Super Bowl XLIII: the highs, the lows and the in-between
Super Bowl XLIII produced one of the best championship games in NFL history, so at the top of five highlights let's salute three top-flight teams:
1) The Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals played great, but NBC's Al Michaels and John Madden and director Drew Esocoff were on top of every play and every replay. Look at the overhead, on-field camera and Madden's analysis of the line blocking on the Steelers' first touchdown, his Telestrator work on Larry Fitzgerald's go-ahead touchdown and finally the definitive replay on Santonio Holmes' game-winner. Madden may not be as impassioned and excitable as he used to be, but he's still the best.
2) As halftime entertainment, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band finished with "Glory Days," a song about aging and decay performed with renewed vitality.
3) Pepsi redefined the Pepsi Generation as "Pepsi Generations" with Bob Dylan and will.i.am melding versions of Dylan's own "Forever Young."
4) The job-search site careerbuilder.com told viewers when "it may be time" to find a new job in a clever, repetitive spot that pounded the point home.
5) Alec Baldwin plugged the TV-rerun site hulu.com as an addictive "evil plot to destroy the world."
Five lowlights:
1) NBC loses the audio to Matt Lauer's ballyhooed White House interview with President Obama, leaving host Bob Costas to be heard asking, "Did you lose it? Did you lose it?"
2) Bud Light resumed its endless series of stupid ads aimed at young-adult males. It's not drinkability, it's idiocity.
3) Memo to the TV networks and Hollywood movie studios: 3D will never be completely successful. Never.
4) Pepsi borrows NBC "Saturday Night Live" trouper Will Forte for the stupid action-movie sendup "MacGruber," which actually ran the previous night on "SNL."
5) Alex Flanagan uses F. Scott Fitzgerald's now-cliche line about how "there are no second acts in American lives" to describe Kurt Warner. You're a sideline reporter, not an essayist. Who do you think you are, Jack Whitaker?
Split decisions:
1) The flower-delivery site teleflora.com did a spot about talking, insulting flowers. Great, but wait, are we supposed to order flowers or not?
2) Pigeons like Cheetos. Does that mean people should?
3) NBC proclaimed that its "LMAO" Thursday sitcoms make viewers "laugh my (butt) off." If only it were true.
4) Coke did a couple of old-school Super Bowl ads using "Peter and the Wolf" and a takeoff on the classic "Mean" Joe Greene spot with Troy Polamalu.
5) Budweiser fell back on its Clydesdales to sell its tasteless beer.