Teranu's Thoughts on the Super Bowl

First of all, let me congratulate all the Colts fans out there on your team's Super Bowl win. Last night, I counted myself among you, since I had drawn the Colts in my family's football pool, and for the first time, won the whole thing! I admit, I was pretty skeptical after the first 14 seconds went by and already the Colts were behind, but they came through in the end. Hooray!

Even though I don't normally cheer for the Colts, I was genuinely glad to see Tony Dungy finally win a Super Bowl. He's a quieter coach than many, opting to talk with his players rather than yell at them. And it seems that almost everyone who watches football, regardless of which team they cheer for, agrees that Dungy is a classy coach and a great human being. Well done and well deserved, Tony.

Now, to the Super Bowl stuff that really matters--the commercials!

To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with most of them this year. Far and away, the company that had the funniest spots was Budweiser. Several Bud Light commercials were laugh-worthy--the rock, paper, scissors ad and the hitchhiker with the axe in particular. The commercial that got the biggest laughs at the party I was at was the one with the crabs who stole the cooler full of Budweiser. Very funny :)

Snickers had a pretty funny spot with two mechanics kissing, and the 3 Careerbuilder.com ads I saw, with the office workers in the jungle, were consistently funny as well.

What I was most interested in, however, were the several commercials that took on a darker tone. I'll start with the one that may or may not be dark, depending on how you view it. It's the Coke commercial with an old man who, after having a Coke for the first time, rushes out to try all the things he hasn't done yet in life. This doesn't seem particularly dark; however, several people that I was watching the game with said that they thought the old man had Alzheimer's, and that he'd really had a Coke before and had just forgotten. Since he's in a nursing home, this seems like a possible explanation, and makes the commercial depressing instead of inspiring. My thought is that since he is actually gone from the nursing home at the end of the ad, it tends more towards inspiring. What do you all think?

The NFL ad "It's hard to say goodbye" was also slightly sad, mostly because of the ending. The spot shows fans everywhere mourning the end of football season, followed by the words "It's hard to say goodbye." Then, the ad cuts to Brett Favre thoughtfully tossing a football, followed by the words, "For some, it's even harder." Now, I know that Favre has said that he's coming back for the 2007 season, but this ad seemed to hint at the possibility that Favre was saying goodbye for good. It might be that it's just saying that for someone who loves the sport as much as Favre does, the end of the season is especially hard. But for those of us who are Packer fans, it served as a depressing reminder that Favre's retirement is getting ever closer...

And finally, the ad that honestly almost made me cry. The GM robot ad. This ad is very well done; I really connected with the robot, and felt sorry for him. But jumping off a bridge at the end? Wow. Portraying suicide in a Super Bowl commercial, even the dream sequence suicide of a robot, is really dark. Then again, it's strangely motivating. I find myself thinking of buying GM, just so that robot can keep his job. Ok, not really.

It was a cute robot, though...