[Diederich]

I've only watched a few episodes of House of Cards, and none of them were this episode.

I can see why you'd consider it heavy handed. Had I watched that in the episode proper, it would have set off the 'placement ad!' bell in my head.

However, as stated elsewhere, that's orders of magnitude less invasive than a real ad., and it would not break the flow of the show, for me, at all.

It's really the same kind of exchange I have actually been involved with many times in real life.