Posted Feb 2nd 2009 9:25PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Super Bowl, Episode Reviews, Chuck, Reality-Free
(S02E12) "The cell is mightier than the sword, or the very large knife." -- Chuck
There were some funny bits in this episode of
Chuck. There were also some good bits of plot development. Still, for what was being promoted as a spotlight show, including the novelty of 3-D, it's hard for me to sing the praises of tonight's episode. It just left a lot to be desired. What it did leave me with is a headache.
Before getting into the particulars, let's get the 3-D thing out of the way. It was terrible.
Joel wrote about this a few days ago, and he was right. The 3-D glasses were cumbersome and lame. They also seemed too dark because instead of the effects popping, they just seemed murky and dim. I give NBC credit for trying to think outside the box, but 3-D is not the answer for how to make TV viewing more exciting. Compared to high-def, 3-D is not awesome, just annoying.
Continue reading Chuck: Chuck Versus The Third Dimension
Posted Feb 2nd 2009 2:10AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, OpEd, Video, Commercials, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
(Editor's Note: In anticipation of editing the Best/Worst Super Bowl ads, I paid close attention to the ads while I was watching and decided that some could go either way. Sure enough, Rich and Bob picked a couple of the same ads - Cash4Gold and CareerBuilder. Check out Rich's Best Super Bowl ads, and tell us which category you think the ads fall into ... Jane Boursaw)There weren't any
Super Bowl ads that made me want to kick in my television set this year, but I think that says more about the dullness of the ads rather than any brilliance. There weren't many memorable ads. I asked a friend of mine about the ads, and she said, "I think there was a cute one, I don't remember what it was."
Below are the five ads I chose as the worst of the night (not including the movie ads - those are in a different category and shouldn't be counted when you're judging the commercials). They range from confusing to lame to downright sad.
Continue reading The Super Bowl Commercials: The Worst - VIDEOS
Posted Feb 2nd 2009 1:10AM by Richard Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Video, Heroes, Super Bowl
(NOTE: The following post talks about my favorite commercials of this past Super Bowl. There are absolutely no spoilers in this post. That is, unless you didn't watch the Super Bowl, recorded it for future viewing, and have decided to ignore every single other media outlet, as well as friends and family so no one tells you who won. If that's the case, don't blame us for your extremely poor time management skills.)
Well, it's all over except for the pack-up, the clean-up and the over-analyzing of the analyzing of the game that was actually played in Tampa. Super Bowl XLIII is now in the history books and so are its commercials. This year featured some returning companies, some new ones, plenty of NBC promos, and a koala puppet being punched in the face. In other words, a bit of everything. Out of all of them, here are some of my favorites.
(NOTE 2: The embedded videos come courtesy of Hulu. If you cannot view these videos I have linked the commercial titles to another site that you should be able to view.)
Continue reading The Super Bowl Commercials: The Best - VIDEOS
Posted Feb 1st 2009 1:15PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, News, Programming, Animation, Adult Swim, Children, Game Show, Super Bowl
If you're like me (you have my deepest sympathy), you don't have a dog in this Sunday's hunt.
Thanks to the Arizona Cardinals' first appearance this weekend, my hometown team, the New Orleans Saints, will now be one of only five left in the NFL that have never made a Super Bowl appearance. Three if you don't count the expansion clubs.
So if you're a Cardinals fan and don't have the stomach to endure their slow, agonizing and inevitable defeat at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers, here are some alternative shows you can watch instead of the Super Bowl.
Continue reading Sick of the Super Bowl? Here's a sampler platter of what else you can watch
Posted Feb 1st 2009 9:55AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Sports, Cancellations, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
God has offered us another conflicting sign that depending on who you ask, he either loves and respects us or is punishing us for doing something really, really bad. Check which chromosome they are carrying before you ask.
Lingerie Bowl VI, that pay-per-view hotbed of halftime entertainment for lonely fantasy football players with too much time and money on their hands,
lost their first venue in Florida awhile back. Then, the doomed franchise rose from the ashes like a mighty phoenix when the league's owners found a new venue at
a nudist colony in Tampa.
