NBC, bless its rapacious, corporate heart, engineered a Sunday evening of close to 6 hours of programming designed to put America through an emotional rollercoaster........
We speak, of course, of the Super Bowl pitting the scrappy underdog Philadelphia Eagles against that loathsome, malignant dynasty, the New England Patriots.......followed by a monumentally tragic episode of the already heart-wrenching series, "This Is Us"......
You might have needed tranquilizers to make it through the football game and then several boxes of tissues to survive the drama episode......
In case we forgot to mention it, the BQ is the more sedate, whitebread version of the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air......West Philadelphia born and raised.
So we don't have to describe our reaction to watching our home team triumph over the Patriots, an evil, preening, self-satisfied cabal who've been cheating and spying their way to victory for years.
Watching this game was the equivalent of viewing a steel cage match between Trump and the disabled reporter he so cruelly mocked during the 2016 campaign..........and seeing the incredible spectacle of the reporter kicking Trump's cheeseburger-inflated ass to the floor.....
Yes, it felt that good.
And the Eagles accomplished this not with their star quarterback, sidelined with a season ending injury.......but with Nick Foles, their backup guy. The unintimidated Foles let more air out of the Patriots' egos than the air they once let out of their footballs to connive their way to a win.
But the evening of the game's highs and lows was far from over..........
NBC next plunged us into an hour of "This Is Us", which finally revealed the long unseen demise of its most beloved character, Jack Pearson, the flawed but stalwart loving father perfectly played by Milo Ventimiglia.
As Nick Foles became the annointed MVP of the Super Bowl, the "This Is Us" MVP was most certainly Mandy Moore, who with uncommon skill and grace, took on the devastating scenes in which her character is confronted with the sudden death of her husband.
Even though we could practically hear the sound of millions of TV viewers sobbing their eyes out, we also felt a measure of happiness for Moore, who's been skirting around the peripheries of TV and films for over a decade now, an underappreciated talent and an untapped resource.
To use football imagery, it's been nice to see her catch the plum role-of-a-lifetime and run with it into the endzone. Mandy Moore and Nick Foles, the two MVPs, made one hell of an unforgettable night of TV together.
Did we scream for joy during the game? You bet. Did we cry during "This Is Us"? Hmmm......uh....nah, it must have been an allergy or something that made our eyes water....just a tad. Maybe a tad and a half......
For both shows, for both MVPs, Nick 'n Mandy......5 stars (*****) both FIND OF FINDS.
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