It Really Wasn’t All that Super, Was It?

Just a few observations after watching the Super Bowl with some family.

1) That was one sad pre-game musical extravaganza. With the exception of Stevie Wonder, it seemed that none of the other singers were very comfortable singing Motown music. That surprised me because I would have thought that Joss Stone would have handled the music a lot better. The dancers were…well…just sad, especially when they put their little “West Side Story” spat fight thing on in the corner at the end of one of the songs. New rule for the Super Bowl Entertainment Staff: No. More. Dancers.

2) The National Anthem was both bad and good. It was bad when Aaron Neville was singing and great when ‘Retha took it over. Dr. John was just Dr. John – one of the greatest jazz pianists of our time and a living legend with a line that goes straight to Louis Armstrong and King Oliver. I honestly don’t know what the heck Aaron Neville was doing with the Anthem, though. His falseto turn halfway in the first verse just struck me as bizarre. Luckily, ‘Retha was there to save the day. In all, it was just lackluster and that seemed to strike the whole tone for the night.

2) The best comercial tonight? A tie between the Bud Light “miracle fridge” commercial and the hospital room shock paddle commercial (though how good a commercial could it be if I can’t remember the company?). A nice second-place to the FedEx caveman spot.

3) The worst commerical? Hands-down, the Pepsi ads with Puff Daddy and Jackie Chan (though the “stunt can” did get a small chuckle).

4) The game. Yeah. The game. Boy. What to say?

I’m sure the NFL has to be gnashing its teeth that the teams were from two of the smallest markets in the country. I don’t think that the game had all that much buzz anywhere else in the nation and, after the first half, I’m not sure the game had much interest. I’d ahve to check the overnigh ratings to confirm that, but that’s my impression.

I think Super Bowl XL is going to go down as one of the least-exciting games in Super Bowl history. Neither team showed any real flashes of excellence. Pittsburgh scored on a trick play and on a referee screw-up (and yes, that was a screw-up. Big Ben never got the ball into the end zone) that took the wind completely out of the Seahawks’ sails. It must have been tough to play such good defense the whole first half only to get hosed that badly on national television.

Even so, the ‘Hawks offense never really got going. Well, neither offense really got going and neither defense had to work particularly hard.

Neither did the referees, apparently. The Big Ben “touchdown” aside, there were at least two other pretty notable calls that just got muffed badly. The league is going to have a lot of ‘splainin to do to the coaches in the off-season.

5) The halftime show. I didn’t honestly think that anything would make me long for Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Part II, or even Aerosmith/Backstreet Boys Redux but the Rolling Stones sure as hell did. This was probably the worst halftime show in a decade, and given the drek that’s been on the stage of late (Paul McCarney’s performance last year notwithstanding), that’s saying something. Oh, and was it just me or did Mick draw a complete blank on some of the lyrics to “Start Me Up” right at the beginning? That was the warning that we were in for 30 minutes of decrepit crapitude.

In all, I wans’t impressed with much of tonight’s extravaganza.

I must say, though (and I almost forgot this!) that the opening bit with Harrison Ford and the NFL greats against the Dr. Seuss setting was brilliant. I loved it. It was delightful and relaxed, yet carried a certain level of importance that I can’t really explain. It was nearly perfect. Too bad that what followed for the next four hours wasn’t half as good.

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