And Now, a Plot from Our Sponsor

I had resolved not to write much about the excesses of product placement, since my previous discussions of my disappointment with Eureka and Smallville (found here and here, respectively) seemed to leave readers nonplussed. But I did want to register my view that a line of sorts was crossed on last week's episode of Eureka.

Normally product placement is intrusive but incidental; people picking up the sponsor's product, as in "I Do Over," or displaying the logo on their uniforms, as in "What About Bob?", are annoying; but you can mentally edit them out as you watch, like skipping over commercials. These scenes usually involve only one or two characters and are, in terms of the plot of the episode, entirely extraneous. Commercials featuring Eureka characters pitching the product ("Hi, I'm Zane Donovan!") also don't bother me: they're commercials. But in "Here Come the Suns" (3x07), an advanced version of the sponsor's product is integral to the plot itself.

At issue is a cylinder of green gel that, as Eva Thorne (Frances Fisher) explains at the top of the show, is being developed "for our sponsor" (i.e., the sponsor of the show itself, Degree antiperspirant) to provide protection against extreme heat. (Thorne explains this to Allison Blake, and Allison's monotone response about the wonders produced by technology comes across as an ironic comment from the actor, Salli Richardson.) This conversation includes the word "overengineered," which is part of Degree's advertising tagline.

The main plot involves a second sun being created directly over the town. Fargo (Neil Grayston) later steals the gel from Zane's (Niall Matter) lab so that he and the mayoral candidate he's shepherding, Vincent (Chris Gauthier), can appear cool while everyone else is sweating and wilting from exposure to the intense solar radiation. As he steals it from Zane's workbench, we see that the gel is sitting right next to a container of Degree antiperspirant. Several scenes follow in which Fargo and Vincent are unaffected by the punishing heat-wave produced by the second sun.

The climax requires Carter (Colin Ferguson) and Zane to fire off a rocket at the new sun from such close proximity that they should burn up from the heat, but slathering themselves with the gel provides enough protection that they are completely unaffected by the sun they're standing directly underneath. The dialog that sets this up again contains the word "overengineered," explicitly underlining the fact that it's a version of the sponsor's product that is providing part of the resolution to the crisis.

Is this the first time this line has been crossed in the history of television? Of course not. Am I aware that commercial television in the United States is – well, commercial? Of course. Do I still like Eureka? Absolutely: this week's episode, "From Fear to Eternity" (3x08), which provided the resolution to the Thorne storyline, was interesting and had some nice moments for Ferguson, Fisher, and the others, with actual consequences for Carter's maverick style in the closing twist. (This episode was sponsored by Cheer, and though I half expected it, at no time did S.A.R.A.H. start enthusing about how white her whites were getting.)

But I firmly believe that resolving storylines using the sponsor's product cheapens and undermines the show and its characters. I know that all of these fictional creations are just dancing marionettes for the corporations that want us to buy their products. But while I'm actually watching them dance I'd like to at least pretend they're not.