Category: TV Dramas (Page 127 of 235)

When product placement goes too far…

September 29, 2008 /

Movies and television have been using product placement for years. For a kickback from the manufacturer, the product appears onscreen and usually fits within the context of the scene. For example, someone might be working in an office, and there’s a FedEx envelope or a can of Coke sitting on his desk. This type of product placement makes sense and can even add to the realism of the scene. (It’s less distracting to have a can of “Coke” than a can of “Cola” that is made to look like a can of “Coke.”)

Anyway, with DVRs creeping into more and more households, advertisers (and television producers) are getting more and more aggressive with their product placement since they know many of their viewers are simply skipping the commercials. It’s a fine line between having reasonable and distracting product placement. If the CSI unit pulls up in a Toyota truck, that’s okay, but what the folks on “Eureka” are doing is ridiculous.

This season, “Eureka” started a joint campaign with Degree deodorant to shoehorn its logo into (seemingly) every episode. Most recently, there was the episode where Sheriff Carter kept living the same day over and over and, you guessed it, he kept pulling a stick of Degree out of his medicine cabinet. And it’s not like the stick is just sitting there in the background. The first time he pulled it out, we were treated to a two- or three-second closeup… of a stick of deodorant! Then there was the episode where Zane was working in his lab and Fargo came to him with a favor. Mysteriously, there was a stick of Degree sitting on Zane’s desk. Once again, we were treated to an inexplicable closeup. Later in the same episode, there was a scene in a larger room and in the background there were metal crates with the Degree logo on the side.

When does it stop? The shoehorning of the Degree logo into every episode has become a joke between me and my wife, and we’re seriously considering dropping the show from our watchlist because the product placement is so cheesy and distracting. Moreover, I’m actually less likely to buy Degree deodorant because the product is ruining a good show.

And I’m not alone in this. TV Guide’s website posted a jeer from one of its readers.

Jeer to Eureka, one of my favorite shows, for indulging in product placement. This season, the producers apparently came to an agreement with the makers of Degree deodorant to display their logo at every opportunity. Not only is it disappointing, but it is annoying, and distracting to deal with in an otherwise quality show.

In the associated poll, 45% agreed with the jeer, 15% disagreed, while 40% said it was a “Jump the Shark” moment.

In total, 85% of respondents find the product placement distracting. So is it worth those extra advertising dollars if you’re irritating 85% of your audience?

Doubtful.

External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Old Show, New Season: “Lipstick Jungle”

September 24, 2008 /

I can’t really tell you that I was a huge fan of the first season of “Lipstick Jungle,” neither when it aired nor after it was released on DVD; I liked it well enough, but while I enjoyed the three female leads individually, I had some serious issues with the premise that they’d actually be friends. Still, when it was announced back in June that Mary Tyler Moore would be appearing in the show’s second season, playing the mother of Brooke Shields’ character, Wendy, I didn’t hesitate in deciding that I’d be interested in checking out the season premiere.

If you watched the first season of “Lipstick Jungle,” then two of the three primary storylines of the Season 2 premiere will not surprise you…well, not in general, anyway.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Greetings to the New Show: “Knight Rider”

September 24, 2008 /

Well, I might as well start off this entry with the bit I wrote about the return of “Knight Rider” to series television in my Fall TV Preview:

After the incredibly disappointing TV movie earlier this year, which played like a two-hour-long car commercial with a really bad script, there is absolutely no rational reason for my including this within my top 10, but, dammit, sometimes nostalgia wins out over common sense. It is almost certainly telling that the powers that be couldn’t manage to get us a copy of the first episode prior to a network conference call to promote the series, and I will be the first to bail out if the premiere is as bad as the movie was, but – God help me – I can still remember how much enjoyment I got out of the original series, and I cannot for the life of me shake that off.

Well, NBC finally managed to produce an advance screener of the first episode, and…well, it’s not as bad as the movie, but it’s still a far cry from “great,” that’s for damned sure.

It’s one thing to turn on the television set and turn off your mind, but based on its premiere episode, it looks like “Knight Rider” is shaping up to be about as scientifically plausible as…uh…wow, I’m trying to think of a sufficiently ridiculous example, and I just can’t come up with one that I’m comfortable with. Suffice it to say that your average automotive engineer would probably find this the most hysterical hour of television to emerge in the past few decades.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Fall TV Preview, Pilots, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

The Shield 7.4 – Genocide

September 23, 2008 /

The Armenian/Mexican gang war really heated up this week as the Strike Team (perhaps unsurprisingly) found themselves once again stuck in the middle. Vic had to know that his plan was bound to go sideways at some point, and when Rezian demands a sitdown following a Mexican barbeque of two of his lieutenants, Vic tries to convince him otherwise. Unfortunately, Rezian is insistent on explaining to the Mexicans that he has nothing to do with their missing property, and so Vic (as his second favor to him) heads to Cruz Pezuela to set up the meet. Pezuela, in turn, offers up his right-hand man, Armando Rios, as the voice of the Mexican side, but he doesn’t see any point in talking with the Armenians if they don’t plan on returning the blackmail box.

