In yesterday’s Tonight on the Tube post, I stated, “The Giants continue to surprise, but the TVaholic has the feeling we are in for a Patriots blowout. Really hope that I am wrong, as a Super Bowl that is close like the last game of the season between these two teams would be outstanding. So, hopefully there will at least be some good commercials.” Well, there wasn’t a blowout, but only one of my hopes came true. We got the “outstanding” game that went down to the wire, but the commercials were pretty terrible. It is a bad sign when the FOX promos for Prison Break, House and American Idol were better than most of the commercials that companies paid millions to produce and air. So, in a pretty lackluster field of competition, here are the TVaholic’s prime seven Super Bowl XLII commercials for 2008.

Top 7 Super Bowl XLII Commercials

1. Bud Light “Breathe Fire” - Not overly original, but still funny none-the-less.
   
2. T-Mobile “Wade & Barkley” - Wade finally gets into Barkley’s Fave Five, but lives to regret it. They have been setting up this payoff for quite sometime. Although, I still like the one where Barkley calls Wade as he is about to sink a putt that would get him in Barkley’s five is the best of this series of ads.
   
3. Bud Light “Jackie Moon” - Letting Will Ferrell just ramble on can be hit or miss, but it works out pretty well here. Wouldn’t you like to see the outtakes on this one?
   
4. Vitamin Water: “Horse Race” – It’s Shaquille O’Neal on a horse. That’s just funny.
   
5. Budweiser “Rocky” - Classic Budweiser commercial, as it hits the cute target right smack dab in the center.
   
6. Pepsi “Justin Timberlake” - Who doesn’t enjoy seeing Justin Timberlake take a mailbox post to the crotch and a flat screen TV to the head?
   
7. Diet Pepsi Max “What is Love” - Not really that funny, until Chris Kattan makes a cameo at the end. But, you just can’t stop bobbing your head when this song starts up. And hey, now both of the Butabi brothers have made the top seven.
   

It wasn’t a very good year for Super Bowl ads, at least the game turned out to be good. So, what were your favorite Super Bowl XLII commercials?

Last week I participated in a group-writing project hosted by ProBlogger. There were just shy of 900 submissions, which is a lot of Top 5 lists on various topics. The TVaholic entry was: Five TV Shows on the Bubble That Should Be Saved. Hey, one of them, Friday Night Lights, has already been renewed by NBC. By Thursday of next week, ABC, CBS, The CW, FOX and NBC will have all announced their Fall 2007 TV Schedules. Then we will know the fate of the other four on the list.

I went through the complete list of entries and found many interesting reads, which included a fair number that were actually TV related. So, I thought that I would put together a list of the seven best Top 5 lists from the project that you may find interesting, funny or informational.

Prime 7 TV Top 5 Lists:

1. Top 5 American Idol Parodies – The top three are actually pretty funny. Number one on the list is The Simpsons parody they played during “Idol Gives Back,” which is one of the best I have seen.
2. The Top 5 Supporting Characters on NBC’s The Office – I think I would have put Kevin on the list instead of Jan, but overall a pretty good list with video of some of their best moments from the series to show why.
3. Top 5 Reasons to Use a Home Theater PC Instead of a Cable DVR – Five very good reasons to use a PC instead of a DVR. Reasons two and three are the main reasons why I presently use my computer with Beyond TV 4 and two Hauppauge-WinTV-PVR-150 tuner cards instead of a TiVo or Cable DVR. With the way I have it setup I can watch a TV show while recording two others, actually three others, as I can still record on the old VCR as well. Why the need to record so many shows? Well, I am a TVaholic after all and back earlier this season I could watch Grey’s Anatomy while recording Scrubs and 30 Rock, The O.C. and CSI. Well actually, CSI, along with a few other CBS shows, is available on Comcast On Demand in my area the day after it airs, but if it wasn’t, I could still have recorded it.
4. Top 5 TV Series Currently on air – A list of the favorite American TV shows from a TV watcher in India.
5. Top 5 - Serial Sci-Fi – I have only really ever watched a significant number of episodes of Star Trek: TNG of the shows on this list, but I did watch Stargate SG-1 back when it started on Showtime though.
6. Top 5 Reasons Why American Idol Lost Sanjaya – Reason number 4 is a little cruel, but the top two seem about right.
7. Top 5 Shows That Won’t Be Around in 2 Years – Well, number three on the list is a given, since Studio 60 isn’t very likely to even make another season let alone two. Number four, Prison Break, is probably correct, unless they come up with something spectacular for season three.

