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The Super Bowl, by nature, has given us unrealistic expectations of grandeur. It’s no surprise then, that I was underwhelmed by many of the spots, especially the winning entry from Doritos. Their winning spot – from guys who nearly won last year – rehashes the ideas Bud Light was chastised for a few years ago, with far less brand tie-in. Seems like a free pass was issued to the amateurs, in my opinion, and diminishes really solid work from Coke, CareerBuilder, Cars.com, and even Denny’s, among others.

However, aside from sour grapes, one ad was interesting to me for entirely other reasons: Hulu’s spot featuring Alec Baldwin.

The motives for this ad, on the surface, seem simple based on recent history of Super Bowl commercials. Push a fairly new website with deep-pocket venture capital, using humor to sell. Nothing new there. Talk about aliens eating our brains using TV and Hulu, a sly wink to behavior we already indulge and our moms tell us to avoid. Nice use of cheeky fun factor.

But none of that is nearly as interesting as the tagline: “An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy.” Given that this site is backed by many television networks and movie studios as a way to control their content from P2P networks, the tagline is a bit Orwellian. Their hope is that instead of fans downloading shows and movies in an internet free-for-all, we’ll access Hulu – in an arena the copyright holders can control. Basically, this is an anti-piracy spot, boldly stating an intention to control what we watch and how.

Personally, I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with artists being fairly compensated for their work. I do feel that Hulu keeps far too tight a rein on content, restricting access to programming as they see fit. Given the fact that anyone can obtain this content with a minimum of internet knowledge, Hulu feels to me like the kids who take their ball home when we don’t play by their rules. I also feel they’re spoon-feeding us a behavior that will one day become a subscription-only model, so we can pay for content that was originally free to users (television) or already paid for at least once before (movies and cable offerings).

So is Hulu’s ad really “evil”? No, it’s funny and strikingly plain about Hulu’s intentions. But we can consider this the first good look at Hollywood’s tactical shift in how we consume entertainment.