bottom of the screen keeps going even long after the commercial is supposed to have ended.
- The tie-in website also contains this. Clicking on the links will cause them to randomly fly off, the tabs at the top to slowly disappear, and the Claridryl bottle will eventually begin to grow until it takes up the entire screen.
- Madness Mantra: Donna keeps repeating "I don't have a gun" at the end.
- Meaningful Background Event:
- Look closely at the start of the Claridryl commercial. You can see the evil version of Donna standing in the background at one point.
- When Donna is driving off in her van, her children are not with her. Instead, the back seat is covered in boxes and boxes of Claridryl, signifying how bad her addiction has gotten.
- A man in a baseball cap and safety vest can be seen running through the crime scene. No one seems to notice or acknowledge him in any way except for the man being arrested.
- If you look closely you can see that the man being arrested has the same shoes on as the man murdered on the ground.
- Mind Screw: A lot of weird and bizarre things happen throughout the short.
- The fact that a YouTube commercial skip counter goes up instead of down is the first indication that something is not right with whatever universe this takes place in.
- The multiple Donnas. It's never made clear if they're physical manifestations of Donna's addiction to Claridryl, hallucinations, or if there's just one Donna and Claridryl has caused her to have some severe mood swings.
- Somehow, the guy being arrested as Donna drives by the crime scene killed himself/his doppelganger. Whether or not this is literal or metaphorical is never explained.
- Evil Donna somehow acquires the keys to Donna's minivan following the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. There's no indication of how; they just appear in her hand, and even she looks surprised to find them there.
- Motion Blur: When Donna picks up the phone, even though it isn't a very fast motion.
- Number of the Beast: The product code seen on the insanity-inducing Claridryl box contains the number 666.
- Running Over the Plot: It gets started when Donna runs into her evil clone in the street, who attacks her, forces her out of the car, and then hits her with said car. This allows the clone to take over her life for a while and do something to her kids, while the real Donna is stuck crawling home.
- Shout-Out: "See our ad in Tables and Chairs Magazine."
- Shown Their Work: Some of those horrifying side effects that can occur when taking Claridryl? They're real. Antidepressants can cause heart problems, and in people with bipolar disorder, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and other antidepressants can cause mania and suicidal thoughts. The kicker? Mania can happen with certain allergy meds, too. The Donnelli Twins are psychologists themselves, and the short is an Author Tract against the overprescription and abuse of SSRIs, particularly the type used to "help along" an already prescribed antidepressant.
- Side Effects Include...: The side-effects of Claridryl include some pretty horrifying things including a warning to call your doctor if you have "someone's face all over you."
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: One of the first signs that something is very wrong is when the cheerful ad music suddenly fades away, leaving nothing but the sounds of Donna's car and the ad-announcer's voice coming quietly through the radio.
