Super Bowl Commercials: Liveblogging The Reason This All Happens

To recap, the things that have been prevalent in commercials:1. Men in their underwear

2. Random animals.

Google’s Search Bar Commercials are clever, but the Tiger Woods one may be just a tad over the line of good taste.

(That’s actually a parody by Slate, but the point stands: it’s better than the original.)

The hallmark of all great commercials is that at no point should you, the viewer, consciously think about the fact you’re watching a commercial. VW is uncannily good at this on Super Bowl Ads: they’re the ones who brought you one of my favorite ads of all time, “Sunday Afternoon,“ and generally give good ad whenever possible.

This year’s entry is no exception:

You know, you can avoid whatever hell most oppressed American men live in on weekends by marrying a woman who likes football. They exist, they’re fantastic, and they understand the need to spend an entire weekend on the couch watching football. It doesn’t have to be this way, America.

So this is a slightly amusing entry from FloTV…

I will lose my audience in the first ten seconds by complaining in monotone about doing the things adults do in life. I will have the guy from Dexter narrate my advertisement, thus infecting the entire ad with creepy serial killer cooties. I will moan about performing basic personal hygiene because you know brushing your teeth is like sooooo hard. I will appeal to the most misogynistic and yet spineless of men by blaming women for the hellish misery of my employed, pampered existence.

I will make a really, really creepy commercial. Then, I will ask you to buy a car.

All men in commercials should wear these and not tighty-whiteys.

Thanks,

So, here’s what’s really happening in this ad. Four guys leave for a bachelor party in Mexico. One dies in a tragic Tiujuana bullriding accident, and then the other three panic. Somehow they end up muling drugs across the border in the belly of a killer whale kept like the original Free Willy in a dingy Oaxaca aquarium, and what you’re seeing is the end of sequence where they shoot the whale into the ocean where the pickup ship will meet it and take the bales of cocaine strapped to its belly into the boat and into LA for sale on the open market.

Oh, and their friend’s body is safely in the body of the whale. I’m pretty certain that’s what’s happening here.

The fiddling beaver is a real Horatio Alger story for our time: a talent working its way through hardship and then to the peak of success, which disturbingly enough is sitting in a hot tub in the back of a limo in a romantic situation with an animal not of your species. Add that in with the Bridgestone Killer Whale commercial, and animals in strange situations clearly equals ad gold.

The Tebow ad was far, far milder than you could have imagined, save for the son-on-mother violence in the ad. At best it was an audition for Tebow’s future as a linebacker at the pro level, and a good one since Pam Tebow has wicked open field moves and was a feared rec league flag football player in her day.

There’s our first guaranteed winner of the night: Betty White taking a hard hit across the middle, something which is perfectly brilliant because a.) it’s Betty White, and b.) her brilliant performance where she acts like she can’t get open against loose man coverage in a pickup football game. Betty White is way too mad ballerish for that not to be “acting.”

We kick off with an ad for Airbender, which as far as I can tell is a

—heavy kung-fu epic directed by M. Night Shymalan. This means that the film will end with the surprise twist of the hero being a giant animatronic hamster who has been dead the entire time.

These lofty heights will not be approached again, but we can only hope someone comes within a mile or two of this high water mark of advertising genius tonight.