What’s up with the sponcon slop in Nobody Wants This? Netflix, Nobody Wants This | Alina Demopoulos

AAfter a long day, it’s nice to sweat it out, pour yourself a glass of wine, turn on the TV and enjoy an ad for Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum Synchronized Multi-Recovery Complex.

Or at least that’s what I found myself doing Sunday night, when I went back to watch Season 2 of Nobody Wants This on Netflix. In the series, Adam Brody plays a so-called “sexy rabbi” who is a lover of Kristen Bell’s character, an atheist podcaster who is considering conversion. Together, the couple navigates cultural differences and rejection from family members. Or at least I assume that’s what happened – I was too distracted by all the product placements to focus on the plot.

Here’s a quick recap of the first five episodes of Season 2, with some technical spoilers. The lovers get coffee and cake from Dunkin’. Noah Brody gives Belle Joan a gold necklace from Jennifer Meyer. Sister Joan (Justine Loeb) calls the family “DoorDash people” and eats her favorite snack of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos poolside. The couple goes to a pasta-making class, which the chef reminds them was booked through an Airbnb experience. Something is happening in the bathroom. I don’t know what, other than that there was an extended money shot of the aforementioned Estée Lauder serum.

And oh yeah, there’s gossip and intrigue and life lessons learned along the way. Unfortunately, all I kept was the incredibly subliminal message that I should order takeout and buy some skincare. The medium is really the message.

I took my concerns to Reddit: Has the show really become a sponcon sponcon? I was not alone in this assessment. “The amount of product placements this season is so laughable that it’s basically a huge commercial,” one user posted. “It’s like they wrote the scene around the products,” another wrote. Another opined: “It’s almost like a parody of product placement in movies, but it’s not, and that’s a big problem.”

I realize it’s hard to make movies and TV shows today, even if you’re from Netflix (the company is doing well but nothing is certain in the volatile streaming market). I’m a lifelong Los Angeles romantic, and I’m bothered by the fact that Hollywood has entered a slow death spiral. Filming in the city is at a historic low, with production fleeing to Atlanta, New York, the UK or Australia to save costs. Many releases these days are big-budget franchises or spin-offs, not the kinds of character-driven romantic comedies that I and so many others love. Nobody Wants This, filmed in Los Angeles, was an exception to all that: smart, funny and overwhelmingly charming. So what if Netflix asked for a little financial support from our benevolent corporate overlords?

It would be naive to turn to television as an escape from the capitalist hell that is the endless scrolling on my phone of thinly veiled ads and collaborations with influential brands. Since the early days of the first soap operas (so called because they were sponsored by personal hygiene brands), television has been around to entertain and sell things. However, the continued promotion of “Nobody Wants This” seems particularly egregious. Sure, I’d buy that Joan, a distinguished and slightly vulgar podcaster, would be a brand-name snob carrying a fancy Clare V handbag and stocking her fridge with Spindrift water. But in its best moments, the series encourages us to think about our belief system: how it came to be, and how it can change over time. This introspection becomes difficult when your eye is drawn to the Seventh Generation disinfectant spray bottle (available at Target) in the frame.

Netflix has long promoted brands through its shows. But the company swears it’s not they an idea. Netflix, which did not respond to my request for comment, told the New York Times in 2019 that “most brands that appear in shows and movies are added by creators who believe they add to the authenticity of the story,” and that such placements were “rare and not a commercial focus” at the time.

This is a little hard to believe. One of Netflix’s early success stories, House of Cards, ran from 2013 to 2018. Its product placements (BlackBerry, Sony, Cartier) fit the world of the show — for the most part. At one point, main character Frank Underwood, who was then Majority Whip in the US House of Representatives, asked one of his colleagues about his PlayStation Vita. “I’ve got to get one of these for the car,” he said before the episode’s credits rolled.

Netflix’s Stranger Things, set in the 1980s, prominently featured products from that era, bringing modern-day bliss to brands like Coca-Cola, Ego, Cadillac, Schuinn, Nike, and Burger King. In 2019, CBS News reported that the total advertising value of more than 100 brands featured in the series was expected to reach more than $15 million in the first three days of the third season’s airing.

Last year, the Daily Mail found that Emily in Paris, a drama starring Lily Collins, communicated 37 brands over the course of 10 episodes. You might expect some of it in a show about an American who moves to Paris and has been consulted by Sex and the City fashion designers: Chanel, Dior, Hermès. But not all sponsors were as elegant as Starbucks, Apple, and- Monday duet! -McDonald’s.

Maybe I’ll finish Nobody Wants This tonight. Or maybe I’ll watch five straight hours of car ads on YouTube; I’m not sure there’s much difference at this point. Netflix executives, if you see this, they’re probably going to lower the product positioning. You said it yourself – no one wants this.