On the airwaves:It was a week in which Willie O'Dea's moustache finally came into its own. For all the talk of debates and ladders and missing Ministers, in allowing his hairy trademark to be stroked live on Ray D'Arcy's Today FM show, the Limerick TD pulled off the publicity coup of this campaign.
The sound of his upper lip bristling across the nation may have been drowned out by that night's leaders' debate, but D'Arcy has over 250,000 listeners and many of them texted the show to say that they were crippled with laughter at the episode.
It was a strange highlight of a week only dimly illuminated by the debates. For much of the time, it felt as if we were only going for another spin on the merry-go-round.
Bertie did stop running and finally sat down long enough to engage in one-to-one interviews, but without any resultant excitement. Elsewhere, the radio and television programmes that hadn't grabbed the other party leaders the first time around fulfilled their quotas by getting them this week. And apart from Pat Rabbitte's rejection of a coalition with Fianna Fáil, experienced viewers and listeners would by now have known each leader's scripts better than any spin doctor.
In many ways, there has been more of interest in the packaged political broadcasts.
Earlier in the campaign, Pat Rabbitte wandered through a forest of actors to introduce the Labour Party's attempt to convince voters that this is a country of exhausted worker bees, afraid for their lives.
But it could have graced Cannes in comparison with the Fine Gael broadcast, in which Enda Kenny made a great display of signing his "contract for a better Ireland".
Fine Gael has relied on the perceived attractiveness of Kenny's character, but there are times when he could be engaged in a brilliant and subtle postmodern parody of soundbite politics. Except that it turns out only to be a bad video.
Fianna Fáil's use of the sales team of Blair, Clinton and Mitchell caused some controversy. The party also courted unkind comparisons by making a video which looked like something played at a retirement dinner. You could have easily imagined Bill Clinton signing off by raising a glass and declaring: "Enjoy your cruise, old friend!"
The party's other broadcast featured "ordinary" people waxing lyrical about how many positive changes there have been over the past decade. What was most extraordinary about it, though, was that in a three-minute list of all that has changed, there wasn't a single mention of immigration.
The increasing problem for parties is that we are in an age when the public has a sophisticated understanding of media, appreciates subtlety and has little tolerance for the predictable.
The Green Party seems to have been the only one to recognise this, which is why its broadcast - featuring only children - attracted a lot of attention.
There is an argument that the Green Party was the biggest winner from Thursday night's debate between Ahern and Kenny: its broadcast aired right before the most-watched programme of this entire campaign.
It helped that they made a smart, atypical video. Many of its stars were children of party members, with the rest coming from the drama schools, and there was a jarring moment in which a toddler said she'd like broadband all over Ireland, but the ad had an impact that the other parties will learn from.
Costing €25,000, it was written by Nick Kelly, who previously wrote the Guinness ad that features polar explorer Tom Crean, and was directed by Andrew Freedman and Ken Wardrop.
Wardrop made his name with a short student film called Undressing My Mother. Maybe the next election will see Undressing My Candidate. Willie O'Dea may even be first to volunteer.