When Vic relays the message to Rezian, he’s both surprised and confused to discover that the Armenian boss is willing to admit he’s in possession of the box. This is all Pezuela needs to hear, and the meeting is goes on as planned. What Vic doesn’t understand, however, is how Rezian is going to explain the missing box, so when Rezian sandbags him at the meeting by explaining to Rios that he never had anything to do with its disappearance, Vic is understandably pissed off. Rezian simply wants to form a true with the Mexicans, and he’s even willing to ignore the recent murders and help them track down the real owners of the box in trade for leaving him and his guys alone. Vic attempts to convince Pezuela that Rezian is only lying, but when that isn’t enough, he heads to Aceveda for help.

Micheal Chiklis in The Shield

For as much as Aceveda has to lose by refusing to work with Vic, he sure treats him like an unwanted mouth sore. Nevertheless, when he’s brought up to speed on the day’s events, he agrees to let Vic dive into the blackmail box for a little help convincing Pezuela that Rezian was lying. What he gets is a tip about a city planner (the same one that screwed Vic out of his favor last season) who has repeatedly refused to sign off on a memorial in Little Armenia. When Vic and Ronnie threaten to release info about his insider trading if he doesn’t greenlight the latest request, however, the Armenians get their memorial, and Pezuela is led to believe that it was Rezian who set it up. Instead of gunning for the Armenians, however, Pezuela has the city planner assassinated, which upsets Aceveda greatly. Vic tries to calm him down by informing him that Agent Murray is using her federal connections to help bring down Pezuela and the drug cartel, but then Aceveda drops a bombshell. Agent Olivia Murray – the woman we know so little about, but Vic seems to trust immensely – is also in the blackmail box. In the words of Scooby-Doo: “Ruh-Roh.”

It’s nice to see Murray getting involved in the story, but the setup was so subtle that I’m really curious to see what kind of dirt Pezuela has on her. Obviously, it has something to do with why she’s trying to regain favor with her boss, but if it was anything really bad, how in the world could she still retain her status within the FBI? It’ll be interesting to see where Shawn Ryan goes with this one, but for the time being, you can hardly criticize the guy for continuing to progress the main story. Every episode has had at least one major revelation so far, and it really feels like this season has been well planned out.

Still, with as much that’s going on, I still found myself gravitating more towards Dutch’s (possibly) standalone story this week. His interactions with the kid (who he believes is a serial killer in the making) were some of the episode’s best moments, and though he got away this time, it would be really fun to watch Dutch continue to chase him down for the rest of the season. His character is clearly never going to get involved with Vic and Aceveda, and between solving cases like this and keeping tabs on Claudette, he should have more than enough to keep him busy in the short term. The whole Cassidy subplot, on the other hand, is dead weight that never should have been introduced, and if she somehow plays a role in Vic’s death/incarceration/whatever before the end of the season, it won’t be so much shocking as it will be a total disappointment.

External TV, The Shield, TV, TV Dramas

Greetings to the New Show: “The Mentalist”

September 23, 2008 /

I believe I put this out there in another post, but I think it bears repeating: “The Mentalist” is the new series that my mother-in-law is the most excited about. I can appreciate where she’s coming from. I’m pretty excited about it, too. Mind you, my reasons are different than hers – I love the concept, she thinks the show’s star, Simon Baker, is hot (and has apparently felt this way since he starred in “The Guardian”) – but, still, it means that I can count on her getting excited when I get an advance screener of any future episodes of the series.

In “The Mentalist,” Baker plays the title character. His name is Patrick Jane, and he’s an independent consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) who has a remarkable track record for solving serious crimes by using his razor sharp skills of observation…not that that’s a direct quote from the CBS press release or anything. Jane is a guy who knows how profound his abilities are, and it shows in his every word and deed when he’s on a case.

We get an example of his trademark confidence (or possibly hubris) in the first minutes of the first episode as we watch him walk into the home of a murder victim, brew a pot of tea, and make himself a sandwich. It isn’t until the kettle whistles that the victim’s mother even knows he’s there, but he quickly offers her a cuppa and, after demonstrating his powers of observation, says with a sly smile, “I used to make a good living pretending to be a psychic. I tell you this because I want you to understand that there’s no point in hiding things from me.” After a brief conversation with the missus, he then greets the child’s father by identifying himself as being with the police, adding with no further preface, “Did you murder your daughter?”

I won’t tell you how the rest of the scene plays out, but it’s a testament to Baker’s charisma that his last line – “Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks” – earns a laugh.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Fall TV Preview, Pilots, Reviews, Rome, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas

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