Yeah I thought the crash pad was funny but "bush league"? I have been seeing this happen on all crazy bumps since the attitude era. Wrestlemania 17 had a much more comical "holy shit" bump when Taker chokeslammed Hunter through 3 feet of air onto a crash pad. Pretty much every match on a big stage in the last 20 years have used crash pads, and they have all been visible. Perhaps not as easily as this one, but it has always been fairly obvious to anyone watching.
Same thing with the commercials. They sucked and they definitely hurt, but the match I thought was excellent despite them. Plus, the entire reason they put this on TV was to sell ads to advertisers and prove themselves to be a valuable TV product. It is an inevitability.