The Super Bowl Revealed Two Farm Stories
Only one fit comfortably inside our delusions.
On Sunday, every Super Bowl ad ended in non sequitur. DJ Khaled and Kenan Thompson shilling Wegovy, AI chatbots trash-talking each other, Sabrina Carpenter building her soulmate from Pringles, the setups inevitably dissolving into brand reveals no one saw coming. But I practically spat out my masticated chips when PepsiCo’s “Last Harvest” aired.
A father prepares to retire from his potato farm, handing literal keys (to what, exactly?) to his daughter. They take one last romp down the rows together, the present stitched together with flashbacks: a little girl driving a tractor, tenderly handled spuds, high fives, an adorable puppy. It’s the version of farming this country happily cosigns — wholesome, ethical, white. By the time the bag of Lay’s chips finally appears, it feels like a kind of benediction, as if colorful, foil-sealed bags are the inevitable endpoint of this noble work.
People got emotional. “Nothing tugs on my heart more than a good family story,” one viewer wrote on social media. “Father and daughter stroll down memory lane one more time before the younger generation takes the reins.”
