Absolute WTF, 'what were they thinking' plots and subplots in old movies and TV shows

“Let’s go to my place!”

Betty Garrett was the horniest character in the entire movie.

There’s a bit in the third Bill and Ted movie, where one future version of Ted has an English accent for no apparent reason, other than showing that Keanu finally learned to do a kind of OK British accent.

But Ann Miller is close!

P.S. Betty Garrett was trying to corrupt poor innocent Frank Sinatra

Ha, yes. I liked the secondary characters better than the primary couple (Gene Kelly and Vera Ellen). Lots of fun.

THANK YOU! Yes.

I’m not disputing Reeves’ acting ability; I’m saying that casting him as one of the Most Famous South Asian People In History was a questionable choice.

I mean, at least casting Krishna Pandit Bhanji as Gandhi made some sense.

Or River’s Edge, his first feature film, in which he was excellent.

That was a weird movie though I haven’t seen it in decades.

A while back I was watching The Dick Van Dyke show. Rob and Laura had a new neighbor and decided to set him up on some blind dates. Afterwards, they asked which one he would go out with again, to which he told them that he wouldn’t go out with either of them again. As it turns out, he has a habit of hitting women that he likes, so he doesn’t want to go out with either of his dates again for fear of what he might do. I mean, it shows great restraint on his part, but a bizarre topic for an episode of Dick Van Dyke.
~22 mins in for the reveal, should be cued up:

Interestingly, they could have left that out and just made the part about him being divorced (at least) 3 times as the controversial reveal that would have scared everyone off.

The laughter from the studio audience seems pretty muted at the point of his revelation. I’m guessing they weren’t big fans of The Honeymooners, either.

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It occurs to me that despite Hollywood formerly being perfectly okay with reducing minorities to caricatures, one thing they never sunk to was using the “n” word even pre-Hayes Code. Given the blatant racism of many whites back in the day I wonder why the sensitivity on that point.

We watched this one a couple of weeks ago, too. I don’t remember watching it back when it was new, so I was certainly rather shockingly surprised that it was played light-heartedly for humor.

I would’ve assumed Archie Bunker would have used it (regularly) but some very quick googling makes it sound like, other than a few instances, he didn’t.

I remember one episode where he said he hadn’t used the “n” word in 10 years.

Oh I should have mentioned that one (I’ve mentioned it before on the SDMB, but didn’t think of it this time)!

Anyone innocent enough to think women don’t go out on the prowl has never seen How to Marry a Millionaire. Snaring a man is the focal point of their sorry lives.

There was never any domestic abuse on The Honeymooners, and everybody knew there never would be. Ralph might bluster a lot, but it was clear he was nothing but a big gasbag. Never in a million years would he have hurt Alice, who could more than hold her own.

Sure, he never beats her or takes a belt to her. He just threatens, yells, and intimidates her. He belittles her smallest ambitions and is constantly putting her down to try to inflate his sense of self-importance.

Tell me that this isn’t abuse:

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