Cross promotion and product placement are a fact of life in modern television. Some shows do it better than others, and some products can be integrated better than others. 30 Rock has a lot of fun with it, and shows like Survivor and American Idol live on it. But shows can really take the whole idea too far, and that’s definitely what happened on this week’s Bones.
Hodgins, Sweets, and Fisher worked together to score themselves tickets to Avatar (James Cameron’s latest geek opus, for the uninitiated). The quest became main push of the whole B story. Sure, Sweets’ jealousy of Fisher’s played a big part of the story, but it felt secondary to the fact that, at any give point in time, they were waiting in line for movie tickets.
The worst part of the whole thing was the fact that Joel Moore, the actor who plays Colin Fisher, also has a role in Avatar, playing Norm Spellman. The whole thing was just a bit to “meta” for me. I’m all for the inside joke, but this one just didn’t sit right.
Bits of tid:
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Dec 03, 2009 @ 23:42 EST5EDT
It was horrible this week, HORRIBLE. The B plot took over the show and they talked about THE EXPERIENCE THAT IS AVATAR! What a horrible mess of an episode. They do that bullshit again I will be leaving the show for good.
I am now determined to never see Avatar.
Exactly!
I was looking forward towards the MOVIE, they make it seem like it’s Jesus returning from the dead. Now I’ll just wait to rent it, if that.
Unfortunately, I have to watch Bones live in order to record the NBC comedy block. Thus I was trapped when the characters began raving over a movie none of them had even seen yet, simply due to the massive hype and Hodgins apparently never noticing the uncanny valley. I opted to go do something productive in a different room and returned at a randomly chosen moment later. I don’t know how much of the episode I missed because of JAMES CAMERON’S AVATAR and don’t care.
Strangely enough, I am looking forward to The Last Airbender, which had to drop “Avatar” from its title.
Not the best episode of the season, or the series. It’s almost like they wanted the Avatar moment to be the A plot, with an actual mystery being the B plot. On the upside, we have the ability to play Punky Pong for ourselves on the FOX website.
I was looking forward to a new episode of ‘Bones’ last night, but was sad to see that it was preempted by an ‘Avatar’ infomercial… Nice one, FOX.
What makes it worse was that they weren’t waiting in line to get the tickets they were waiting in line to get good seats. I have never heard of anyone doing that.
I could swear that Angela’s father gave Hodges the tattoo before the wedding that never was. Wouldn’t she have noticed it before?
I can’t help but think about the Mermaid Darlings when I read your take on synchronized swimming! Damn ABC.
*POST AUTHOR*
Wow, looks like I started a crapstorm.
Let me say, that this choice by the Bones team is not going to keep me from seeing this movie. Do I plan on seeing it day one, first in line? Heck no, never was, but if its James Cameron, I’m in.
Also, for what its worth, I don’t think there’s been nearly the hype that I actually expected for this movie. It could be much, much worse.
No, my decision not to see the movie was reached after watching the craptastic trailer (Smurfs In Space/Dancing With Smurfs… really?). But this episode certainly solidified my decision.
I wasn’t going to see the movie before this Bones episode. Still not going to see the movie. Despite my disinterest in the movie, its placement in the Bones episode didn’t bother me at all. Maybe specifically because I have zero interest in the movie and have essentially ignored anything to do with Avatar, it didn’t annoy me in the show.
Sounds to me like the dislike for the storyline stems from a dislike for the movie rather than the actual storyline on Bones. I bet you would all be raving about the ep if they were waiting to see Star Trek or Iron Man 2.
I liked the episode and the ‘Avatar’ storyline was pretty funny. But, I don’t have any hate for the movie.
The movie could have been any movie. It didn’t bother me at all whether it was Avatar or some unidentified geek flick. The bit about waiting in the line had some good moments and it was fun to see the boys getting out together without Bones or Booth.
More importantly, the whole case was riffing on King of Kong and thinking about Billy Mitchell’s hair always makes me laugh.
Not the best episode, but it was enjoyable enough. Particularly without some of the most egregious Bones/Booth relationship BS that other recent episodes have had.
They were doing spoofs of 2 different documentaries, “The King of Kong” and “Starwoids”.
I hated the episode because it was a commercial for a movie! That’s it! It was horrible!
Ivey, you didn’t create a crapstorm, the episode was such crap it created the storm.
I hated the episode.
Then I asked myself, if they had made up some generic movie and not used a real one, would I have still hated it?
Yes. I don’t remember ever having been this bored watching an episode of Bones. The B Plot was way to invasive, in fact, I think you could even say the crime was the B plot this week. Nothing was particularly moving, nothing was particularly funny, it was just a bland, boring episode.
I live overseas and haven’t been keeping up on US pop culture, so I’d never heard of Avatar and had no idea it was a real movie. And I enjoyed the episode. Some very funny moments with the three guys trying to speed up work to wait in line, the tattoo reveal. I admit, though, I am not one to analyze. It’s the only tv show I follow at the moment, so I just look forward to being entertained for 45 minutes without reading too much into it.
that chick was hott! the skirt, glasses, & tattoo… sold!
I’ve been so disappointed with the way the BONES scripts have degenerated into sex, sex and more sex. At first the show was wonderful, a real anthropological who-done-it. Now most of them end with something akin to ‘and then I woke up’…wait, one did end that way, didn’t it?
It seems the show can’t go for more than 10 minutes with some kind of sexual discussion, joke, or innuendo.
If these people REALLY did work at a professional place like the Jeffersonian, and talked like that during work (and had sex in the closets) they wouldn’t keep their jobs for long.
I miss the old “Bones” and don’t even care to watch it any more.