Our Lord and Sponser
The Superbowl was on last night. Someone was playing something with somebody else… but who really cares about some gentlemen with a gas filled piece of meat, there were new commercials on! Most were innocuous. “Buy fatty foods” and “Bud Light will make women want you” – always a strange thing to lie about when there’s a much more interesting fact about that particular pilsner they could popularize: it’s the only beer I’ve ever consumed that tastes the same in both directions. I’ve done the research here, I’ve booted plenty of beer (I know we’re all good skeptics concerned with logical fallacies, but I’d really recommend you just trust my expertise in this field rather than repeat the research). I don’t know who engineered that particular feature into the beer, but it’s some magic chemistry, I’ll swear by that.
Of course, they wouldn’t be Superbowl commercials without having something to annoy a scientifically literate man. Once commercial in particular caught my eye. It was one of the many commercials celebrating the joy of light beer. Here’s the story: a group of scientists are looking through a telescope at a terrifying and fast approaching meteor (I assume it’s in the atmosphere already due to the perceived temperature increase, represented by the rock glowing red). The scientists suddenly breath a sigh of relief, the meteor is not going to destroy them, it’s time to drink beer and get crazy. First off, I’m pretty sure they would have figured out the path of the falling rock and known what it’s trajectory was going to be already, but ignoring that irksome detail, let’s look at the end of the commercial. The scientists are no longer looking into the sky, they’re too busy getting drunk and pretty much having a wild time of it. We suddenly focus back on the telescope, where a now one inch meteor collides with the telescope, gently bouncing off with the tiniest “bink.” Bull-shit. Let’s be really clear on this one: any object, pretty much no matter how small, will gain enough kinetic energy falling from space to do some serious freaking damage. And here’s what really annoys me: wouldn’t that have been more entertaining to watch? The scientists are all enjoying themselves, suddenly the telescope is utterly destroyed by a space rock. Everyone just sort of stares for a second, and then some guy shouts out “Three day weekend!” and everyone gets drunk all over again. “Light beer: good for any celebration,” would have been awesome and at least, semi-scientifically accurate.
But even where there’s place for jeer, there’s place for cheer. Specifically, it was a Denny’s commercial; the second in their new campaign of commercials featuring animated chickens screaming. In this commercial, there’s chickens all over the globe screaming their heads off, and then they cut to a two second shot of a chicken astronaut, screaming right alongside them. And here’s what was cool: for the seconds they’re in space? No noise. It’s the first entertainment I can remember in a damn long time that respected the lack of sound in a vacuum, and I appreciated it. Not even my beloved Battlestar Galactica got that one right. Hey, Denny’s: I’m still never going to eat at one of your restaurants, but color me okay with the new campaign.
Of course, the big ad news was the pre-infamous anti-abortion ad, and I’d talk about it but to be honest, I didn’t see it. I never left the room, I watched the whole game and that god-awful halftime show and still I missed it. One of the folks I was watching the game with said he caught a glimpse of it when we were filling our plates at the close of the second quarter (my host Toby made a not-to-be-missed Chicken Gumbo) and if that’s the case, I think it makes me even less impressed with CBS. I was sort of looking forward to seeing a partisan, religiously motivated ad. I was ready to get good and steamed over the whole thing, and CBS tacked it onto the one slot in the commercial line-up they knew the least amount of people would be watching. House that Sumner Redstone Built: you made a decision to broadcast a highly politically polarizing advertisement during the highest rated two hours in all of American TV; you take millions for it above the protests of at least half the nation, and when you can’t stand the heat of criticism, you bury the ad. You know what, I’m a pro-choice man, but I’m also a great believer in free speech. These shmucks (the anti-abortion folks: just because I’m supporting their right to be heard does not mean I’m supporting them) paid their entrance fee and CBS chickened out. But not before they let us believe that this commercial was coming so they could drum up more commercial spotters from America’s armpit. I was expecting controversy. I feel cheated.
All in all, a mixed night for commercials. Good space, bad space, and chicken-shit programming decisions. Also, probably one of the most exciting 3rd quarters I’ve seen in a Superbowl in over a decade, but that’s only if you’re into that sort of thing.
