POTPOURRI

This week's Justice League Unlimited really highlighted the ensemble nature of the show. It's the first time none of the original cast had a speaking part (Martian Manhunter shows up in a silent cameo at the end -- and what exactly was J'onn going to do with Wildcat? Could be a simple counseling session, but in these post-Identity Crisis days, maybe Wildcat was up for some mind-reprogramming). Pretty brutal episode, complete with bone-cracking sound effects during Black Canary's show-opening fight, and a little racier than usual, also -- "You want to go a few rounds with me? ...I'm talking about sparring." "That'd be nice, too." I don't much care for Green Arrow's voice (soap opera actor Kin Shriner), and I didn't like Canary's voice, either (Morena Baccarin -- she used to be on Firefly -- the voice itself is fine, but the voice acting isn't very good), but Dennis Farina was excellent as Wildcat, as was Virginia Madsen as Roulette. She's smoky!

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Super Bowl stuff:

Man, they couldn't get enough of Michael Chiklis, could they? He was popping up all over the place. The most surprising thing (HA! "Thing!" Because he's in the oh never mind), though, was seeing how tiny he is. He's so powerful on The Shield (new episodes next month! Sweet!) that I never really noticed what a relatively small guy he is. Tom Arnold made him look puny. Yikes.

The halftime show, while certainly tamer and less elaborate than in recent years, was still tremendously enjoyable to me. Hey, a Beatle's a Beatle! Still, with the history of surprise guests and the nature of the performance (huge audience, tons of money, finished quickly), I was actually expecting Ringo Starr to pop out for a quick round of "With a Little Help from My Friends," and I was a little disappointed when it didn't happen. I know, crazy to get my hopes up -- but if the two remaining Beatles were ever going to get together on stage again, wouldn't that have been the time and place to have done it?

The commercials were a mostly lackluster lot this year. I liked seeing all the superheroes together for that Visa spot, especially Underdog's cameo at the end -- Underdog is the best. I also liked seeing all the old commercial mascots in that MasterCard ad -- Count Chocula, Charlie Tuna, and the Groucho Marx-voiced Vlasic Pickle stork. Visa and MasterCard must have the same ad agency.

The GoDaddy.com spot, with the busty woman almost losing her top in the middle of a Congressional-type hearing, was a bit more risque than I thought they'd allow the ads to get this year. I thought Fox canned one ad for making reference to the Janet Jackson incident. I guess this one wasn't specific enough to get the hook. And the Napster ad almost made me want to sign up for it -- 30 days free to download all the songs I want? I'll try that! -- until I read the microscopic fine print -- subscription must be maintained to continue access to downloaded songs. I'm not entirely sure how they're able to do that, but basically they're telling me I need to keep paying $15 a month to listen to the songs I download, for as long as I want to hear them, is that right? That sucks. What kind of an idiot system is that? Only the people who know how to break the code will sign up, I'd imagine.

The real star-power spot, of course, was Brad Pitt's Heineken ad. Very unusual for a AAA-lister like him to make a commercial (at least, in the acting world; equally famous singers make commercials all the time), especially for a cheap beer. Maybe that break-up with Jennifer shook him up more than we realized. That P. Diddy Pepsi commercial -- also packed with stars (and star-fuckers, like Carson Daly). But as far as recognizable actors in the ads went, I preferred the FedEx spot with Burt Reynolds getting kicked in the groin by a talking bear. Hell, who didn't?

And, oh yeah, there was a game, too, wasn't there? A lot closer and more exciting than I would've expected from two teams I picked a rooting interest in solely on the basis of one of the quarterbacks' names (Tom Brady, of course). My favorite player: the Patriots' Tedy Bruschi -- pronounced "Brewskie". Don't mind if I do!

And the after-shows. The Simpsons had its moments, highlighted by Ned Flanders' religious gore-fest, The Passion of Cain and Abel. (And his children's Biblical questions -- If Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve's only children, where did the rest of the people come from? Rod -- or maybe Todd: "Did they have babies with their mommy? Or with each other?") But it wasn't a great episode overall. American Dad, on the other hand, just seems so unnecessary. Geez, Fox goes from needing zero Seth MacFarlane cartoons to needing two? Each with the same style of animation, basic setting and premise, and sense of humor? Maybe they just didn't get enough satisfaction out of cancelling Seth last time, so now they want to cancel him twice.

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Scott of Polite Dissent makes a good point in the comments to yesterday's post (in which I marveled at the fact that 20 million people watched The Simple Life). He reminded me that Fox also claimed forty million people watched House. I saw that claim, too, and the only thing I could think was -- "Yeah, but surely not all at once? That's 40,000,000 viewers for all the episodes so far combined, right?" Because those are C.S.I. numbers there, and House is no C.S.I. Hell, it's not even American Idol, which I guess leads into House now. As much as I like it, there is no way that every viewer of American Idol is sticking around for House. No way. This is some creative accounting kind of thing.