The Town of Odyssey

Customary discussion thread.
This year's performer was The Weeknd.

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

It was okay. I tried to remember if this was a group and then remembered that I thought that it was just one person. I was only half-watching. It was fun but nothing super special to me. I am always happy when a Super Bowl show involves all the people wearing a significant quantity of clothes the whole time, so that part was above average.

I thought the skyline backdrop was kind of neat, and the part with the hall of mirrors effect was cool (though all the manhandling of the camera made me nauseous), but overall this was an incredibly bland and unimpressive show.

You want to be either a memorable spectacle or a good performance. Ideally you should be both, but you need to at least be one of the two. Bruno Mars in 2014 was an underwhelming presentation compared to what is expected from a modern halftime show, but just as a musical performance did a great job. Black Eyed Peas in 2011 were a complete disaster musically, but the production was an entertaining spectacle. This was just nothing. It didn't look particularly good, and it sounded terrible. And I don't just mean the music wasn't to my personal taste, though that is also true, but the actual sound of the show was awful. Someone didn't adequately test the audio mixing beforehand.

Yes, the mirror part was cool for a few seconds and then I started getting dizzy. Maybe I'm too old and not enough fun for this kind of event.