'Beckers' Give Audis A Not So Subtle Shout Out

If Meet the Beckers sometimes seems like a car commercial, that’s because it is—kind of. Audi is behind the series, which is an attempt at a viral marketing campaign for the German automaker. While the show may primarily be about the Becker family and their unusual relationships, the pilot focuses on stereotyping the drivers of luxury cars. Old curmudgeons drive Mercedes, douche bags drive BMWs, Lexus drivers are sad sacks, but normal (read: rich) folk can be seen behind the wheel of an Audi (in your face, Saab! You’re not even getting a mention!)

Jason Becker brings his lady home for the holidays to meet the family. He warns her, his family is weird. No, really weird. I mean, they don’t drive Audis, for crying out loud. While product placement in a web series

is certainly nothing new, it seems Beckers focuses more about branding Audi and its competitors than delivering a great episodic web show.

A nice normal guy heading home for Thanksgiving with his embarrassingly odd family clan is well worn premise, and the problems of the rich have been explored at great length on mainstream network television from Dynasty to Dirty Sexy Money. Even so, Beckers does deliver a few laughs. The stereotypes are fairly accurate. Bluetooth wearing, BMW driving Billy is comically jaggy, while the patriarch of the family, Mercedes Marcus, gets a lot of “mileage” out of his moments on screen (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

While many of the characters are played-out archetypes, there are a few unexpected choices. Lexus Lewis has Satanic twin daughters—creepy ringers for the twins in The Shining, and BMW Billy’s hot girlfriend is only pretending to be dumb. In fact, the entire cast has great timing, and like Lexus’ new L Studio series, the production value is high. Even if pilot feels overly expositional, the extra features on the website promise comically “rich” series on the horizon.