Ugly Betty

I love this show but if they keep inserting product placement (aka Heroes - the hour long Nissan commercial) - I will stop watching.

The episode where they tried to drum up business for Wicked the musical was bad enough. A few episodes later they tried to drum up interest in a movie soon to be released (I won't give them the satisfaction of more publicity by naming it.)

I was really enjoying the episode and didn't really think about the fact that Betty kept repeatedly talking about some random film coming out and frankly when her friend started talking about how much she loved James Marsden - I got confused and thought she was talking about the guy that played Spike on Buffy. So it wasn't until the commercial break where they played an ad for a movie with James Marsden in it that I realized I'd been thinking of the wrong actor. I then realized the ad was for the same movie they had just been hyping on the show.

To me this is unforgivable. I'm watching the show for the great plots and great characters, but when I know that dialogue is written just to sell something it ruins the entire show for me. So yes, great Betty White part, interesting Henry v. Gio - but I'm not going to watch a show that's using the plot/characters as ads instead of entertaining characters.

I actually do consider writing an TV to be a form of artistic expression - so anyone willing to whore themselves out and compromise themselves is not worthy of my viewing time or respect.

I could even have accepted it if at the beginning there had been an obvious message saying "this episode sponsored by X movie" - so fine, at least we know there was an obvious exchange of script lines for cash. Instead they tried to pretend this was a spontaneous expression of Betty's real taste in movies. Now I wouldn't believe anything that came from her character's mouth because I'd believe her opinion has been bought.