There is an unwritten rule in dramatic television–particularly shows whose genres create unstable realities for the characters–that no one is really dead until you see a body. Through supernatural or soap operatic machinations, characters previously believed to be dead can act as a Chekhov’s gun waiting to go off, upending a protagonist’s worldview and often destabilizing their essential sense of self.

Ten years ago, Alias pulled the trigger on that narrative gun by ending its first season with a shadowy figure in a doorway and a handcuffed and beaten Sydney Bristow looking to her captor and asking, “Mom?” Audience members had known that Sydney’s supposedly dead mother, Irina Derevko, was a Soviet spy and potentially very much alive, but the final moments of the season revealed her as a direct and ongoing threat to Sydney. She was “The Man,” the season’s big bad. The question of “Mom?” mixed hope and terror as the revivification of the maternal is wrapped in violence, a threat left unclear over the four-month summer hiatus.

Now, almost ten years later, two more first seasons of television ended with similar revelations: NBC’s Grimm and ABC’s Revenge. All three shows are set in narrative worlds where twists, threats, and threatening twists are commonplace, relating to ongoing serial mysteries and generic conventions. There is nothing necessarily new about a character’s surprising return, but the particular attention to the absent mother’s return in a threatening form that appeared in two finales last week appears to tap into a current and contentious discourse of motherhood: attachment parenting.

This recent TIME Magazine cover image and the accompanying story discuss attachment parenting as both physical and emotional closeness between mother and child during the child’s formative years. The image on the cover represents an extreme example of that method in which a child is breastfeeding well past the normative time-frame. Underlying this form of parenting is a reaction against absentee-ism and an implicit critique of distance between mother and child. It is this criticism that links with the threatening fictional mothers on Alias, Grimm, and Revenge. Death appears to be the only legitimate reason for an absent mother, and when that death is revealed as a lie, the mother becomes a threat to the child.

Grimm’s first season finale, “The Woman in Black,” followed protagonist detective and creature-hunting Grimm, Nick Burkhardt, as he is threatened by a man who was involved in his parents’ murder. The eponymous woman operates one step ahead of Nick, the police, and the assassin, outwitting, outrunning, and outfighting all before revealing her identity as Nick’s supposedly dead mother. Although the reveal tempers her threatening characteristics–at least toward Nick–the majority of the episode portrays her as a powerful, shadowy figure not to be trusted. She poses a potential physical threat toward Nick by being a clearly better fighter than him (in a few seconds she fells the man he had battled for the previous five minutes), but she also represents a threat to his understanding of self and purpose. If his parents–particularly his mother through whose blood the gift/duty of being a Grimm was passed to him–were not sacrifices to the Grimm duty and name but were/are instead hiding from it or waging their own separate war, how can Nick reconcile his recent acceptance of the mantle? It is yet unclear whether Nick’s mother will live up to her threatening title as the Woman in Black and join the other monstrous women of the show or if the reference to Susan Hill’s recently adapted novel is merely happenstance. The implication, however, seems to be that there is something seriously wrong with her that she’d distance herself from her son when he was a child.

Different from the two mothers discussed above, the reveal that Amanda Clark’s mother may still be alive on Revenge does not pose a physical or immediate threat to her daughter, but it does show a similar potential for existential crisis. What happens to Amanda’s singularly focused drive for revenge when she may have family yet to love and lose? Alternatively, what role might Mrs. Clark play in the vast conspiracy that instigated Amanda’s vengeance? Might she be “the Man” behind the Initiative? How bad could she have been to warrant a faked death and total isolation from her young daughter? We are only told that there is more to Mrs. Clark’s alleged death than we know, and that David Clark didn’t even bring a picture of his allegedly dead wife when he moved to the Hamptons. Until next season, she is an empty vessel for viewer supposition, the equivalent of a shadow in a doorway, a maternal threat cultivated through absence, a bomb waiting to go off.

Daisy (looking around interior of car): Why do you drive a minivan? Do you have kids that we don’t know about?
Angela: I’m an artist, Daisy, and the Sienna has plenty of room, plus I stink at parallel parking and that back-up camera thing is like the invention of the century.
Daisy nods.

…and they return to plot-related discussion.

This post could be about the seeming ubiquity of scripted product placement lately–even though that’s nothing new.  Early radio, after all, had to script their sponsor plugs (audiences couldn’t see them using Vaseline, they had to talk about it).  And shows like Alias and 24 have long irritated fans with their lingering, loving shots of Fords driven by superspies and superagents.  Televisionary has this 2006 post about when product placement goes too far, citing the presence of scripted product integration within dramas and comedies as particularly bothersome (as opposed to such integration within unscripted programming).  Jace even critiques Alias outright–in particular, an episode when the characters discuss that the “quietness” of the electric Ford Hybrid is useful for their mission.

But this post isn’t about scripted product placement, despite its prevalance and increasing audacity.  No, this post is actually about a particular moment–the one roughly scripted above.  It’s certainly the kind of thing that might irritate viewers by taking them out of the narrative through an awkward, somewhat stilted conversation related to the vehicle being driven.  But, as an audience member myself, after my initial annoyance and eye-rolling, I realized that, in fact, this particular instance of product placement was actually pretty brilliant, and a definite coup on the part of Toyota.

You see, this isn’t just placement touting the general benefits/awesomeness of the product.  No, this particular moment not only “works” (more or less) within the context of the series (Angela is, in fact, an artist and not a soccer mom)–it works within the context of Toyota’s current ad campaign for the Sienna.  The campaign focuses on redeeming the minivan and making it cool.  The key spot for the campaign, known as the “Swagger Wagon” ad, is below.  (See the entire campaign here.)

This ad, and the rest of the campaign, focus on touting the Sienna as a family vehicle, yes–but more than that, it’s depicted as much cooler and more deisrable than the stereotypical minivan, long believed to be the preferred car of “lame” soccer moms and dads.  The recurring punchline of “Daddy like” and “Mommy like” and, of course, the goofy “Swagger Wagon” concept underscore the reimagining of the minivan.

And this is why the Bones moment is so fantastic.  The Sienna appears, yes.  It is even mentioned within the script.  But even better, the treatment of the product placement underscores the larger campaign–the van is depicted as belonging to Angela, the most hip, least nerdy, childless character on the series, and she’s able to explain why she loves the van despite its “mom” reputation.

Regardless of whether Toyota arranged for this particular treatment of the Sienna within the script, or if they simply lucked out because the Bones writers decided to give the van to the character least likely (or maybe not, if we believe the campaign) to own a van, this particular moment of product placement takes scripted integration from irritating to genius.  (For the sponsor, if not for fans.)