Two Chicks in a Kitchen

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A common form of television commercial. Alice and her less attractive friend Edith are discussing a domestic issue in the kitchen, with The Product being the solution. Coffee or tea is often being sipped. Generally, Alice is the one to help out Edith by suggesting The Product.

The trope is still in use, but not as prevalent as once it was.

Often abbreviated "Two Cs in a K" or even "2CK", the trope name is the politically correct version of the industry term for this set-up, which does not use the word "chick," but a different C-word. (And you thought Mad Men represented marketing's past.)

The female version of Two Guys in a Garage. Also see Supermarket Skit.

Examples of Two Chicks in a Kitchen include:

Live-Action TV Advertising

  • AARP commercials do this incessantly. In fact, any commercial with life insurance that targets senior citizens does this in at least one of their commercials.
    • To wit:

"It's a shame Lillian's husband passed."
"And so quickly, too."
"I hope they can handle the funeral bills. I've heard they can be over $9,000!"
"Well, she told me that right before his accident/cancer/massive jellyfissing he signed up for X-Brand Life Insurance."

  • Feminine hygiene products can border on Too Much Information. Alice and Edith must be very close friends indeed if they can discuss having a "not so fresh feeling" over tea. And there was that one late night Trojan vibrator that goes on your finger, where apparently the two ladies are discussing this in a mall and a little old lady, who was in eavesdropping range, puts in her two cents.
    • A magazine advertisement sometime in the nineties took this to its most ludicrous extreme, with a photograph of two women conversing via comic-book style speech bubbles:

"Why do they make o.b. with an applicator now? It doesn't need one."
"I need one."

  • Parodied in a commercial for Ikea organizing systems.. Two women admiring one's walk-in shoe closet, but they have the exact same dialogue and mannerisms as Two Guys in a Garage.
  • Vanish stain remover uses a variation, where the first Chick spills something, and the second appears out of nowhere in a way that would suggest "Who the hell are you??" and/or "How the hell did you get into my house??" would be more appropriate responses than "Why yes, that certainly is a powerful cleaning product you have there".

Radio Advertising

  • Radio Active would include a fake advertisement in this format Once an Episode. The two women were always called Mary and June. Radio Active writer/performer Michael Fenton-Stevens refers to this trope as '2TK' - Two Tarts in a Kitchen.

Print Advertising

  • The documentary At Home with the Georgians showed a printed advertisement for furniture polish, with a Georgian housewife extolling the product to her friend over a cup of tea. In rhyme, yet.

Other

  • Lampshaded, along with a lot of other advertising gimmicks used to draw in women, in some of Sarah Haskins' Target Women videos.
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