But just as that majestic phoenix spread its flaming wings and took to the skies once again, someone blasted it with a fire extinguisher. The game has been canceled for the second straight year because of
a dispute with their new venue. Continue reading Lingerie Bowl canceled, then renewed, then canceled again
Posted Jan 30th 2009 5:21PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, Commercials, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
NBC is airing the
Super Bowl this year. Sunday's all-day telecast (several hours of pre-game and probably another four or so for the game itself) will feature a wide variety of guests. Which of these guests are not going to be seen during the broadcast?
Keith Olbermann
Sarah Palin
Tina Fey
Top Chef's Tom Colicchio
Matt Lauer
Al Roker
Bruce Springsteen
Bob Costas
Jay Leno
Conan O'Brien
Continue reading Everyone in the world will be on NBC this Super Bowl Sunday
Posted Jan 30th 2009 12:00PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Super Bowl, Chuck, Reality-Free
This morning, among all its other self-promotional Super Bowl nonsense, NBC's
Today show was promoting
the 3D experience that fans will see during the game on Sunday. Sobe and the animated movie
Monsters vs. Aliens will both have ads in 3D, and then fans can use the same glasses to watch Monday night's episode of
Chuck, which is shot with the same Intel
Tru3D technology as the ads. DreamWorks' co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg appeared on
Today with Zachary Levi from
Chuck to promote the technology and explain how different it was from the old red-and-green 3D that gave people headaches in the days of yore.
According to Levy and Katzenberg, this version of 3D is supposed to work, no matter what the delivery method. Well, NBC was kind enough to send me a preview copy of Monday's
Chuck (which I sent on to Allison for her episode review), complete with glasses. I've got to tell you... it doesn't work. At least not on TV. At least not for me.
Continue reading I don't care what NBC is saying... 3D on TV still doesn't work
Posted Jan 27th 2009 2:28PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Commercials, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
There's a joke here involving cucumbers I'm sure, but I'm much too mature to think of it. Feel free to make one up yourself.
NBC has pulled a PETA ad that was going to run during the Super Bowl, because it "depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards." Hey, what about subjecting viewers to those people on
The Biggest Loser? And they usually have their tops
completely off. This particular commercial shows various lingerie models getting all frisky with broccoli and pumpkins (pumpkins??). I guess it is pretty sexual, though I've seen edgier things on daytime soaps.
Funny how there is always a few controversies when it comes to these Super Bowl ads, either before they run or after the fact.
PETA says that they don't understand why the ad was pulled when ads for chicken and burgers are OK even though they make you "fat" and "boring in bed." As an eater of chicken and burgers, I resent that.
Continue reading NBC won't air veggie sex ad during the Super Bowl after all - VIDEO
Posted Jan 22nd 2009 5:03PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Sports, Industry, Commercials, Web, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
Two things about Darren Rovell's CNBC.com story about the famous
Apple Macintosh Super Bowl ad shocked me:
- That it aired for the first and only time (at least as an ad, not a cultural icon) 25 years ago today, during the broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII (when the Los Angeles Raiders crushed the Washington Redskins, for you sports fans); and
- That the Super Bowl was once played as early as January 22.
The NFL season has slowly gotten longer and longer, hasn't it? Anyway, Rovell has an interesting interview with Mike Murray, Apple's marketing manager for the then-brand-new Mac. The best thing to come out of the interview was the fact that Apple's board of directors
hated the completed ad, which was inspired by George Orwell's novel
1984, and never wanted it to air. But they couldn't sell back their 60-second spot and had nothing else to put there.
So, basically, a lack of productivity on the part of Apple's marketing department allowed us to see what became the most famous Super Bowl ad ever. You can see the ad after the jump.
Continue reading Someone fetch me my cane: Apple's "1984" ad is 25 years old today - VIDEO
Posted Feb 11th 2007 11:55AM by Brad Linder
Filed under: News, Commercials, Super Bowl
GM has agreed to
edit a commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl which shows a despondent assembly-line robot contemplating suicide. Earlier this week, GM had said it
would not remove the ad, despite complaints from a national suicide prevention group.
The
commercial features a robot that drops a screw. Because of GM's high quality controls, it's forced to leave the plant, take up several other part time jobs, and finally it jumps off a bridge, only to wake up in the plant and reveal that the whole thing was a dream sequence.
