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Barbara Lippert's Critique: In Love With Google

The fact that Punch Buggy ( redubbed Punch Dub) involves a lot of hitting can't hurt on the Super Bowl. (I'll even forgive them the hit-in-the-groin joke, which I believe was the lone nut-sack destroyer of the night.) The idea was so good and so amusingly executed that it didn't even need the celebrity surprise at the end (although anytime Stevie Wonder wants to joke about his blindness, I guess you have to go there).

I also liked Audi's ad, although calling out liberal, do-gooder environmentalists as eco-fascists and then promoting itself as the Green Car of the Year seemed to confuse people. I thought all the details were hilarious (the too-hot hot tub, for example). I want to go back and look at it again, because it's so layered. I also loved the joke after the button with the dorky Green Police busting the real police for their foam cups ("Please step out of the car and put them on the hood").

Here's the spot I hated the most: Focus on the Family.

First, I didn't think it belonged on the Super Bowl. But given that it was accepted, it was a brilliant media move for FOTF. It basically won before it ran. When it did show up, it was fundamentally dishonest -- as phony as Mrs. Tebow's French manicure.

It seemed to borrow the lighting and look of the "Real Beauty" campaign from Dove, which attempted to be, well, real. But it was so coded and disingenuous ("We almost lost you!" she says to her son) that it came off as having the same slightly creepy, slightly disturbing sensibility as the Skechers spot.

Speaking of women, I wanted to like the Vizio spot with Beyoncé. But she was in it so little, and it was so dense and deep and hard to follow in parts, that it came off as a bit of a be-mess-é.

Overall, I thought CBS did a brilliant job of branding itself. The Letterman-Oprah-Leno triangle was a triumph (and Leno sat on the couch moaning, munching on no-name chips when he used to sell Doritos). And getting The Who to do a CSI: medley really spoke to the times. (Or was I dreaming? Bitten by one of the many squirrels?)
 
About the men mess -- can't we all just get along? It was bad enough that Bud Light had a spot years ago showing a husband who preferred beer to having sex with his wife. But showing, as Bridgestone did, a man who preferred his tires to his woman was really misogynist. As was the FLO TV spot in which the guy who shopped with his girlfriend is told to grow a spine.

But there's a special place in battle-of-the-sexes hell for the Dodge spot. I liked the American Psycho look of it (it was brilliantly shot -- as if these guys were taking a mug shot). And the dialogue was actually well written. It's just that this dude is so angry at being overly controlled by his wife that he should definitely get into therapy, or just take his truck and move out, before she ends up dead and messing up his beloved vehicle with her blood and guts.

As for the use of hell in the Electronic Arts spot? Somewhere the Medicis are smiling.

Barbara Lippert is Adweek's advertising critic.