Super Bowl 50 is over. The Denver Broncos won 24-10 and the commercials, were—well a lot of people still aren’t sure how they feel about them.
If you tuned in to watch the game, then you know it was a clumsy, monotonous affair that saw both offenses forced into punting, then punting again.
After the game, Peyton Manning, the 39-year-old Broncos quarterback, was asked if he’d retire. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he responded (though his mother later said he should). Then Manning plugged Budweiser; the company said it was “delighted” by the endorsement, but hadn’t paid Manning for the promotion.
At a post-game press conference, a sullen Carolina Panther’s quarterback, Cam Newton, answered two minutes of questions with his hoodie pulled to his brow. Then he he told reporters, “I don’t know what you want me to say, I’m sorry.” He stood and abruptly left. The New York Times described it thusly: “It was as if Newton was intent on taking his magical season, his jumping jacks and dabs and evident leadership, and poking a hole in his side. He let his charisma and leadership drain away, to be replaced by a soup of the sour and the petulant.”
As for the commercials, if you like babies, talking animals, or Jeff Goldblum, you likely came away happy. Writing in The Atlantic, my colleague Sophie Gilbert bemoaned the offerings.
If anything, the 2016 Super Bowl ads, in all their greying, hyper-consumptive glory, might be both symptom and cause of the Donald Trump ascendancy, in which Marco Rubio and Madison Avenue alike try desperately to woo disillusioned Boomers while also proving they’re hip enough to capture the youth vote. (Case in point: Jeff Goldblum, playing piano in a winch on the side of the building, then running smack into Lil Wayne and George Washington having a cookout).
Still, the Internet is spilling over with best and worst lists, which at $5million for 30 seconds of air time set a record. Doritos caught flak for its spot in which a fetus leaps out of its mother’s womb to chase a cheesy chip.