Hey, it’s better than watching the Jets

As a warm-up to the Superbowl, Animal Planet is offering a marathon of the Puppy Bowls from years past. For the uninitiated, the Puppy bowl is at least an hour or so of about 7 or 8 puppies running around in a miniature stadium, made of cardboard. Multiple cameras around the “stadium” show images of puppies running around, jumping on each other, or mostly just laying on the turf, all set to zany music. To make matters worse, they spared no expense on the announcing, getting NFL Films, NFL Radio, and longtime Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas to do the deed. Also, this is a big production, probably 5 cameras, including one called the “bowl cam”, placed underneath a glass bottom of the water bowl that they drink out of. At halftime they clean up the turf with a blatantly used bissel vacuum cleaner, and then they bring out the kitty castle for the kitty bowl halftime show. While an interesting diversion for about 5 minutes, it get incredibly boring and repetitive as the animals don’t do very much, other than walk around to wacky music and disco lighting. Also, you can buy the video here

Puppy Bowl II receives 1.5 stars for being a pretty big waste of your pre-superbowl time. I honestly think I’d rather watch a marathon of“The OC”.