How the Andersons Got Tickets to the Game
Seriously — HOW did they get tickets?
We’ve seen this commercial too many times. It is time that we reckon with the various terrible questions that it poses:
First we need to address this dad. Let’s call him Dennis Jones. He can understand that the game is sold out (and, judging by the Snapchat he receives, that it’s either in progress or imminent… let’s tackle one hole at a time, though), but he does not understand that he can still get tickets on a league-sponsored ticket sale and resale site. He seems, in general, to be massively confused by the great symphony of life.
His misunderstanding in this instance is understandable. Because the Andersons suck. Really. They’re the fucking worst.
Jeff Anderson, the fail-patriarch (failtriarch) of this clan, picks his nose and eats it, cheats on Marie Henderschott-Anderson, his wife, at every opportunity, stole his neighbor’s leafblower (the neighbor being our hapless hero, Dennis) and uses it right in front of him with complete impunity, and may have been complicit in the assassination of journalist Michael Hastings. “Car accident,” my ass.
Marie ain’t too special herself. She lied about voting for Hillary Clinton but 100 percent hit the button for Cheeto Jesus himself, has said that Derrick Rose’s recent rape accusations make her more committed to supporting him and the Knicks, and is generally a mean asshat to her two poor, stupid sons, Derek and Verek. I mean — Verek? What the hell?
Verek is harmless. Derek Anderson, though, is an evil piece of shit who feeds spiders to nerds and carries a Def Leppard lunchbox with him at all times, sometimes using it as a blunt instrument on passing senior citizens. He deserves to be pelted with acorns and/or dipped in a vat of Africanized honeybees. Fuck him.
Anyway, the Andersons regularly get NBA tickets that they don’t even appreciate because of Jeff Anderson’s employment as a midlevel National Security Agency intelligence analyst. Dennis, our hero, doesn’t know this and thinks his neighbors are somehow wildly powerful and influential. This fills him with sadness and rage.
Violet Jones knows, though.
Violet is Dennis’s loving but sometimes frustrated wife, and she knows exactly how the Andersons got those tickets.
She has been tracking Jeff in an undercover sting operation for years. Violet Jones is also with the NSA, but tasked with a mandate to stamp out corruption festering within the agency. Jeff Anderson is at the top of her personal wanted list. He is an embezzler and a slob, and grossest of all, uses his power to authorize surveillance of American citizens to film his extramarital exploits as pornographic videos. As a member of Pornhub Community, “jeffballz6969” has over 6,500 followers staring at his shriveled nutsack on a regular basis. Also, Benghazi might’ve been his fault. Just a hunch Violet has. What a fucking douchebag!
So why is she smiling in the scene pictured above? It’s because her plan to nab Jeff Anderson is about to come to fruition, and it will happen as an embarrassment in front of his entire family — at the very NBA game those fuckwits are attending right now!
As for their own tickets to the game, which Violet must attend as part of the sting, she entrusts her bright son Demetrius to explain the internet and secondary ticket markets to his well-meaning but dopey father. They’ll be pricey seeing that the game’s already started, but she can write it off as an operational expense. The intelligence community has deep pockets.
Just one hour later, Jeff Anderson is looking down the barrel of several firearms as Violet Jones and her compatriots shout, “Freeze, bitch-boy!” They’re at the top of seating section 102 at Madison Square Garden, but no one notices the arrest, all of them transfixed by a bravura Kristaps Porzingis performance as he attempts to rally his Knicks against the Celtics in the late third quarter. Young, foolish Verek is oblivious, but Derek is flabbergasted until a heavyset agent clocks him upside the head, causing him to void his bowels with great alacrity. Marie just cries and shudders and involuntarily snot-rockets. Violet’s husband and son are just one section over, and Demetrius turns to watch the sting and flash his brave mom a thumbs-up, which Violet returns. Dennis, of course, is too focused on the Zinger. He doesn’t know what his wife really does for a living.
Violet returns to Dennis and Demetrius with a broad smile on her face, ready to enjoy the fourth quarter with popcorn and a glass of red wine. “The lines, they’re just brutal,” she explains, and Dennis doesn’t question this. (To be fair, neither would many of us, because MSG concessions are a shitshow, the conflation of family love and capitalism unavoidable even for the woke and jolly Jones crew, even in their moment of ecstasy after finally thwarting the Andersons.)