Continue reading GM will edit robot suicide commercial
Posted Feb 8th 2007 9:23PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Sports, Industry, Programming, PVR Wire, Commercials, Ratings, Super Bowl
Nielsen Media Research
has released a boatload of Super Bowl related ratings data, including the first ever "live plus same day" Super Bowl ratings, which account for PVR users who watched the big game a little bit later than the rest of the country.
The game itself got a 32.8 rating, while the average commercial got a rating of 32.1, meaning that 92.8 million people were watching those horribly overpriced ads. Does that mean they were worth the money advertisers were spending on them? Probably not, but that's a lot of eyeballs (roughly 185.6 million of them, in fact).
Continue reading Nielsen releases Super Bowl ratings
Posted Feb 7th 2007 11:32AM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Commercials, Web, Super Bowl
Remember that potentially homophobic
Snickers ad that aired during the Super Bowl? The one where two guys are so enamored with a candy bar that they start eating it from opposite ends,
Lady and the Tramp-style, and wind up accidentally kissing? They're so concerned that they just kissed that they decide to do something really macho to affirm their heterosexuality, so they start pulling out their chest hair. Because that's apparently what straight men do all the time.
Anyway, now that you're up to date, you won't be seeing that commercial on television anymore. Snickers
got complaints from the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Apparently they thought the ad was homophobic. Who knew, I thought it was just anti-gay. Oh, right.
Continue reading Snickers pulls Super Bowl ad in response to complaints
Posted Feb 7th 2007 11:01AM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Commercials, Super Bowl
Sketch comedy troupe (and
future stars of Fuse) Whitest Kids U Know are
claiming that Budweiser stole one of their sketch ideas for a Super Bowl ad - specifically a sketch about how slapping is replacing bumping as the guy greeting du jour. Between
How I Met Your Mother's "Slap Bet" episode and all the
"slap fights" on YouTube, I'm not sure anyone gets to claim slapping as intellectual property. You can't stop the zeitgeist.
Decide for yourself. You can check out both videos after the jump.
Continue reading Did Bud rip-off the Whitest Kids U Know? - VIDEO
Posted Feb 7th 2007 10:25AM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Sports, CBS, Celebrities, Super Bowl
America - always threatened by the black man's sexuality. The debate hasn't gone there yet, but just you wait. An
AP story was released yesterday that strings together multiple reports of viewers who were shocked, shocked to see Prince's "demonic guitar phallus," as it was described by Stephen Colbert, projected in shadow against a large sheet of fabric during the Super Bowl halftime show.
These same viewers also giggle at the word "dooty," think a man using a microphone resembles an act of fellatio and that, from the air, Dolphin Stadium looks like a vagina. Folks, you can't rock out without your cock out so get over it already. You're just lucky this was Prince circa 2007 and not Prince circa 1984 when the guitar he took on tour would ejaculate water at the climax of "Let's Go Crazy." He kept his ass covered. What more do you want?
Posted Feb 6th 2007 2:21PM by Brett Love
Filed under: CBS, Programming, OpEd, Criminal Minds, Ratings, Super Bowl
The numbers are in and Super Bowl XLI was huge. Coming in at 93.1 million viewers, it was the third most watched program in history, and the second most watched Super Bowl. Having the lead-in to end all lead-ins also helped
Criminal Minds put up the best numbers ever for the series. The special episode following the game averaged 26.2 million viewers.
Is that a disappointment? Last year, the post Super Bowl episode of
Grey's Anatomy drew a considerably larger 38.1 million viewers. We can chalk part of that difference up to the fact that
Grey's was more of a hit show going in, but I think more of it has to do with the subject matter.
Criminal Minds is never a touchy-feely, happy bunnies on clouds kind of show, but the post Super Bowl episode was dark even by their standards. Come on, Dawson chaining up a woman and setting the dogs loose on her? That's asking a lot from the family friendly Super Bowl audience.
Continue reading Was the post Super Bowl Criminal Minds a mistake?
Next Page »
The TV Squad Podcast: The Prisoner, '80s TV, soap news and more
Let's talk about spoilers ...
The Prisoner -- An early look
