I don’t think any 2011 Super Bowl Commercial got closer to that weird, internet-born tone of creepy weirdness for its own sake than Doritos’ leadoff ad, which featured a guy who loves all of the worst parts of Doritos. Maybe it’s my fault for working at a keyboard all day, but I can’t believe in a Doritos ad that suggests fingers covered in cheese-dust are a positive:
The pug ad was a little more conventional, but this one just continued to leave a bad taste in my mouth throughout Super Bowl XLV. Maybe because that guy’s fingers were in there. If I may TV-Trope one major feature of a lot of recent horror movies, it’s this: The Human Who Doesn’t Act Like A Human Or Move In Human Ways. Japanese films are especially good at this. It doesn’t make me laugh in a Super Bowl ad.
SB Nation suggests this weirdness comes from the Doritos commercial’s overlap on a certain Venn Diagram: The space in which “Men with Malicious Intentions” and “Men With Severe, Undiagnosed Learning Disabilities” meet, which is in fact where most male commercial figures originate. What I have to wonder is how all these idiotic male figures in Super Bowl commercials managed to get married to their super-hot spouses in the first place. (I sense a Match.com Super Bowl commercial idea coming on…)