The week in TV offered a roundup of American masculinity as Bruce Springsteen slid his crotch into the faces of Super Bowl viewers around the world, and The Office’s Michael learned how to take it like a man.

The Super Bowl lineup was fitting for a deepening recession and a new Democratic administration. The Arizona Cardinals aren’t just from John McCain’s state, they play in the sort of faceless suburb that’s been largely responsible for Republican victories in our recent past. And they have plenty of geriatric appeal. The Cardinals’ Glendale home fancies itself an antiques capital; founded in Chicago in 1898, they’re the longest-running team in football.

They’re not the Chicago Bears, but the Pittsburgh Steelers evoke the Democratic party’s old base. Family-owned, they call a gritty—but still-thriving—old manufacturing town home. Their logo, borrowed from US Steel and the American Iron and Steel Institute, calls to mind an era when America and its men made things, when the world economy was fueled not by unsound mortgages and Ponzi schemes but by mining and manufacturing. It’s fitting that the Steelers recovered from the Cardinals’ October surprise to win the game, and even more fitting that blue-collar bard Bruce Springsteen, fresh off playing the inauguration and winning a Golden Globe, played halftime.

Should we be relieved or disappointed that Springsteen’s short set didn’t include “Born in the USA”? The song is from that period when the Boss got his teeth capped and danced with Courtney Cox, and it feels almost like a cliché now—but its tale of a jobless vet is sadly timely. What we got instead was the hopeful side of Springsteen: the kid-with-a-dream-starting-a-band in “Tenth Avenue Freaze Out,” the adolescent desperation of “Born to Run,” the tenacious “Working On a Dream”—and “Glory Days,” sort of a “Born in the USA”-lite, minus the politics. But why play working class hero when you can pander to the audience by changing your lyrics to fit the sporting event, as Springsteen did by changing the baseball references in “Glory Days” to more football-appropriate (if nonsensical) chatter? And why ignite political controversy when there’s the important Super Bowl tradition of sexual quasi-controversy to maintain? Following the fine work Janet Jackson did with that wardrobe malfunction and Prince’s expert fondling of his phallic guitar, the prince of Asbury Park slammed crotch-first into a camera man. It was amusing, baffling, and unlikely to convince any of Springsteen’s skeptical fans that this wasn’t a sell-out

The hour-long Office special that followed the game celebrated the inauguration in its own way. Ever-diligent Dwight’s surprise fire drill—complete with real fire—went, unsurprisingly, horribly wrong, resulting in an office-wide panic that (coincidentally?) injured a few more cameramen, and in a heart attack for Stanley. Michael’s bumbling way to revive Stanley: “Barack is President! You are black!” Michael’s equally bumbling way to welcome him back as he recuperates: refuse to give him chocolate ice cream, explaining, “Racism is dead, you can have any kind of ice cream you want.”

To his credit, sort of, Michael realizes he’s a major source of stress contributing to his colleague’s cardiac problem, and tries to make up for it by holding a roast in his own honor so his employees can freely make fun of him. The idea backfires: their jokes crush him (and, most importantly, aren’t that funny). But Michael eventually pulls himself up by his bootstraps and once again takes responsibility, smoothing things over with his colleagues by roasting them. That, we learn on Super Bowl Sunday, is the American way: the self-made man dusts himself off, gets things done, and then pulls a questionable stunt for comedic effect.

Meanwhile, the Dunder Mifflin gang watches a bootleg video that provides a way for NBC to stuff an assortment of guest stars into this very special episode, thanks to an odd make-out scene between Jack Black and Cloris Leachman, proving that there are second acts in American lives.