This year didn’t seem to be a very good year for Super Bowl commercials, at least for memorable or funny ones. The ads you will be talking about over break time at work tomorrow. It was hard for TVaholic to come up with seven for this list.

7 Best Super Bowl XLI Commercials 2007

1. Bud Light: Reception – This ad played in the first quarter and made me laugh, twice. The Bud Light people always seem to come up with at least one good ad each year. Of the four they had, this was there best and I think the best overall. An auctioneer doing a wedding is pretty funny.
2. Sprint Broadband: Connectile Dysfunction – This ad played in the second quarter and made me laugh. It still brings a smile to my face just thinking about it. It was a very good spoof of ads for erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra. Get Sprint’s Wireless Broadband and you won’t have to worry about connectile dysfunction anymore because the other guys product doesn’t work in as many cities. Very well done.
3. Doritos: Smooth? – This ad played in the first quarter and made me chuckle and then laugh. A guy eating Doritos while driving is attracted to the beautiful woman walking down the street eating Doritos. Words that describe the chips and the situation popup on screen like “crunchy” when the dude crashes his car. As the woman boldly goes to see if he is all right she slips and whacks her head on his car. Why a person falling is funny, I don’t know, but it is.
4. Sierra Mist: Combover – This ad played in the first quarter and made me smile and then chuckle. The guy had a combover. Not just any combover though, a beard combover. The site of which was very amusing, not to mention his choice of wardrobe.
5. FedEx Shipping: Ground – This ad played in the third quarter and made me smile a few times. Based on the idea that you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge a service’s speed by its name. In this case, Ground. It sounds slow. But as we find out from the hairy Harry, the joyful Joy and the bobbing head Bob, among others, it isn’t the case. At least that is what they want you to believe.
6. E-Trade: Things You Can Do With One Finger – This ad played in the fourth quarter and made me smile. It portrays things that can be done with one finger, the index finger in most of the examples except the last one, which isn’t shown. You have to picture it for yourself as the announcer tells you that just one finger can be used to, “tell your expensive broker where to go.”
7. Budweiser: Rock, Paper, Scissor – This ad played in the first quarter and while clever didn’t really do it for me, but I needed a seventh commercial for my list. I would hate to see how the guy would have won had he chosen the scissors instead of the rock.

To make this list, the Super Bowl commercial had to do two things. It had to be funny and it had to be memorable for more than making me laugh. After all, if you don’t remember what the ad was for then it didn’t do its job. We have all seen an ad and later tried to relay it to somebody else, saying something like, “I don’t remember what it was for but did you see that ad where …”

Which Super Bowl ad was your favorite? Which commercials would make your top seven? Leave your list in the comments.

Last month I participated in a group-writing project at ProBlogger. The object was to write a list about something. There were 301 total lists submitted and 21 fell in the Entertainment category. Seven of these were TV related in some way. So I thought it might be fun to put together another list and share the link love, so-to-speak. The seven entertaining TV related lists are:

1. My Top 10 Favorite Desperate Housewives Moments – Number eight and nine would probably rank in my top ten if I made a list like this.
2. 11 Teams I’d Love to See on the Amazing Race – Skewers the Blogosphere with a few interesting team ideas for CBS’ Amazing Race.
3. Top 10 Lindsay Lohan Oops Moments – All I can say is somebody needs to get this girl a bra.
4. 14 Amazing Chuck Norris Facts – Fourteen of favorite facts from Chuck Norris Facts. I wish Walker, Texas Ranger was still on every Saturday night. Then at least something would be.
5. 5 Benjamin Bratt movies worth your time; and 9.4 Law & Order episodes, too – Somebody really likes Benjamin Bratt.
6. The 11 New Fall Shows I Can’t Wait to See – Only four of these made my list of upcoming fall show that I can’t wait for.
7. 7 Reasons I Can’t Wait for the Fall TV Season to Start – This was my contribution to the project. Later, I also wrote 7 More Reasons I Can’t Wait for the Fall TV Season to Start.

Which entertaining TV related list was your favorite?