oh taco bell, taco bell, product placement with taco bell, enchiritos, nachos, burritos...

i tell you, i love "30 rock" but the product placement in that show really grates on my nerves sometimes.

i know the writers do their best to make the in-show advertising feel like an amusing part of the plot rather than a corporation paying them to plug a product, but i still think it's totally unwelcome and it taints the show. the mcflurry joke in last night's episode was mildly funny and everything but they easily could have produced the same result without talking about fucking mcdonald's for 45 seconds.

one of the reasons i hate product placement is it always reminds me of adam sandler (blargh) hawking subway and popeye's and whatever else in his movies. if you go back and watch "happy gilmore" or "little nicky,"* the pervasive in-movie advertising looks horribly shameless and cheap, even for the gutter-level standards of mass market comedies.

i'm always kind of fearful of stuff like that because it tends to evolve from something that's mildly annoying and employed by only a few people into something that every organization does because they have to stay financially competitive. like how networks now have their logos constantly in the corner of the screen and have short advertisements flash across the bottom of the screen when you're trying to watch a damn movie.

anyway, i don't want "30 rock" to be like an adam sandler movie in that regard. i don't care how much money you get to mention ipods or verizon phones. commercials are the worst part about watching tv, so keep them out of my fucking shows, assholes!


*neither of which are even mediocre movies and i think watching one of them now would be on par with being waterboarded, but the fact remains that most of us enjoyed them when we were younger.