"The Boy and the Bot"

19 November 2025

73s

Careware update.

As Google CEO Sundar Pichai tells people "not to blindly trust" what AI says, this Teleflora commercial features a robot you can rely on. A graduate of the Iron Giant School of Friendship, the robot also takes a leaf out of Baymax's book. Its best friend, as it turns out, is a young boy in hospital with a lot of time on his hands.

It's unclear how ill the boy is, but he musters enough energy to show the robot how to do—you guessed it—the robot. When he's not in bed, he puts Christmas lights on a machine that towers over him, but is gentle as can be when the boy needs reassurance. We like how it mimics a wind-up toy for extra robot points.

You sense there's more to the robot than meets the eye, however, so director Duncan Christie lets us in on a secret: the state-of-the-art behemoth is Nurse Kelly in a homemade costume. The reveal has shades of Christie's Breast Cancer Now spot, as reality and the imagination work together to make a tough situation bearable—no wonder someone leaves a bouquet from the advertised florist at the nurses' station.

USA

Florists