Ranking Commercial Breaks

You may think commercials are those nuisances interrupting your favorite shows but for these girls, being famous for thirty seconds is a big deal. Commercial acting is its own world with its own terms, protocols and competition that Kain makes as exciting as any Hollywood set.

1. Picture Perfect/Dramatic Pause: Normally I would put two in the top spot, especially in a trilogy but this is such a close tie that I truly cannot decide. In Picture Perfect, Cassie Harold loves commercials for its pristine, perfect life so unlike her mom who is her complete opposite and her father’s long distance work. In commercials everyone is happy and perfect and for those thirty seconds, she can be perfect too. In the course of the book, Cassie’s attempts to mold her real life to commercial life fails miserably especially as she reels from the news of her parent’s divorce. Kaine does an excellent job in showcasing Cassie’s numbness and denial over her changing life. Unlike other divorced kids, she doesn’t blame herself but wonders why her parents can’t remember what brought them together in the first place. You can understand how commercialism is her escape in a life where she feels pretty dumb and average but it makes it more triumphant when she starts to see how reality can be more affirming even if it isn’t perfect. Also it’s unique in that there’s no love interest, sure there’s a guy who has a crush on her and she learns to befriend him beyond his nerdish appearences but he’s like three years younger than so it would have been weird if it went in that direction. The only flaw is that Kain get repetitive in bringing the point home and some lines seemed to repeat or at least be a variation of the same. Dramatic Pause features Isabel Flores who yearns to be a serious actor in Broadway and she has the prodigy chops to back it up when she gets accepted to an acclaimed academy on scholarship. But it’s expensive, so she desperately accepts a ridiculous Japanese commercial job. Since it is supposed to only air in Asia, she is assured that her humiliation will never reach her serious actor crush, but then it comes to the U.S. Isabel’s struggle to reconcile the two highlights the snobbishness of the industry but it’s nice to see her learn as she befriends her fellow commercial actors and understands that one can be both. Her acting cred won’t tank because she appears as a dancing banana but just shows her versatility, one can be both. However, it’s one flaw is that Kain is just not great at burgeoning romances. I didn’t buy why Chuck would be still into Isabel after she acted like a snob to him and they only talked thrice.
2. Famous for Thirty Seconds: Brittany Rush is a big deal. She booked the most commercials in the industry ever since she was 8-months, but one year off the grid because her stupid family had to move to Hong Kong she finds her position as it-girl has been usurped. Honestly, Brittany is unlikable throughout the book. Her career is more important to her than anything else, so much that she barely knows how to interact with people her own age or fathom niceness without ulterior motives. Most of the book has her planning to sabotoge her really nice rival, Phoebe who genuinely believes they are friends by dating Phoebe’s brother aka her good luck charm. On one hand, Kain does a good job in pinpointing why Brittany is this way. How she has spent so much of her life on screen that she doesn’t have much idea of who she is on her own. That she confuses being viewed through screen as being seen. But I found her chemistry with Liam, the guy she ends up falling for despite her initial plan to dump him to ruin Phoebe’s mojo to be predictable and just cartoonishly self-involved for most of it. However, it did introduce me to the series and does an excellent job in illustrating the commercial industry, its lingo, process and such.