In the mid-late-nineties, Budweiser beer started a new advertising campaign, consisting of a trio of frogs just croaking the syllables of their name. It became hugely popular and all-but iconic. Then, after a few variations, an actual story developed, played out over the course of the commercials (especially during Superbowls), involving a self-impressed lizard named Louie scheming to take the frogs’ place.

The surprising thing is that, if you string the commercials together, it’s not a bad little short film, largely due to the great voice acting on Louie and Frankie the lizards (courtesy of actors Paul Christie and Danny Mastrogiorgio) and some strong dialogue (“All my hard work has paid off!” “Louie, you hired a hitman.” “…Yeah, with my own money!”).

On top of that, you have a pretty decent example of basic story structure here. We open with a false order (a status quo that seems stable, but contains the seeds of disruption): the frogs are the champions of Budweiser and Louie is jealous. There’s a rising action: Louie lets his resentment of the frogs lead him to increasingly heated rhetoric and finally desperate action. There’s a chance to turn back via his buddy Frankie’s repeated warnings. There’s a turning point that changes the status quo from false order to disorder: Louie hires a hitman to assassinate the frogs. There’s a unexpected result – the assassination attempt fails to kill the frogs, but leaves one of them incapacitated, allowing Louie to get what he wants after all. Then there’s the climax and logical result of the action, where Louie achieves his dream…only to ruin it through his own personal flaws, the same ones that led him to such desperate measures in the first place. Finally, Louie receive his comeuppance, first by being beaten up by the frogs and then by seeing himself replaced by the character he respects the least and never bothered to take seriously, but who ends up outdoing him completely while being a more reliable performer, thus restoring the status quo to true order.

As Frankie says, this isn’t Shakespeare, but as a bare-bones and very funny illustration of story structure, you could do worse.