Viewers are always assured to have a reasonably good time watching the Super Bowl even if the game is boring. The biggest television event of the year usually has the best commercials of the year. Companies spend millions of dollars to produce and buy coveted marketing time during the most watched telecast in America.

This year there was a mix of funny and sweet commercials for a variety of products and services. We are going to highlight the best below:

Doritos: “Play Nice”
Doritos had some major misses this year. They try to be funny, but so many failed miserably. Lucky for Frito-Lay and for the viewer, they had one gem. A cute young black kid tells his single mother’s date the rules of the house and of conduct. He’s definitely in charge!

Snickers: “Betty White”
Old people being tackled is just funny. If that old person just happens to be Betty White, the epitome of a nice old woman, it is destined to be a winner. Throw in an brief appearance by Abe Vigoda and you have a formula for a memorable Super Bowl commercial.

Flo TV: “Moments”
I had never heard of Flo TV before this Super Bowl. Allowing people to watch TV anywhere seems intriguing, but advertised by this commercial made it all the more appealing. The Who’s “My Generation” blasting over images that have formed contemporary America makes me want to never miss a moment. I guess I can do that with Flo TV!

HomeAway.com: “Hotel Hell Vacation”
Remember the Griswolds? Back in the 1980s, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo took their family across the world in a series of vacation movies presented National Lampoon style. HomeAway.com? I had never heard of them. Apparently they have something to do with traveling. But just like an effective commercial, I am going to seriously contemplate booking my travel plans through the site. If the Griswolds do it, then America should too!

Motorola: “Megan Fox Photo”
Using sexy girls to sell products is certainly not new. In recent years, GoDaddy.com has used well-endowed women to sell their service. Motorola went this route and created a funny montage of what would happen if Megan sent out a sexy photo. A mother desperately knocking on Timmy’s locked door, asking whats going on in the room made this commercial too memorable to exclude from the list.

Bud Light: “Light House”
Ah, the Super Bowl beer commercial! A staple of the Super Bowl experience for as long as I can remember. Bud Light always tries for the humorous route. Its always hit or miss. This one was done very well. Playing off of the “Go Green” movement, the house appears to be made up of recycled beer bottles. But they aren’t recycled, they’re full and the guys can’t resist them.

Bud Light: “Stranded”
“Lost” just started its final season and most people are wondering what really happened on the island. Playing on that motif, a crashed airplane is saved not because of the discovery of a radio, but because there is Bud Light in a beverage cart!

Google: Search On
Google did a masterful job with the ad. The most memorable commercials usually utilize humor humor to grab the attention of the viewers. However, Google decided to tell an endearing story of a guy falling in love in Paris through a series of searches. “How to Impress a French Girl”, “Churches in Paris”, and “How to Assemble a Crib” were just some of the searches that describes so much without saying anything. Superbly crafted.

Entertainium’s best of the decade series continues with television-in-review.

• “The tribe has spoken”: In May 2000, an American version of the Swedish game show Expedition Robinson premiered on CBS. The show’s first season attracted 28.3 million viewers and was a summer hit. The show’s second season premiered after the Baltimore Ravens decimated the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV and was the most-watched show on television during that 2000-01 television year. That show, of course, was Survivor and launched the phenomenon known as reality-competition television.
  • Ironically, the show that popularized the format never won an Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program. Another show on the Tiffany Network, The Amazing Race, has won the Emmy each year since it was first awarded in 2003.

• “Come on down”: Bob Barker retired from The Price is Right in 2007 after fifty years in television and thirty-five years hosting. Comedian Drew Carey replaced him as host of the popular game show.
• The UK kills the traditional sitcom: In 2001, comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant created the BBC mockumentary The Office, a comedy series shot in the documentary style. In 2003, BBC America began broadcasting the show and it became a popular hit. Around the same time, both Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond left the airwaves as NBC, looking for a sitcom hit after the Americanized version of Coupling was a failure. NBC remade The Office with Steve Carell occupying the main role as a bumbling office manager. The series was a great success and has prompted most every new comedy series to shoot in a single-camera, no laugh track, and interstitial-based format.
  • Coincidentally, the original episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was a 1999 mockumentary that detailed Larry David performing an HBO special. The show adopted its current format in 2000. This information has no real relevance other than the fact that it got me to talk about Curb Your Enthusiamsm, a show of which I’m particularly fond.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: Janet Jackson revealed her nipple during a halftime performance with Justin Timberlake on Super Bowl XXXVIII. This incident sparked a review of live television policies that led to the institution of tape delay for most major live performances. Furthermore, this incident prompted a wave of re-editing violent or sexually suggestive television programming.
• “Tell me where the bomb is!”: 24 premiered in 2001, giving new life to the careers of men previously known for the roles of a KKK leader in A Time to Kill (he became the counter-terror hero) and Pedro Cerrano (he became the president).

• “You think that’s bad…”: Fox cancelled Family Guy in 2002, only to bring it back to air in 2005 after a series of fan petitions and strong DVD sales. Seth McFarlane launched a comedy empire with spin-offs American Dad and The Cleveland Show. However, much like the fact that the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t holy, wasn’t Roman, and wasn’t an empire, McFarlane’s empire lost its humor with dumb cutaway gags (Family Guy) or were never funny to begin with (American Dad and The Cleveland Show)
• All good shows go to cable: HBO cements itself as the place to watch great serial dramas and comedies with the success of The Sopranos, Rome, Deadwood, John Adams, Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and True Blood among many others. Additionally, Michael Chiklis finds success on The Shield on FX, Bryan Cranston with Breaking Bad on AMC, and of course, Mad Men on AMC.
• Science fiction finds its way into the mainstream again: Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG-1 pick up a strong cult following over the decade while Lost premieres to much success on ABC.
• The success of game shows: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? continued to build on its momentum from its 1999 premiere and spawned a host of competitors (including shows hosted by Maury Povich, Dick Clark, and Anne Robinson). Ken Jennings won over $3 million on Jeopardy! in 2004.
• Hard science goes primetime: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which detailed forensic science investigations, premiered in 2000. The show spawned two other spin-offs and led to the success of other science-based television shows such as Numbers.

…and Law and Order is still on the air.