If you haven't seen True Blood you should go rent it right now. It is NOT some spoof, it is the most interesting brilliant show put on TV since the Wire and the Sopranos. Seriously, it is awesome beyond belief.
Anyway the point is that the Wii is considered mainstream enough that characters who would never have been seen playing a console (since it wouldn't make a lot of sense) pre Wii now CAN be shown playing the Wii and have it work inside the context of the story. The idea of a business executive sitting in his office playing Halo 3 is just silly, but showing the same executive playing something like Tiger Woods 2008 on his Wii makes sense without suspending disbelief. Showing a character playing video games used to be of indicating he was a loser (see any number of stoner comedies or other such movies about a 30 year old loser who can't grow up) but now its perfectly mainstream for even successful characters to play video games in TV shows largely thanks to the Wii (and to a lesser extent handhelds).
For why the shift makes sense see my story above (my dad, strangely enough, is a senior VP at his company, thus a aging RL business executive who likes the Wii). I would bet a decent amount of the greater population of aging executives also have had positive experiences with the Wii which is why they think of featuring it in the first place.
It is almost always sport games though that serious characters are seen plaiyng (golf, Tennis ect). I still haven't seen anyone playing Smash Bros on TV/in Movies. I think the chance of my dad playing/enjoying smash bros is pretty close to nil.
