Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Bowl Commercial Wasn’t the Weirdest ‘Clerks’ Cameo of the Night
The big winner of this year’s Super Bowl, once again, was gratuitous pop-culture nostalgia. In addition to a Muppets-themed travel ad, and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s horny condiment commercial, ‘90s stoners Jay and Silent Bob popped up in a Ben Affleck-centric spot for Dunkin’.
Affleck once again donned an orange tracksuit to perform with the “DunKings,” his Dunkin’-branded boy band (although the word “boy” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there). The DunKings now also include Ben’s brother Casey, Bill Belichick, and Jeremy Strong, who we briefly see emerging from a vat of coffee grounds like a more svelte Baron Harkonnen.
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The extended version of the ad features Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as Silent Bob and Jay, respectively. They show up at Java Jam, which is some kind of coffee-themed fan convention. Jay then asks Affleck to sign a football, which surprises him since they made “six movies together.”
Of course, Affleck did make appearances in six of Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob movies, including Chasing Amy and Dogma. But does that mean that, in the world of this commercial, Smith and Mewes are supposed to be playing themselves? But they just dressed as their movie characters for some reason?
The Jay and Silent Bob cameo would have been the most surprising cameos from Clerks cast members that night, if not for a show that aired on Fox right after the Super Bowl.
The Floor is the Rob Lowe-hosted game show in which contestants are shown a series of images of everyday things pinned to a particular theme, and then have to name that thing. It’s basically the kind of show you’d get from 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy if he were to wake up in the Idiocracy future.
The show begins with dozens of contestants on the titular floor, with each knowledgeable on a specific theme. They can challenge each other for trivia duels to create illuminated paths or some such nonsense. It’s a great show for people who found Deal or No Deal’s numbers and briefcases to be too intellectual.
Anyways, last night, viewers were surprised to see that one of the contestants on the big post-Super Bowl episode was none other than Brian O’Halloran, who played Dante in Clerks and its subsequent sequels. Appropriately enough, he was dressed in a hockey jersey and the expert category he selected was “convenience store items.” Presumably “Star Wars” and “Petty Jealously Concerning Your Girlfriend’s History with Blow Jobs” weren’t options.
While some people were obviously surprised to see O’Halloran on the show, he had announced the appearance on his Instagram the day before:
And, to his credit, the appearance in no way required him to hawk the star of Pearl Harbor’s favorite donut brand.
