When Daniel Jalkut blogs, I usually agree with him and/or learn something, but I disagree strongly with his praise for the new Microsoft ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. I disagree so strongly that I briefly wondered whether Daniel was being sarcastic.

For my taste, the ads fail at the level of basic comedy. The timing is off and there is no chemistry between Jerry and Bill.

In the latest ad there is something deeper and uglier that bothers me. The premise is that Jerry and Bill need to get back in touch with regular people — people who don't live in a "moon-house" or own a fleet of cars — and so they've taken up residence with a suburban family. From this I would expect self-deprecating humor that shows how out of touch they are.

But many of the bits of business in the ad make fun of the family, not Bill and Jerry. The father wonders if Bill has ever had something as humble as scalloped potatoes. The mother thinks celebrities need fancy mustard (an impression Bill and Jerry actually confirm). The granny is a wacko. In the end, Bill and Jerry's experiment fails because a family member sabotages them.

The ad starts out pleasantly enough, with the father taking a very reasonable attitude about the car in his neighbor's driveway. After that, there are maybe two moments I liked: Bill showing the kid the top-secret app, and the recurring bit at the end when Jerry says "If it's yes…" For the rest of the time, I found all the characters — Bill, Jerry, and the family — pretty unlikeable.

[Minor update, 2012-07-10: The YouTube link to the ad is now "private", so I replaced it with one that works.]