A collective yawn as CK's too-hot-for-TV spot makes it to cable

Remember that Calvin Klein jeans ad that was deemed too hot for American TV? Well, it's not too hot for cable. An edited version of the original, which was released with much fanfare earlier this year on the designer's Web site, has begun airing during envelope-pushing cable shows like Nip/Tuck. Guess the string of letter ratings that accompanies that series—TV L, S, V, M for its coarse language, sexual situations and violence (intended for mature audiences only!)—covers all the bases for anything that commercial director Steven Meisel could come up with. The grainy, intentionally rough-around-the-edges ad shows some gorgeous models in Calvins and little else, writhing around in simulated sex on a couch. It's become stock in trade for CK to intentionally create ads that won't pass muster with TV standards departments. (PETA and GoDaddy do it, too. It's all the rage.) But when you see it in context—this week's Nip/Tuck season finale showcased a couple of modern-day blood-drinking "vampires," a nitrous-addicted anesthesiologist and a sex scene that turned into a murder—the ad seems positively anticlimactic.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley