Good morning, TSFers! I hope y’all enjoyed the Super Bowl. Of all the Super Bowls, it certainly was one of them. I guess if you’re into great defense and the kicking game, it was your dream day. The Patriots were thoroughly over-matched and the game was one-sided.
The halftime show was magnificent. 10/10. No notes. It was joyful and it made me happy. There is no language barrier there. There were a bunch of little (and not so little) details that I’d encourage you to read about in a recap of the performance.
I do have notes on the commercials, which were probably the worst batch that I can remember as a whole. First and foremost, get outta here with the AI stuff! I don’t want AI crammed into everything I do.
The Good:
- Jeff Bridges ski-training montage for Michelob Ultra
- Ben Stiller and Jake Johnson for Instacart
- Bradley Cooper and Matthew McConaughey for UberEats
- Is It Cake for EOS scents
- Bud Light keg crashing down the hill at the wedding
- “Relax your tight end” prostate cancer PSA
- Pokemon ad
- Meal Diamond for Hellmann’s (they had a good ad last year too, IIRC)
- Marshawn Lynch for Nike post Seahawks win
The Bad:
- Manscaped singing piles of shaved hair (pre-game) was nasty
- Liquid Death energy drink ad
- Pepsi CGI polar bears taking a shot at Coke
- Singing toilets was gross
The Ugly:
- Ring’s “we can help find missing pets” to sell their surveillance network that already is documented sharing video and data with the government
- Could really do without the propaganda ads for CBP
Assorted Notes:
- Hooray for Mandalorian and Grogu but other than that, we’ve got a whole lot of weird and bad looking movies on the horizon
- Always like the Dove Women’s Sports ads
- Levi’s jeans butt ad was fine, liked the Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A. reference
- Wanted to enjoy the Dunkin’ Donuts 90’s TV nostalgia ad but the de-ageing was weird and they tried to do too much with it
- Having two Backstreet Boys commercials was odd
- NFL’s “Thank You Coaches” ad was nice
- Budweiser’s Clydesdale + Eagle ad was predictable, but I like the clydesdales
Share your thoughts on the game, commercials, halftime performance, and anything else in the comments.
