Super Bowl LX was a strange one, featuring teams that make you say, “Who’s that, now?”; hosted in a place that made you say, “Where’s that, now?”; and highlighted by a halftime show that many assumed would make monolingual English speakers say, “What’s that, now?” but that actually presented a more interesting question, something along the lines of: “Wait, so can you legitimately celebrate the United States and its deeply multicultural and immigrant roots while also calling out oppressive regimes that run on fear and division?” Which is to say nothing of the important questions being asked at the bar where I watched the Super Bowl LX pregame, such as, “Wait, I thought Charlie Puth was British?” and “OK, I know Jon Bon Jovi is from New Jersey—why is he introducing the Patriots?” And then later things like, “If my aunt was so opposed to the Bad Bunny halftime show, then why are her shoulders shimmying like that?” and “Did that doorbell commercial just use the surveillance tech from The Dark Knight to find a lost dog?”
Indeed, the bicoastal battle of the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots at the gridiron that jeans built, Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium, ultimately raised more questions than it answered, and personally, I’m left wondering whether this was the year ad execs finally killed any remaining appeal of the Super Bowl commercial as a construct. But confusion isn’t always a bad thing. It means that there’s still something left for us to learn, even if that thing is just that Charlie Puth is also from New Jersey and therefore legally allowed to sing the national anthem. Thank goodness we had Bad Bunny’s Boricua celebration to perk us up, given that this year’s ads contained more than one suggestion that we’ll likely all be murdered by robots in the very near future because we didn’t want to make our own spreadsheets anymore. But even bizarro Super Bowl, with its threatening commercials and pretty low-key football, still featured some cultural highs to latch on to and some truly hilarious lows to laugh at.
More on Super Bowl LX
Winner: Patriotism (Green Day’s Version)
I’m not sure when the NFL became interested in at least hosting some slightly complicated conversations around who gets to be patriotic and why. But opening up the Super Bowl with a less than traditional trio of anthems—“America the Beautiful,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and Green Day’s “American Idiot”—was a dynamic choice in the year of the Benito Bowl. Super Bowl LX certainly shook out to be a politically charged one, what with the alternate halftime show for people who are scared of Spanish-language reggaeton. But it was also several hours of never letting 100 million viewers stop thinking about America, in a way that felt actually constructive for once. That’s pretty all-American, no?
Loser: Kid Rock and Turning Point USA
End of blurb.
OK, fine, we’ll do a little more on the “All-American Halftime Show” because it is so funny. It’s best not to dwell on Turning Point USA’s decision to host an alternate halftime show because they were outraged over the selection of U.S. citizen and proud Puerto Rican Bad Bunny to perform at the Super Bowl. But it is important to note that the All-American Halftime Show’s own selected headliner, Kid Rock, donned jorts and a leather fedora to lip-synch (and still seemingly forget the lyrics of) his 26-year-old hit “Bawitdaba.” It is also important to note that TPUSA advertised that the performance would be available to stream across multiple mediums, but then hours before the Super Bowl announced that it wouldn't be streaming certain places due to unforeseen licensing restrictions. Viewership wasn’t an issue for Bad Bunny, who was performing on the most watched stage in the nation. President Donald Trump swore he wouldn’t watch the performance, but he immediately crashed out over it in a rant that of course included being big mad that Bad Bunny was singing in Spanish but also somehow included a mention of 401(k)s. Honestly, if you don’t know how to shake your ass a little, just say so. Also, there’s never a good reason to stream jorts.
Winner: Celebs Supporting Celebs
An incomplete list of celebrities who publicly expressed support and delight for Bad Bunny performing the halftime show at the Super Bowl: J.Lo, Madonna, Rosalía, Elmo, Katy Perry, Doug Emhoff and Kamala Harris, Kacey Musgraves, Shakira, Ariana Grande, Tim Cook (OK!), Gracie Abrams, Ciara, Triple H, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (collectively), and the Teletubbies (also collectively, through dance) ...
