Smallville Wins the Award for Crackiest Product Placement
Spoilers for Series 7 episode 13, yadda yadda.
I'd noticed some Stride gum on Chloe's desk in an earlier episode. So, okay, product placement. Dell's all over the place, except for Luthors who tend to like either Macs or special evil laptops. I can handle a little, unobtrusive product placement.
This episode, however, opens with a club scene. The name of the club? Stride. Complete with the correct font. But, turns out there's a reason for it. It's not a club. It's a gum factory. With a live band and drinks. It might be best not to ask what they're on at this point. (The answer might be gum.)
But wait! That's not all! This gum factory slash club has glowing green Kryptonite gum. Dun dun dunnnnnn.
One wonders which came first. Did the writers say 'Hey, let's have an episode where gum turns people into Plastic Man' and the marketing group latch on and say 'Cool, let's get a product endorsement for that'? Or did Stride give them a buttload of money and ask them to write this cracky plot?
Pity Pete had to come back for such a lame episode.
Pete was acting a bit gay. Which would've been an interesting twist. I did a little digging and discovered he's Pratt's gay brother from ER. How did I miss that? I could recognize him in the context of Smallville, but not out of context, apparently. Also a gay squint on Bones? I can't even remember a gay squint on Bones. Let alone one I should recognize.
Remarkably little information Sam Jones III, so I couldn't figure out if he was gay himself or not.
Reminds me I have a juicy new ER ep on tape to watch!
(Yes. Tape. I'm living in the 20th century.)