The weepy clashed with the cheesy in “Saturday Night Live’s” pointed puncture of socially conscious Super Bowl ads in the cold open.
“To reflect this moment in history you’ll see impassioned commercials,” noted pre-game “sports personality” Mikey Day about Super Bowl LV on Sunday. “This one almost brought me to tears.”
Cue moving videos and photos of Olympic runner Jesse Owens, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and a Black Lives Matter street mural. “We must alway strive for equality,” the narrator urged. “And we must alway reach for Cheez-its … historically delicious.”
In another ad, wild Budweiser Clydesdales frolicked in a gorgeous mountain panorama until one of them stepped on a hypodermic needle. It flew through the air to inject a COVID vaccine into the arm of an elderly woman sitting somewhere on a bed. “It’s good! Better get the second dose of cold, refreshing Bud Light,” quipped the ad.
But the commercials took a sharp right turn for Papa John’s pizza with “no child sex trafficking” in the basement. “Sorry Democrats, you’ll have to get your child sex pizza over at Hillary’s Pizzeria.” Papa John’s is “A-OK,” added the pitchman. “Stop by with your ‘Q-pon’ today.”
Chris Redd predicted rapper Cardi B might do a disturbing “Wet Ass Pepsi” commercial.
Aidy Bryant paid homage to mind-numbing football coach talks by playing both Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians with a hat switch and pretty much the same strategies.
You can’t expect much more than that with “four hours of television for 11 minutes of action,” warned Kenan Thompson.
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