Your argument is invalid: Superbowl commercials suck

Let me begin by saying that any time someone tells me "I'm watching the Superbowl, but only for the commercials!" I have to clamp down on my right arm to stop myself from slapping them across the room. Does anyone saying that realize how absurd it sounds? Here, let's do a simple replacement exercise. 

"I'm watching the State of the Union, but only for the commercials!"

"I'm watching The Godfather, but only for the commercials!"

"I'm watching a home video of my child's first steps, but only for the commercials!" 

What the hell is wrong with you, that you think commercials - the part of tv watching that everyone hates and, if they can, fast forward through - are the best part of a viewing experience? If you care about the actual Superbowl so little, do something else with those three and a half hours of your life besides waiting around for numerous 30-second clips of stuff you won't buy. 

It would be one thing if these commercials, which have fallen (lucky) victim to the "if it's expensive, then it must be good!" fallacy, were really as outstanding as the American people's devotion to them would have me think. But for the most part, they're just as tired, lazy, thoughtless, and expedient as commercials that air during daytime soaps (interestingly enough, most of the commercials that air during daytime soaps are for birth control and genital herpes treatment). The beer, soda, and snack commercials continue to trot out their Neanderthal-era gender roles about how sex-crazed men are and how emotion-crazed women are. Car commercials attempt to reach The Common Man with a gritty voiceover talking about "luxury" and "what we do" and Eminem, somehow. Michael Bay teases another glossy full-length commercial/feature film starring robots, which I won't link because fuck Michael Bay. 

There were, of course, a couple of standouts. The Volkswagen commercial, which had been making its rounds online over the past few days, is almost perfect. It doesn't make me want to buy a Volkswagen, but it does have the best child actor of all time, and a truly adorable moment at the end. And the Groupon commercial...

This also happened. Actually happened. As in, was written, greenlit, filmed (BY CHRISTOPHER GUEST??), and aired for three million with an M dollars. I suppose one could argue that there's nothing more American than disrespecting an entire nation and its suffering in order to make a cheap "joke," or a bit of money. But that argument is a miserable one to make. 


My point is, this whole cult around Superbowl commercials simply baffles me. The ratio of awesome to awful is the same during the Superbowl as it is during the rest of the year. These commercials were just more expensive to produce - and since you probably don't strategize your buying habits around Superbowl commercials, they were more expensive for no real reason.