The Cable Guy‘s Super Bowl 2022 ad paid off Jim Carrey’s monologue about the future of technology in the film. First released in 1996 and directed by Ben Stiller, The Cable Guy was Carrey’s first major foray into black comedy. Though it also ended up being the first real disappointment in Carrey’s career after his rise to stardom, its reputation has grown more positive since then.
In The Cable Guy, Carrey plays cable installer Chip Douglas, who wants to be the friend of Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick) after hooking up his cable service. Chip’s bizarre behavior and refusal to respect Steven’s space leads him to break off the friendship, with Chip becoming vengeful to Steven. The Cable Guy was certainly a departure for Carrey, but he would return to the role during Super Bowl LVI in a surprising way.
In the Super Bowl 2022 ad, Chip arrives at a customer’s apartment, once again pounding the door to make his arrival known, to set up her cable. The customer informs Chip that she’s already good to go with Verizon 5G. Much to Chip’s surprise, the customer’s setup is wireless and doesn’t require a coaxial cable to be installed. However, one can only assume Chip was merely feigning his astonishment at Verizon 5G, as he himself predicted it in The Cable Guy.
In the scene where Chip takes Steven to a satellite dish to explain how cable works, he gives a monologue about where the future of cable is headed. In Chip’s words made immortal by Jim Carrey’s comedic performance: “The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone, and computer. You’ll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female mud wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam. There’s no end to the possibilities!” Needless to say, Chip’s prediction was a very spot-on prophecy about the internet, Wi-Fi, and other technological developments since The Cable Guy was originally released.
These days, Chip’s proposal of TV, phone, and internet all being packaged together is commonplace thanks to providers like Verizon. Furthermore, Chip was also on the money with the idea of gamers playing together from different corners of the globe as well as online shopping. All of that makes the Super Bowl commercial for Verizon 5G feel like the (admittedly very brief) sequel to The Cable Guy that never was.
While The Cable Guy wasn’t the most beloved Jim Carrey vehicle in its time, it’s fun to revisit with the benefit of 26 years of hindsight. Carrey still made full use of his well-known brand of physical comedy, while the darker story allowed him to show his range as an actor. Carrey’s portrayal of Chip was certainly a hard-right turn from the live-action cartoon character he’d embodied before. That said, Carrey’s venture into both darker and more dramatic roles since The Cable Guy have helped put it into a context many have come to appreciate in his career. The other great legacy of The Cable Guy, though, remains Chip’s very accurate foretelling about where cable, the internet, and telecommunications were headed back when the Jim Carrey-led comedy arrived in 1996. Jim Carrey’s return as Chip Douglas in the Verizon 5G ad for the 2022 Super Bowl ultimately pays that off, showing Chip seeing firsthand hand just how right he was in The Cable Guy.
