by 
Updated on February 18, 2022
Another Super Bowl has come and gone. Super Bowl LIII this year was between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots. Here’s my thoughts on the ads and halftime show during the Big Game.
Super Bowl LIII commercials
Best ads
- The ad for Bubly with Michael Buble was pretty amusing, especially “Dave” pronounced as “Dah-vay.”
- The Mercedes car ad featuring a CGI Wile E. Coyote.
- Bud Light’s “no corn syrup” ad with the king and his army hauling a misdelivered keg of corn syrup back to its rightful owners.
- The NFL 100th anniversary dinner ad where a football game breaks out.
- The Walmart pickup service ad with various famous cars—the DeLorean from “Back to the Future,” KITT from “Knight Rider,” etc. This ad actually debuted around New Year’s; there’s also a variant with other cars, such as the Flintstones’ foot-powered car.
- A Microsoft ad promoting their new Xbox Adaptive Controller for those with physical disabilities.
Worst ads
- The TurboTax “robot child” ad. For some reason, there were a lot of ads featuring robots/artificial intelligence this year.
- The “Mint Mobile” ad with “chunky milk.” Ugh.
- The Amazon Alexa-powered device ad. The “Internet of Things” already has a lot of problems. Showing even comedic “failures” doesn’t seem like it’d make a good argument for buying such devices.
Super Bowl LIII halftime show: Maroon 5 and only a few seconds of SpongeBob
Maroon 5 was this year’s halftime show. While I actually like them, they’re not the first music I’d associate with Atlanta. Granted, there’s been stories of various R&B/hip-hop performers turning down performing at the game, due to the NFL’s mistreatment and blacklisting of Colin Kaepernick.
There was an online campaigning to get the halftime show producers to air the iconic song number from the “SpongeBob SquarePants” episode “Band Geeks.” However, while the halftime show did air it, we only got a clip lasting several seconds. Twitter was, shall we say, less than amused. Never mind CBS is a corporate cousin of Viacom; the latter owns “SpongeBob,” and both companies are owned by the same parent company, National Amusements.
For those disappointed, here’s the entire “Band Geeks” song.
The game itself
As for the game itself, it wasn’t the most exciting game, as it was pretty slow and low scoring. I’m also not pleased with the outcome, especially given I was rooting for the Los Angeles Rams. (The New England Patriots are my least favorite professional football team, so I rooted for the Rams by default.)
It’s ironic that some Americans (or American comedies) make fun of soccer because of its tendency toward low-scoring games. Yes, football’s normally a higher-scoring sport, but low scores do happen in “normal” American sports, too.
“Front Side of Six Vince Lombardi Trophies” by daveynin is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (Flickr / cropped from original)
