I was getting ready for work while watching this, so my attention was a bit off. Given that, I honestly didn't notice the product placements mentioned in the thread.
Still, I'm more than happy to have the show back. Yeah, it's a little formulaic, but a number of sci-fi shows are like that, too. Star Trek, for example (at least, TOS, TNG and Voyager), mostly had shows of "Meet new species, seems friendly at first, something else going on behind the scenes, battle ensues, polarity is reversed and all is well".
Like FigPez, I like the show more for the characters and kooky/funny concepts that occur. I'm wondering if the alien signal recieved is from the...what was that mysterious, powerful, behind the scenes villain that was introduced early in the show? The Consortium or something like that?