24 Sprint Product Placement

Last night’s seat-gripping, nail-biting episode of 24 (season 8 episode 21) had me glued to the TV until Chloe O’Brien, played by Mary Lynn Rajskub, decided she needed to drop some product placement for Sprint into the scene. It was almost as bad as the Jack Bauer Hyundai incident.

Literally, the whole day would have been blown, and Jack Bauer would be dead if it weren’t for the Sprint Overdrive 4G Mobile Hotspot technology that saved the day. In an episode where they quoted the US/UK military communications intercept network ECHELON, it is ironic that Sprint’s consumer level 3G mobile internet device would save the day.

Later in the episode Jack Bauer performs a rudimentary surgery to remove a Sprint SIM card from the Russian agent Pavel Tokarev’s innards. After a quick wipe to remove any guts and stomach acid, the card is inserted into a Spint enabled HTC smart phone and low and behold it works!

Despite my groaning, this is why I love 24. Call it MacGyver for the tech generation.