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'Modern Family' Was One Long iPad Commercial Last Night
by Joel Keller, posted Apr 1st 2010 7:08PM
We live in a TiVo world, and its impact has been spilling out all over our favorite shows in the form of product placement. The judges on 'American Idol' drink out of huge Coke or Vitamin Water cups. The chefs on 'Top Chef' use Calphalon equipment, as all the logo close-ups tell us. The folks at the Buy More on 'Chuck' really love their Subway sandwiches. We get it. It's the way of the TV world these days, as someone's got to the pay the freight in a world where you can zap a commercial by pushing a button.
But, when entire stories on shows play out like an ad for a product, then things have gone too far. Unfortunately, my favorite new show, 'Modern Family,' took things that step too far last night with their iPad-themed plot. It felt like one long Apple commercial. Never mind that the episode aired just in time for the device's release on Saturday; the iPad drove the plot rather than the plot necessitating the use of an iPad. And that's where the producers crossed the line.
For those who didn't see it: Manchild Phil Dunphy (the fantastic Ty Burrell) wants to stand on line for the iPad, whose release happens to fall on his birthday. As part of his birthday present, his ever-patient wife Claire (the equally fantastic Julie Bowen) volunteers to stand online with the Apple geeks in order to get it.
But she blows it, and she spends the entire episode trying to make up for it. This includes recruiting her brother Mitchell (the also fantastic Jesse Tyler Ferguson) to stand on line with her, which leads him to get into a fight as he shows off his new self-defense skills.
At first, hearing gadget geek Phil extol the virtues of the iPad -- which to me just seems like an overgrown iPod Touch -- and tell his wife that waiting a week to get the device was death to an early adopter, was annoying but acceptable. Yes, it felt like the producers had gotten together with the folks at Apple when they decided that Phil just needed to have some sort of new gadget as soon as it came out, but at least things were still subtle.
Then I kept hearing the word 'iPad' over and over and over again, and it just got to the point where I felt Apple wrote the script, and not Steven Levitan's writing staff. And then there was this scene, after Claire finds out there are still some iPads available at a nearby mall:
Did we really need to see that wide shot of the front of the Apple store there? Just a scene of people standing in line in front of a store that had iPad displays in the windows would have been enough of a clue. But that scene just sledgehammered the fact home just a little too hard.
But, then it got worse, as Phil's dunderheaded son Luke (the equally fantastic Nolan Gould) aced one from one of Phil's gadget geek buddies by saying his dad was dying:
What, the geek friend didn't keep the box it came in? Oh yeah, a box would obscure the money shot of the product in its full glory. Ugh. Then the final scene, where Claire downloaded a birthday cake app and brought it out instead of the destroyed cake, and Phil "blew out" the candles, made me just slightly ill. Look, folks! The iPad is so cool that you can even use it as a $500 substitute for a yummy $20 cake! Steve Jobs must have written that scene himself.
Look, I'm not an Apple hater; I love my iPod Touch, and one day I may convert from being a PC guy to a Mac guy. But this company has enough buzz from tech media types who get the vapors every time Jobs dons his black mock turtleneck to introduce a new product, and it's not like they don't already have a monstrous advertising budget. Do they really need to infect our favorite shows, too?
(UPDATE: Some of the commenters sent me a link to an LA Times piece that talked about the episode. Apparently there was no product placement deal in place; all Apple did was provide an iPad to the show. So the producers turned the show into one long Apple ad for nothing? Jeez, that makes it even worse.)
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