Monday, August 22, 2011

Daughtry - “No Surprise”


We start out in some industrial area, with the band kicking off the song while standing next to a giant manufacturing something or other. (I didn’t realize that industrial areas came with their own live entertainment these days, but times change.) While Chris is doing that yodeling thing that starts the song, a beat-up truck drives into the area, and out hops a guy with a piece of paper. Maybe he’s taking a survey on better ways to start off a video?

Nope, seems he’s here looking for a job, but the little foreman guy doesn’t have any openings. So sorry. Cut to Chris driving through the area in an open convertible, for no apparent reason other than to show off his new shades. The sunglasses are nice and all, but dude, this other guy just got his dream of employment crushed. Chill. Chris turns the car and drives on down the road. Applicant Guy also drives away, allowing the band to play for an audience of absolutely nobody.

Cut to Chris tooling around in his car (do people in music videos ever NOT drive a convertible?). He conveniently passes a diner that just happens to be our next set piece, so that was very helpful of him. We go inside the diner, where we watch as some Waitress Lady is having a nice chat with a cute guy. A bit later, Waitress Lady is just trying to serve a drink, when some rude person bumps her and Lady dumps the drink on another patron who turns out to be very unsupportive about getting wet.

Manager Guy comes rushing up, because he finally has something to do, and of course he promptly yells at and then fires Lady, because if he didn’t do that we wouldn’t have a story for our video. Lady stomps out of the store and hurls her apron to the ground, because that always accomplishes a lot, and then she goes off to wherever fired people go in the middle of the day.

We visit with the band for a little bit, since this is really their song and all, then we’re back with the beat-up truck pulling up to a house. Our non-hired friend from the beginning of the video gets out, waves at some bro living next door, then goes inside to give the unemployment report to his girlfriend, who just happens to be the recently-liberated Lady from the Diner. To make things even more fun, they then stare at overdue bills and low bank-account balances.

Since this is supposed to be reenactment of real-life domesticity, they get into a huge fight and wave their arms around and holler things we can’t hear because Chris won’t shut up for half a second. Whatever words are exchanged, we can assume that nobody will be getting any dinner or sex that evening.

Cut to the next morning, with the couple snoozing in bed, so either they made up or they have very short attention spans. The dude slips out of bed and goes off to do who knows what, then Lady awakes, quickly counts on her fingers and realizes that somebody is missing from the bed, and she goes running off as well. I guess Dude was nowhere to be found in the house, since we then see Lady rushing out the front door, furtively glancing around for her man while still managing to look cute in her cut-off shorts and modified flannel top.

We watch as she runs all over town, looking hither and yon for Dude, but he’s taking this hiding business very seriously and remains unseen. Lady tries real hard, even doing this very cinematic thing in the middle of a parking lot, where she and her hair are captured in a nice 360-degree spin of the camera. But she finds nada. (Well, she does bump into a really cute guy along the way, but she isn’t thinking clearly enough to get his number in case she needs a Plan B in her life.)

Lady finally arrives at that dusty manufacturing place, where nobody seems to be working but the band is still playing an apparent marathon set, then she decides to climb a nearby hill of dirt, because that seems reasonable when you can’t find your boyfriend. Once at the top, she gets tired and decides to lean against the side of an enormous rock that is completely out of place but seems sturdy enough. As the camera pulls back, we see Dude leaning against the other side of the rock, both of them looking distraught and unsatisfied.

The video ends with Chris doing the final bit of yodeling on the song, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Julie Andrews made a sudden cameo, offering everybody a job on the set of her new movie, Princess Diaries 3: Shrek Meets Mary Poppins, but this doesn’t immediately happen. The camera lingers for a bit, helping us understand that being pretty doesn’t mean you can get or keep a job, but you still might get a chance to be in a music video, then we fade to black…


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.


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