Will Chad Get A New Friend?

Is it my imagination, or is the dweeb meant to portray "Verizon" starting to disappear from the Alltel commercials?

Ever since the news broke that Verizon was acquiring Alltel, I've been peeking at those otherwise obnoxious commercials in which four dweebs do stupid things to try to show up a slightly less dweeby dweeb named Chad. The four stupid dweebs wear shirts with colors and labels that represent one of the big cell phone providers -- like the guy with the orange shirt is AT&T (formerly Cingular) and the guy with the yellow shirt is Sprint-Nextel.

Around Christmas they switched from live actors to doofy little animated dolls and the red-shirted Verizon dweeb kind of hung back and did not really join in the gang as they groused about good-hearted Chad. Now they're back to the live actors, and there's no sign of the Verizon dweeb.

I'm betting the little Verizon stalker guy in the gray coveralls who says "Can you hear me now?" will start showing up as Chad's bestest buddy.