Ad fatigue

So, remember the best moment of the Super Bowl last year, when Nationwide ran that ad about the dead kid that made you want to slit your wrists?

Well, apparently we're going to get more of  kind of the same this year.

I guess there are worse things than Helen Mirren lecturing you to keep your drunk ass out of a car, because, well, it's Helen Mirren, and if I have to be lectured by someone, I'd pick her any time. But Mirren's ad for Budweiser, according to the above piece, is going to be more representative of this year's Super Bowl ads than not, which means another year of PSAs masquerading as ads and that sort of fun stuff.

Like the halftime show, which retreated to safe nostalgia acts after the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction (which, as comedian Lewis Black points out, you only saw if you had your nose pressed against the TV screen, as it lasted all of a nanosecond), the heyday of the edgy Super Bowl ad has apparently passed. So there goes half the reason for inviting your friends over and throwing some brats on the grill.

And there goes all the reason for the multitudes who just show up for the food and drink, and couldn't even tell you who's playing. ("I'm for the orange team," they'll say. Or, "I like the cat team.")

Ah, well. I guess it's on to the prop bets.