Last week, we showed our respect and quasi-admiration to a young actor named Jesse Heiman because someone at Go Daddy’s ad agency thought that he was king dork enough to make out with super duper model Bar Refaeli for the company’s Super Bowl ad. The commercial was certainly far better than the past several years of Go Daddy’s “Hey, check out our large-breasted models and Danica Patrick” efforts, which while right up our alley, were far less than creative.

Alas, friends, there is a much darker side to Super Bowl ad fame that has been a relatively unspoken terror in the past, but now it is coming to the forefront of pop culture news, thanks to Mr. Heiman thinking he’s Senor Big Sh*t all of a sudden.

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"On this next take, maybe try no shirt."

“A great Super Bowl commercial tells a story,” says some girl as the behind-the-scenes look at Kate Upton’s already-famous Mercedes Super Bowl ad begins. “No it doesn’t,” I reply as I think back to the zero times that I’ve ever yelled, “Shut up everyone, I want to hear the words to this car commercial”, in between pouring tequila bombs at a Super Bowl party. A good Super Bowl commercial, according to me, is short and sweet, with a softball setup and a home run punchline.

Take, for instance, the “Running of the Squirrels” commercial from several years ago. I don’t know what EDS is, but I remember this EDS commercial all these years later because it was simple. Upton’s Mercedes commercial, though, isn’t as memorable, at least not compared to her previous Carl’s Jr. ad. However, in Mercedes’ defense, what we saw was just a teaser, and there’s a much more elaborate concept in store for us come Sunday (or after the jump).

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At long last, Brooklyn Nets player of note Kris Humphries is returning to the world of comedy. You may remember him from his previous attempts at being funny, which include Funny Or Die’s ‘Kris Humphries Is A Douchebag’ and that time his wife got impregnated by Kanye West.

Humphries joins James Harden in a Super Bowl ad for Foot Locker that leaked (cough) today. Here’s the plot: James Harden is cool, and if you make him mad by rewearing a pair of shoes, he’ll force you to hang out with Kris Humphries. I don’t know.

CBS rejected a commercial for PornHub but lets Kris Humphries slide? Somebody at that network needs to get their priorities straight.

[h/t to everyone on Earth, and anyone with a television for the next 6-8 weeks]

By now, you’re probably aware that Mercedes signed With Leather’s 2011, 2012 (and pretty much every year beyond that until the end of time or she turns 30) Celebrity Sports Fan of the Year Kate Upton for its Super Bowl ad campaign, and today we’ve finally been gifted with a teaser ad. And right from the start, Mercedes grabs my attention, flips it over and shakes all of the money from its pockets with this disclaimer:

Of course, we’d be pretty shocked if a classy automobile manufacturer like Mercedes went the Carl’s Jr. route instead of bringing something a little more clever to the party. Needless to say, Mercedes had that in mind. Sorry to disappoint, fellas.

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While it wasn’t as good as the Doritos commercial with the dog killing cats and bribing his owner, the H&M underwear commercial (after the jump, ladies) starring David Beckham caused quite the stir for its bulginess and rippling abs… or so I was told, because I was totally checking my phone or peeing or outside grilling steaks, bro. But it also caused at least one of Beckham’s rivals to lash out at him via the manliest way possible – Twitter.

According to the memo that my With Leather British news agency carrier pigeon just died on top of, Joey Barton, who plays for Queens Park Rangers, sounded off about his displeasure with Beckham during the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Specifically, Barton gave Becks a jolly ol’ buggering over his tendency to endorse just about anything, as you can see above. But then he took the price of Becks’ knickers to task.

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It was a mixed bag for Super Bowl ads this year. It usually is, but I wonder if we’re just expecting too much from advertising companies on that first weekend in February. Their job isn’t to entertain us, it’s to sell us crap. Some firms managed to do both in the time alloted, and at almost $6 million per minute, that’s worth acknowledging.

There were a couple standouts: obviously the VW ad, and we’ll get to the rest in a bit. Max Pagehasm, the kid in the Darth Vader suit in the Volkswagen ad, appeared on the Today show this morning. Max is closer to Vader than one would have originally expected; he was born with a congenital heart defect and had to be fitted with a pacemaker. That child is more machine now than man…twisted and evil.

As for the others, well, that’s what we’ll attempt to parse out here. For the second year in a row, I’ll be reviewing every ad from Super Bowl XLV. These were my ground rules for eligibility:

• Ads are rated for memorability, scale, and message economy. I’m not necessarily rating the ads by my own personal preference so much as by whether or not the company actually spent the money on the ad, and should have done so.
• Ads for Fox shows are ineligible (Sorry, Glee).
• Ads for films are not reviewed. Movie previews are supposed to be awesome, and all the time. If a quality 30-second synopsis can’t be made out of a 90-minute film, then it’s hardly the fault of the people creating the ad.
• Ads during halftime aren’t counted (Suck it, Chatter).

Brace yourselves for another clickfest. The pages are broken up by every grade or so (A through F), so you can do the math for the most part. Agree or disagree in the comments; you’ve already seen these multiple times by now, anyway. We’re embedding as many as we can (while they’re still up).