Television creators have long put up with the demands of product integration, from commercial tie-ins to naming rights and everything between. The best, most knowing of these is probably 30 Rock’s season-one Snapple jabs, but today we have a new potential champion: this brutishly charming exchange between two characters on General Hospital. Ostensibly, this moment between Ned and Olivia on the long-running ABC soap is about reconciliation — he misses her, and he wouldn’t want to continue life without her. But in this case, that’s actually subtext; the text is “Go see fellow Disney property Doctor Strange in theaters November 4!” As Wayne’s World’s Garth Algar in head-to-toe Reebok gear might say, “It’s like people only do these things because they get paid. And that’s just really sad.” Or, in this case, it’s like they only do them because they’re contractually obligated by the Mouse upstairs, and that’s just how it is. Hilariously, awkwardly how it is.
