I hear ya. Gossip Girl did a "Bing" tie-in over a season that seemed really forced and stupid.

The remake of Hawaii Five-O does this a lot too.

"let's bing that" and tons of screen time for Windows 8 tablets, and a pause, camera lingering, while Skype launches, etc..It's pretty invasive.

Of course, I don't expect a lot from this show...

Bones does this as well. "This car can park itself!" You have an intelligent woman that fights crime and is Indiana Jones (female version), but she can't parallel park? That episode was almost all commercial. It makes me hate the product, so I think it backfires.

They did this on Burn Notice too. The black charger is integral to the plot lines and is as much of a character as the Enterprise is on Star Trek, yet they dump it to drive some lame ass blue car so they can have extended gushing scenes about buy this car and be a spy!

Crap writing.

Yup. I killed my TV years ago for just this reason. Also, since we pay for TV now I got kinda sick of paying to watch "commercials." That and the actual station breaks last about 10 minutes now and even PBS has program bookends that last just as long.

Now I watch what I want, when I want, through my computer at various URLs. It takes a bit of tweaking but I haven't seen an actual commercial in I don't know how long.

It's all the DVR's fault. All of us who keep hitting the ">30 seconds" button to jump past the real commercials are forcing the networks to put them in the shows themselves.

I watch Hulu almost exclusively now. It has commercials, but I click over to Twitter or Facebook during them. Also, I can't watch a full show without pausing it and running off somewhere else on the web a number of times.

I got one of those cheap $50 Roku boxes and have been happily watching lots of stuff on Netflix and Amazon Prime. If it weren't for sports and HBO, I'd happily get rid of cable.

Wreck-it Ralph was chock-full of product placement...including the donut cops!

Most of what I watch is either on the BBC (no adverts) or recorded and fast-forwarded through the ad breaks. Since I changed ISP and now have unlimited downloads, I've been streaming a lot of shows that aren't shown in the UK any more, and I've noticed the amount of product placement.

In particular Project Runway is packed with sponsor endorsements and poor Tim Gunn looks so embarrassed every time he has to extol the praises of the HP tablet or whatever it is he has to promote for that week's assignment.

It's pretty hilarious how hard they hit the product placement in Teen Wolf. EVERYTHING COMES FROM MACY'S ALL OBJECTS PURCHASED MUST ORIGINATE FROM MACY'S, its practically a running gag.

It's more jarring in something less fundamentally goofy like Fringe where they make damn sure that car logo is visible from any driving scene (quick, linger on the close up Sprint phone shot! It's not awkward at all! Not.)

About the only thing that has ever done this well was the Austin Powers movie where they paused for the product placement and it was an obvious gag. I blame Spielberg. It Reeses Pieces had tanked we'd never see another product in a movie.

I hate it just as much the other way, when TV series go out of their way to hide a brand to avoid showing the product. Like when they put a sticker over the Apple logo. They want people to know they are cool and have cool stuff, but hey, Apple didn't pay for this, so hide that. Show me one Apple user that covers the Apple. Throws me right out of the show, Sometimes they even blur it. Then I am all, "Was that a gang thing? No, they are hiding the Addidas brand? How fucking lame." Then I move on.

Show me one Apple user that covers the Apple

I know at least one person with a decal over the apple.

I like it when it's a pointed gag, like on RuPaul's Drag Race when the queens are actively pointing out how "my outfit matches the Form Decor interior" and they are working the promo like a sequined tube top-- a sequined tube top does not apologize, no matter how many times you yank that puppy up: it just is, deal with it.

It really wouldn't take that much to work things into the story, like how Stephen King use to always name every brand of everything. That's not just a tissue that's a Kleenex brand tissue, damn it. But, seriously, specificity works in a Holmesian way, it shouldn't be that hard unless you want your middle class depiction of upper class people shopping at Sears, etc.

I think they really need to work it like HBO GO added features so I can always find out all the info on what song is playing, what they are wearing, where they are, what brand Victrola that is, because I absolutely need that trank gun from Apartment 23 to make my holiday plans come true. Seriously, if I do not get to go on a very specifically targeted non-lethal shooting spree by the end of the year, it is really going to put a heartbreaking damper on things.
C'mon, Santa, I never ask for anything and you owe me you bearded freakshow--