http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/arts/television/12plot.html?_r=2&ref=media
LOS ANGELES — Full-time moms are being forced to take part-time jobs, and corporate executives treat themselves to expensive wine after asking for a government bailout. Foreclosure signs are going up in the most familiar neighborhoods. Three neighbors, laid off and their houses foreclosed upon, take the chief executive of their mortgage company hostage, and out-of-work investment bankers have to stoop to low-level jobs as corporate interns.
The economic meltdown has come to prime time. While each of those situations seems real enough to have resulted from the global financial crisis, they are plotlines of recent or coming episodes of popular prime-time television series, including “Desperate Housewives” and “Ugly Betty” on ABC, “The Simpsons” on Fox, “Flashpoint” on CBS and “30 Rock” on NBC.
Popular entertainment often takes the form of escapism in tough economic times. But a growing number of broadcast network shows have recently incorporated more real-life issues into their stories — a reflection, producers say, of how widespread the current financial troubles are.