Super Bowl commercials 2018: If you don’t use Groupon, you will get a football to the beans

Or, at least, the midsection.

Groupon is an internet service that allows you to buy $40 worth of bowling for $30, provided that you bowl from Monday afternoon through Thursday afternoon. At least, that’s my experience with it. Maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there’s value in spending $7.7 million on 30 seconds to convince the world that there’s something more to it.

Because if you don’t find value in supporting local businesses, perhaps you deserve a football to the beans.

Except, waaaaait a minute. Was that really a football to the beans? Enhance!

That looks like the midsection.

Definitely the midsection.

My dude is holding his midsection like a football was kicked there. Don’t let the smoking jacket provide ambiguity where there is none. GoDaddy and Carl’s Jr. are in an arms race to develop the first commercial with a nude woman riding a porpoise, and Groupon is worried about a football hitting six inches too low?

Getting kicked in the midsection is easily the least funny possibility. If you’re not going to commit to a football to the beans, then don’t go with a compromise that shows off your cowardice. A football to the face is much funnier than a football to the midsection, and it doesn’t leave us making chicken noises like we’re in the fifth grade. A football to the neck. A football that hits the phone out of his hands. Have the guy say, “And now to light this very expensive cigar,” and have the football send the cigar back over the Florida Straits along with his dignity. There are so many options.

As is, it’s a commercial that tries to be absurdist and edgy without sticking the landing on either. If the football hit the rich guy in the beans, and then as he was writhing in pain, another football came and hit him in the beans? We’d talk about that commercial until the next Super Bowl. That’s the kind of commercial that wins awards.

Look at this masterpiece:

There is NO ambiguity where he gets hit. Then there’s the expression. Then there’s the fetal position or aftermath. This is a tripod of beans-related art, and it cannot stand without all three of the legs. The Groupon commercial has only the expression.

Cowards.

Is this commercial worth $7.7 million?

Only if there was someone at the top, someone who is paid too much for replacement-level decision-making, who was responsible for the decision to soften up the football-to-the-groin. Like, if Jean-Paul Groupon watched a rough cut and said, “Mmm, yeah, does he have to get hit in the groin with the football? Seems a little vulgar,” then it was worth $7.7 million because at least the money was wasted by someone who didn’t deserve to have it in the first place.

But if the goal was to make a commercial that people will be talking about a week after they saw it, nah. I’ve had to scroll up six times to see what commercial I’m writing about. Gonna go with “not worth the money.”

If it hit him in the beans, though. If only they had taken that final, necessary step. Then it would have been worth twice as much.