Most of us are familiar with product placement, where movies become quasi-commercials thanks to products like Taco Bell (“Demolition Man”), Mini Coopers (“The Italian Job”), and Reese’s Pieces (“E.T.,” arguably the Grand Poo-Bah of product placement).

And I’m sure the television audience at-large has seen it on various programs through the years, probably with the same semi-amusement they feel toward regular commercials. My earliest memory of TV product placement was “Knight Rider,” and I’m not ashamed to say one of my biggest childhood fantasies was Simonizing K.I.T.T.

I’m not naïve (about this); I realize product placement has been and will always be a part of movies and TV. To be fair, it’s now become downright necessary for the TV sponsors, since digital technology lets you skip over the ad breaks cleanly. It’s a wonderful breakthrough; you’re no longer forced to hear perky people describe cheese as “melty,” a vomit-inducing plight from which even the best VCR couldn’t entirely shield you.

But there’s an annoying new trend, and it’s not the little scene-blocking visual plugs that briefly occupy the lower half of the screen (DON’T get me started.) It isn’t like the “Seinfeld” episode with the Kenny Rogers Roasters plot, and it’s a far cry from James Garner getting behind the wheel of a Firebird and suddenly becoming even cooler.

No, what I’m talking about is how TV characters have recently started to visibly, dramatically, almost droolingly enjoy the products and talk about them on-script. And it’s happening on my shows, which is clearly unacceptable.

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USA Network has established itself as the master of smartly entertaining TV drama, not just on cable but on all of TV. Starting with Monk at the beginning of the decade and steadily adding a solid lineup of hit shows such as Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and White Collar, USA has reminded both audiences and the industry that good, old-fashioned, relatively wholesome entertainment that conveyed sound values was the real key to success with audiences.

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The latest addition to the network’s roster of original drama programming, Covert Affairs (Tuesdays, 10 p.m. EDT), is another solid entertainment with something more. Taking up the 1960s-style adventure formula of current shows such as Fringe and Human Target, the show refreshes the genre by creating realistic moral dilemmas for the characters, without indulging in the sort of flamboyantly gloomy agonizing over the morality of the spy game that has made the genre increasingly boring since John Le Carre introduced it in the early ’60s and began flogging it to death.

The central characters are Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), a new CIA agent in her late twenties. Annie is brave, tenacious, devoted to her duty, and attractive. The same is true of her colleague, Auggie Anderson, who heads technical operations in the CIA office, having been blinded while serving in Afghanistan. Importantly, however, Auggie refuses to indulge in any self-pity about his blindness. Instead, his wit and positive attitude add to his appeal for Annie and other women. (more…)

In the classic manner of series television, the USA Network’s latest new dramedy, White Collar (Fridays at 10 EST), smartly combines elements common to numerous other contemporary TV crime dramas, especially other USA Network shows, in a way calculated to maximize both familiarity and originality. Thus we have at the center of the show a pair of characters of strongly contrasting personalities but similar values under the surface differences, working together to do good.

Convicted confidence artist, forger, and counterfeiter Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) is released from prison (and shackled with an electronic tracking device) in order to assist FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) in catching other criminals. As in the 1960s TV series It Takes a Thief, Caffrey is young, handsome, single, insouciant, creative, and free-spirited, and his FBI handler is more mature, less handsome, and more conventional and stable. (more…)

Monk has been one of the best fiction series on U.S. television during the current decade, and tonight’s concluding episode (9 p.m. EST, USA Network) promises to tie up the few remaining vagrant plot strands. The show’s producers have done a good job of bringing various characters’ stories to conclusions and resolving the major problems each has faced during the eight years of the show’s run. That process has meshed well with the central interest of this type of mystery fiction: the restoration of bourgeois order after a major disruption caused by crime.

Thus, in recent episodes, Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer has become married, something he longed for, and Sharona has returned to apologize to and reconciled with Monk for her abrupt departure several years earlier. Widow and Monk’s assistant Natalie Teeger has found a potential husband as well, a Navy officer of very good character who clearly loves her. This will be quite a comfort to her as Natalie’s daughter, Julie, is moving on to college. (more…)

Proving once again its claim to the hotly contested title of Stupidest Television Network, ABC has canceled “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia,” continuing their business strategy of desperately trying new things and failing to give them a chance to succeed.

No wonder the cab/sat USA Network actually beat ABC (and the CW network) in the national ratings last week. USA’s formula of original series with unusual but likable characters and sound values carries consistently impressive audience appeal.

Although the ABC cancellations were expected–given the fact that the network had brilliantly moved both series to Friday night, a network television Dead Zone, thus guaranteeing that the shows would not be able to generate an audience over time–they nonetheless prove that ABC hates anything with decent values and ideas and cannot appreciate good, solid entertainment with real sense (Castle being the rare exception). (more…)

The return of the popular mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych for new seasons on the USA Network (at 9 and 10 p.m. EDT, respectively) is a bittersweet thing for most followers of the popular show featuring Tony Shaloub as the obsessive-compulsive detective. After a seven-year run in which Monk led the way in building USA and other cable/satellite outlets into a plausible long-term challenge to the broadcast networks’ dominance of television audiences, the coming sixteen episodes will constitute the last season for the show.

The good news is that the producers are planning to resolve the show’s central story lines–Monk’s quest to identify his wife’s killer, and his attempts to become mentally healthy enough to resume his position on the San Francisco police force. (Throughout the series he has served as a consultant on homicide investigations for the force.)

Equally heartening is the fact that Psych, now entering its fourth season, has continued to improve over the years (after a very promising start) and is as enjoyable as Monk. (more…)

USA’s new series “Royal Pains” is about Dr. Hank Lawson (Mark Feuerstein), who serves as a “concierge doctor” to the rich and semi-famous residents of the Hamptons.  In the course of the show, there are some unfortunate public policy claims made. In the second episode, entitled “There will be food,” Dr. Hank is trying to provide health care to a not particularly well-to-do fisherman. Hank gives a short lecture on price gouging and hospitals “screwing” people. A heavily discussed theme in this episode involves the need for a free clinic for the regular people who make the Hamptons run and the selfishness of the person who would have been the biggest donor to the clinic who is instead spent his money on a retirement party for a ballerina. In any case, the dialogue for this segment that I would like to focus on is as follows: (more…)

USA Network’s Burn Notice, one of the best shows on television, returns tonight at 10 EDT. The espionage comedy-drama features Jeffrey Donovan as a fired CIA agent—the “burn notice” of the title refers to his termination, which continually threatens to take on the unpleasant, deadly, espionage connotation of the latter term.

Joining Donovan’s character, Michael Westen, in helping him to get by without an identity (which was taken away by the spy agency upon his termination), avoid being killed by his former employers, and make a meager living helping people menaced by various villains, are ex-girlfriend and superspy Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) and buddy Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell), a former super-agent, “all-around Cold Warrior” (as the USA Network PR description charmingly puts it), and current FBI informant. (more…)