#also this is why they don't let a-list actors do product commercials in their primary markets

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Thinking about it more, I think maybe part of why the Redfern thing is weird for me and why I was so utterly blindsided by it is that it never once occurred to me that "Dr. Redfern" was a real person. Or at least not a currently living person.

I think this is a time thing. I live in hellyear 2023, where corporations are people and brands are soulless monsters papering over their sins with the masks of their long dead founders. I don't expect Dr. Redfern to be real in the way I don't expect Mrs. Butterworth to be real or Dr. Bronner (of the soap company) to still be alive. Whereas LMM was writing in the 1920s, when meeting the self-made millionaire whose name is all over the radio is a thing that could plausibly happen, if only to a very select few. I think the whole thing might well read as way less weird to a reader at the time.

Which makes me think that the modern AU equivalent isn't that Barney is a secret Walton or a secret Disney or something but that he's secretly the kid of a musician or a sports star. Like, Valancy comes home and finds John Elway waiting for her. Or, like, a game show host who's very well known and very rich but also kind of a joke. Like, if the whole story had been peppered with Valancy seeing George Clooney advertising Nescafe and Cousin Stickles drinking only Nescafe because she trusted only George Clooney with her coffee, and then Valancy finds out at the 11th hour that her husband is secretly George Clooney's kid, it might not have been quite so jarring. Because George Clooney is a real person who exists for me, whereas, like, Dr. Scholl is not.