Still condemned to a life of having “McLovin” staining his name like the damned bloody spot in Shakespeare’s MacLovin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse will make a genuine effort to start clean by starring in a new CBS sitcom. And fittingly, both his character and the show are mired in their own inescapable branding: Mintz-Plasse and Red State actor Nicholas Braun have united for a pilot written by Alan Kirschenbaum and Ajay Sahgal, starring as two buddies who ditch their Indiana hometown to move to L.A. and begin exciting new lives working for Groupon. Yes, the actual Groupon—the popular group-discount website that already demonstrated it has a sense of humor during last year’s Super Bowl, when it torched all of its incipient goodwill just for the funny joke of becoming known as the company that thinks philanthropy is hilarious.
As yet there are no further details on what other self-deprecating hijinks may be in store for Groupon, all in exchange for the chance to have the word “Groupon” uttered week in and week out on a network TV show. But in case the tie to Groupon and the blatant-yet-ironically-detached product placement are not New Media 2.0 enough for you, the show will also be titled Friend Me, because that is what the kids on Facebook say. And as McLovin up there can tell you, that sort of marketing synergy is the key to successful comedy.