The best and worst ads of Super Bowl XLIX

Old stalwarts like Anheuser-Busch made decidedly less effort than in years’ past, both in quantity and content. The beer company bought three and a half minutes of airtime (totaling $31.5 million) — down from four minutes last year and the four and a half minutes before that — and grouped that time to make just three longer commercials. Of those, two were "sequels" (swapping Reggie Watts for Pac-Man and continuing to use horses as the Vessel Through Which All Good Happens In The World). The final ad was artificially designed to try and label Budweiser as a "macro" brewer, with hipsters drinking over an aggressive indie beat and title cards like "It’s brewed for drinking, not dissecting" — some bastardized hybrid of artisanal tone and mainstream branding.

It wasn’t just beer that kept it tame. McDonald’s went faux-reality with a message of love. Geico rehashed the months-old Salt-N-Pepa spot, one it knew played well. GoDaddy sexed down this year with an overworked 20-something (which we’re supposed to believe is a last-minute replacement for that stupidly offensive puppy mill parody). Coca-Cola made a sentimental jab at bettering the internet with, what else, Coca-Cola. But "World Peace is Brokered With Soda" is Coke’s modus operandi, day in and day out.

The big theme, if there’s one to find, was dads: Racing dads who want their son to show the need for speed (Nissan). Crying dads who drop their military-bound daughters off at the airport (Toyota). Affectionate dads that hug and kiss (Dove). Doritos' counter to this — a guy in an airplane who’s happy to sit next to the "hot girl" before realizing she has a baby — felt wholly out of place. And of course, if you have a child, the Super Bowl is the perfect time to think of the possibility they’ll die in an accident, at least according to Nationwide’s intentionally jarring, emotionally manipulative 30-second spot (which became a meme by the end of the night).

Basically, it’s all about family. Even Vin Diesel knows it.

Where humor was found, it was by and large driven by tech companies (and one incredible glue maker). Mophie wants you to believe that its battery will last well into the apocalypse. T-Mobile wants you to believe that Sarah Silverman’s hydroponic garden is full of kale. The creator of Clash of Clans wants you to believe Liam Neeson (aka "AngryNeeson52") gets really mad about free-to-play iPhone games. BMW isn’t exactly a tech company, but it did play to the evolution of technology with a clip of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric trying to understand the internet in 1994.

So yes, there were laughs — and yes, there were movie trailers by the half-dozen (albeit very few surprises). But for the most part, if the game wasn’t making you emotional enough, the ads in between would break you.

Stray observations by the numbers:

• Two times the elderly were used to sell cars ("Official Dodge Wisdom" and My-boner-pill-makes-Fiats-cool)
• Two times that prosthetic legs were used to tug at the heartstrings (Microsoft and Toyota)
• Two actors who made The Brady Bunch better: Danny Trejo as Marsha, Steve Buscemi as Jan
• Two uses of that screaming goat meme (Sprint, Discover) — and countless uses of other memes
• One Brett Favre cameo. Seriously, even between plays, he can’t seem to leave football behind.