Loser: Celebs (?) Not Supporting Celebs
And here’s a complete list of celebrities (a loose term) who expressed distaste for Bad Bunny, a United States citizen and the no. 1 streaming artist in the world last year: Chris Brown (LOL, OK, man) and Jake Paul, who called Bad Bunny “a fake American citizen … who publicly hates America,” even though the people of Puerto Rico have legally been U.S. citizens since 1917, and despite the fact that… Jake Paul moved to Puerto Rico in 2021 to take advantage of the tax breaks. I hope a pineapple falls on his empty head.
Winner: The Benito Bowl
But, of course, none of that matters at all. Because after months of fearmongering from the right and undue panic over the NFL promoting an "anti-American" artist, Bad Bunny went out on the nation’s largest stage and gave one of the most joyous, celebratory, unapologetically American Super Bowl performances of all time. Dancing through a casita (literally), bodegas, a wedding with multiple generations of guests, and a barbershop—and hanging off a power line while singing “El Apagón” with jibaros—Bad Bunny didn’t just highlight the heritage and culture, the joy and pain of being Boricua. He invited us to be a part of it, too, to be welcomed and be curious. And, of course, it was super fucking cool, too. Because Bad Bunny is cool, and hot, and obsessed with making music people love. And also obsessed with doing that thing where he … well, how about we just refer to it as dwerking?
This Super Bowl performance really had everything: production value, a strong point of view, universal appeal, its headliner handing a child version of himself the Grammy he just won seven days ago, Lady Gaga being temporarily crowned as Lady Guadalupe, Ricky Martin singing Bad Bunny’s "Lo Que Le Paso a Hawaii" in Spanish on the Super Bowl stage after being told he’d never achieve success unless he sang in English, an actual wedding between a bride and a groom, Cardi B and Pedro Pascal just happy to be included as dancing extras, people dressed up as trees and bushes, and, of course, the transcendent message that we’re still moving toward a more inclusive America, not away from it.
Call me woke 2.0 if you must, but I just had too good of a time watching all those happy people in all those neutral tones positively throwing ass to possibly be mad about anything. Did I pick up on every word of what Bad Bunny was saying in his native Spanish tongue for all 13 minutes of the Super Bowl halftime show? I did not. But my hips seemed to! As did the collective online consciousness. To anyone who refused to accept the no. 1 streaming artist in the world as an appropriate pick for the Super Bowl halftime show, this performance said—in every conceivable language—“Y’all are a bunch of racist weirdos, we’re out here having a good time, and if you want to be dense about it, then I’m going to go ahead and sing, ‘El perico es blanco, si, si, el tusi rosita.’” (Look it up.)
His name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and what he does, he does from his heart. The only English words Bad Bunny spoke throughout the 13-minute performance (OK, party) were at the very end, when he called out, “God bless America!” and then proceeded to name every country in the Americas, from Canada (and no one was more surprised than Canada) down to Chile. To take a phrase that has been bastardized into one of exclusion, and redeem it as it was originally intended to be, and then party all the way off the field—well, joy as an act of resistance seems to be much more fun than huffing, puffing, and tweeting the White House down. Who knew?!
Loser: AI (and Us, It Seems)
And all of this cultural complexity and merriment was immediately followed by a dark-sided Svedka commercial that took the brand’s formerly sexy fembot and gave her the distinct and terrifying effect of wanting to consume human flesh. All using the incredible artistic powers of AI sloppery, of course!
Like the Great Crypto Commercial Flood of 2022—and that worked out well!—every commercial that aired during Super Bowl LX seemed like it was advertising AI, made by AI, or, robot god help us, both. Even reliable constructs like celebrity mash-ups and the psychosexual drama playing out between Ben Affleck and Dunkin' over the past decade weren’t enough to counteract the nightmarish, uncanny valley visuals of AI de-aged Joey Tribbiani.
