by Kbear on February 6, 2017
Super Bowl edition
Did you catch the Super Bowl last night? If you’re a red blooded American, I’m sure you did. If you’re an Atlanta Falcon fan, I’m sure you wish you hadn’t. I used to live in Atlanta back in the 20th century, so I have a soft spot for the Falcons. Not any longer, they blew a 25-point lead, that’s a new low even for the Falcons. I guess I will stick to Cowboys’ disappointments every year. Dak and Zeke forever!!
I’m not here to talk about the game though. What I’d like to discuss are the commercials. Last year I thought the commercials were universally bad. I can’t even remember one. This year I thought the general quality of the commercials were up. More importantly, some of the commercials are memorable.
Because of the political environment we are in now, some of the commercials had a very political bent, even if the company didn’t plan it that way. An example was the Budweiser commercial “Born the Hard Way”. It is about one of the founders emigrating from Germany to American. In years past, no one would have blinked an eye on a commercial about an American success story, but in 2017 with the anti-immigration stand the Trump administration is taking, now this commercial is controversial in some quarters.
Other commercials were taking a stand and clearly knew they would be controversial. The construction company 84 produced an ad called “Journey 84”. It is about a mother and daughter migrating to America and stopped by Trump’s wall. Luckily, some person build a door and the mother and daughter were able to enter with the little girl’s homemade American flag. You had to see the rest of the commercial online because Fox wouldn’t air the part about the wall. It was a very powerful and beautiful commercial.
Coke brought back a commercial they first aired in 2014, “American is Beautiful”, but the commercial is more relevant today.
https://youtu.be/LhP5sDUnF6c
Audi had a gender equality and equal pay ad called “Daughter”. This commercial follows the trend of men with daughters being concerned about how the world will treat their daughters. You heard many politicians say something to that effect when they talked about Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” story. “As a father of daughters I’m alarmed by this.” I guess that allows the men who only have sons or are childless not to give a crap about women’s issues.
https://youtu.be/G6u10YPk_34
Airbnb had a commercial called “We Accept”. Very nice and progressive thought, maybe they came by this after the discrimination suit and Harvard study from last year. Maybe the commercial title should be “We Accept You Now”. I shouldn’t be too hard on these companies; they at least felt like they should be involved in the great national debate and took part.
https://youtu.be/5qUTYHnLz2g
To your surprise, not every commercial I paid attention to was political. I enjoyed the Honda “Yearbooks” ad; it was visually creative. I really laughed at the Melissa McCarthy commercial from Kia, “Hero Journey”. She is having quite the weekend with her surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live as Sean Spicer. One of the funniest sketches on SNL in years. The movie ads that stood out were “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” and “Logan”. There previous trailers have been great, so no surprise on that count.
https://youtu.be/f06ng5cII8o
https://youtu.be/1dQ9a5EFZeI
https://youtu.be/fdewIJ0C0CQ
Even if the game didn’t go your way you’ll have to admit, it was memorable. The first Super Bowl to go into overtime, biggest comeback, and Tom Brady’s life becoming better than we could have even imagined; ugh. Lady Gaga gave the type of halftime show we’ve come to expect from these extravaganzas. It was big, loud and flashy and I enjoyed it.
I hope next year your team wins The Big Game (does the NFL make people say The Big Game instead of Super Bowl), more importantly, I hope my team wins. Much like Trump’s America, I’m looking out for number one. I will have the regular (Did You Catch…?) up tomorrow with the CW Berlantiverse rundown and thoughts on a few other shows, I don’t review. In addition, this week I will be covering The Expanse and adding Legion so be on the lookout for it. Thanks for checking out the new Nayah.
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