This year, series new and old surprised us with hilarious, creative, well-designed and wacky spots. So before the year comes to an end, Brief reminisces about just a few of those spots that we just can’t stop watching.

“How I Met Your Mother”: The Kids Lose It

At Comic-Con this year, CBS released a trailer for the fall season of “How I Met Your Mother,” but this time the tables were turned. Ted wasn’t telling yet another story about how he met someone who is not their mother. But this time, his kids lose it.

For eight years, Ted’s kids have been sitting quietly on the couch listening to his very long story about how he met their mother, and understandably, they got fed up. Their outburst was memorable, cringe-worthy and hysterical.

“Sons of Anarchy:” Brawl

Sons battling fathers, “Sons of Anarchy” Season 6 got slow-mo violent. This spot, created by FX Networks with VFX help from The Mill, mirrors the season’s striking key art that made people take a second look.



The Doctor Interrupts BBC’s On-Air Idents

BBC One tried to promote its upcoming programming with brief idents, but the Doctor wouldn’t have it. In order to get the word out for this November’s “Day of the Doctor” for “Doctor Who’s” 50th anniversary, the most recent doctor Matt Smith stepped in to some of BBC One’s on-air idents to remind everyone about the important day. The non-idents did the trick, acting as both network spot as well as brief TV special promo.


“House of Lies:” Don Cheadle Has a Way with Words

Don Cheadle (as his “House of Lies” character Marty Kaan) put a spin on his message in the trailer for Season 3 on Showtime. Taking a cue from his fellow consultants, Kaan let you hear what you wanted to hear, even if what he was saying didn’t quite match up.


“American Horror Story: Coven”

Ryan Murphy and team would simply not let us look away from the “American Horror Story” promos this year, no matter how many nightmares we gladly got from them.

First, “Inside the Coven: Witch Eyes,” took the point of view of an unknown witch as she hitched a ride into New Orleans, lumbered into a cemetery and spent some time in a bar until catching a carriage to the gates of an ominous-looking house.

Then, short videos like the one below, typically no longer than 10-15 seconds, used vignettes of women in strange positions to give brief glimpses into the new season “Coven.” Most used the same eerie song to get the desired effect.


“Game of Thrones” In Memoriam

“Remember those we have lost.”

A new video released at Comic-Con featured every last one of the characters that had died so far in “Game of Thrones”—and that’s quite a bit. The Season 4 “in memoriam” video, featuring brutal deaths of many characters on the violent HBO hit, was put to Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” adding a classic background to the gory roundup. The video served as a fitting promo for its new season, coming in 2014.

And if anyone is going to make such a video, it works for “Game of Thrones,” with so many deaths that its online fans can’t always keep up.


“Breaking Bad:” Walter White Goes Poetic

“​Breaking Bad‘s” Bryan Cranston, as Walter White (chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin), recited Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” as landscape images of New Mexico and closer-to-home images of White’s neighborhood float by. This was one of AMC’s teaser trailers for the final season of “Breaking Bad,” which premiered August 2013. Both evocative and simple, the teaser features the show’s Walter White as unseen narrator, reciting the sonnet in its entirety.

This was not the first time “Breaking Bad” has tapped renowned works in its promos. After all, the final season’s tagline was taken from the 1980s classic “Fame.”


“The Returned’s” Interactive Ad from Sundance Channel

“The Returned,” a Sundance Channel series set in a quiet French town, follows a group of people who, not knowing they’ve been dead for years, come back home. In an ad touting the show’s take on life and death, it let the viewer decide which point of view to see the spot from: life or death. Once the choice was made, the ad guided the viewer through a sequence of events—life shows family members reuniting, death depicting a darker side.


“Dance Moms” Meets A-Ha in New Music Video

Lifetime’s “Dance Moms” continued this year with its music tradition, this time sticking with the ‘80s for A-ha’s “Take on Me.”

In the Season 4 video—“Take on Abby,” which is inspired by A-ha’s original music video—Abby gets sucked into a book where she corrects everyone’s form (in animation) when the dance moms follow. The video was created for this year’s season after last year’s “Flashdance” video got such amazing response.


The ‘80s Launch Spot

UK Rubik’s Cube champion Simon Crawford takes us all to school with the puzzle to honor all that the 1980s gave us — like the Internet and hip hop (and bad hair and dance moves). National Geographic Channel teamed up with The Corner and Partizan for this spot, using the blocks of the cube to represent the changing technology and pop culture icons that took us toward the new century.

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