As for the AI shilling itself, it was constant. Microsoft Copilot’s AI is apparently putting NFL scouts out of a job … and advertising it during the Super Bowl? That’s chill. Matthew Broderick tells us that Genspark AI is eliminating having to do any actual work at your job … and that will probably work out fine for you and said job. Meta’s AI can tell you whether the big rain clouds in the sky mean it's going to rain. Google Gemini can let you know that you’re not gonna want to eat that mud, so don’t try it (or do—Google Gemini doesn't care about you!). Mr. Beast’s Salesforce AI will give you a million dollars for solving its super-secret puzzle … just as soon as the AI works out all the bugs from receiving too many emails. And Chris Hemsworth’s Alexa+ AI definitely won’t murder you—definitely not at all!
Draw: Basically Any Other Commercial
Most of the commercials that weren’t telling us that we need AI to save us from eating paste (you dumb piece of garbage) were telling us that we need to lose weight. And now we can lose weight—even if we’re poor!
In an ad for RealFood.gov, Mike Tyson honest to god said he wanted to kill himself when he gained weight because he “was so fat and nasty” and that even though America is the most powerful country in the world, “We have the most obese, fudgy people.” No further thoughts—just a suggestion to be less fudgy by eating real food (dot gov), I guess?
So the best—literally the best—we could hope for in terms of commercials this year was toilet humor (literally, singing toilets), body horror (literally, Sabrina Carpenter ate the body of the boyfriend she made out of Pringles), and a commercial about preventative prostate cancer exams featuring Gronk brushing a horse and instructing us to “relax your tight end.” Generally good advice, but so sorry—it’s difficult to unclench my butt cheeks when it appears that we, as a collective consumerist society, have been cursed by an Etsy witch into this eternal advertising hell. I’ve been tuning out Clydesdales since 1998, but I’m going to have to tune back in if asking robots the weather is all I’m left with. Somebody grab a defibrillator and check on Mr. Peanut’s current state of consciousness. We can’t keep living like this! Honestly, I’d take Puppy Monkey Baby at this point.
Winner: The Puppy Bowl
And so thank goodness for the annual return of adorable puppies—because no AI could ever create Teigan, a very special puppy with a very special condition, participating in the Puppy Bowl in a very special custom puppy wheelchair.
I must mention—although she wouldn’t want me to—that the winner of the Underdog Award was Remy, who was so nervous she could barely leave the gridiron wall. And I get it; it’s tough out there for a pure spirit who doesn't want Mike Tyson to tell them they’re going to hell if they eat Pringles. (And not just because, in the case of Sabrina Carpenter, it's mariticide.)
Sadly, it was revealed that shortly after recording her segment for the Puppy Bowl, Teigan passed away. I am not doing well with this news, and there’s nothing AI can do to fix it. Only more puppies can fix it.
Loser: Drake(s). Again.
Given that it was a rough game for Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, people keep saying that this was the worst Super Bowl since last year for a guy named Drake. But I want to be very clear—it was also a bad Super Bowl for last year’s Drake. And this year, that Drake publicly placed a $1 million bet on the Patriots to win the Super Bowl. Maybe just take a vacation next year, man?
Winner: Patriotism (NBC’s Version)
Sure, it may have been a little greedy for NBC and Peacock to take on both the Olympics and the Super Bowl this year, meaning that we did miss out on a few hours of live coverage from Milan in favor of the Super Bowl pregame show. But it also meant that we got about a dozen commercials for the Winter Olympics during the Super Bowl, each one scored to a poppy song about gold. And between Bad Bunny waving the flag of every single American country during his performance, Kid Rock absolutely boofing it, and the near constant images of snowy USA athletes (and Snoop Dogg) soaring to their greatest heights with any number of contraptions strapped to their feet—it would be almost impossible not to feel a little patriotic following Super Bowl LX. So enjoy it while it lasts, because the robots are coming for us either way.
