By Steve DiMatteo, Dawg Pound Daily
I guess you can just call me a cynic now when it comes to the Super Bowl commercials. For so many people, that has become the most enjoyable staple of the night, with the game often taking a backseat to a discussion of how good the previous commercial just was. Sunday’s game between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts was no exception, as the group of people I watched the game with were huddled around the television, silent during every ad so as to not miss a word.
Yet, no one was really laughing. Each commercial flew by, broadcast to the world for an exorbitant price, each trying to be the most memorable one of all, the one that everyone would be talking about the next day (though I’d say more people were still discussing the Tim Tebow-Man Crunch controversy). Despite these ads’ best attempts to keep us in a certifiably insane fit of laughter, I began to realize the trend of recent years, which led me to this question: why did I like Super Bowl commercials in the first place?
Most of the commercials are from beer, car, and snack companies so, naturally, you are going to see a cavalcade of physical humor (i.e. someone getting tackled who has no business being tackled, often set in a place that is deemed a most silly place to be tackled in) and plenty of jokes about men disobeying the women around them. I shouldn’t be surprised by the volume of low-brow humor that is found during the Super Bowl, because, after all, there’s hardly anything more accessible than that. I also don’t want anyone to think I am not a fan of physical humor, of people falling down, of bodily noises and the like. But when I watch what are supposed to be the “best of the best,” I expect to see more than the same, tired routine over and over again.
When I was a kid, I remember being sufficiently excited to see the commercials, and loving them afterwards. But, to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I liked more than one, maybe two, commercials in a year. It’s even a stretch to say I necessarily liked them, but had to like them on the basis that I had nothing better to choose from. Could it be that upon growing up, I’ve realized that these commercials are intended to please kids and teenagers at best? I don’t mean to belittle the intelligence of the American public, though the popularity of The Big Bang Theory often shakes that resolve. I think it has something more to do with the laziness of those people making the commercials, now riding on the allure of the vaunted title of being a Super Bowl ad, assuming we will all love it just for being there. After all, it’s hard to find a better explanation for a “cute” Google commercial being the most memorable one of all in 2010.
Whether it’s some evolution of my own humor or just that I hold Super Bowl commercials to a higher standard than the rest, the quality of these ads in recent years has left so much to be desired. Despite this realization, now fully aware of how bad so many of these commercials will be, I will by no means stop watching them. It also means I can keep fighting the annual struggle of whether or not to take a bathroom break during the game.
