# "Classic" movies or TV shows with situations or premises basically impossible today **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 16, 2020, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922 "2020-04-16T13:18:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2020, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/121 "2020-04-19T16:10:50Z")
If The Godfather took place today Captain McCluskey would have a cell phone, and so would not need to let his precinct know where he’d be. This means no way for the Corleone to plant a gun in the restaurant since they only found out about the location because of their contact in the police department. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2020, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/122 "2020-04-19T18:53:01Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > Haha, yes, when I first moved from a Blackberry to an iPhone in 2007, having a “flashlight” app was an unexpected advantage over the previous device. The first time I thought about using it in a dark room, nerd that I am, I couldn’t help but exclaim: “What have I got in my pocket? … Why, it’s _a light when all other lights go out!_” I always carry a small flashlight. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2020, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/123 "2020-04-19T18:56:10Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > And of course the whole darned plot on that one is now anachronistic–“Someone left a baby on my doorstep and claims my late husband is the father? Hm…I _could_ hire the eccentric and notoriously expensive detective Nero Wolfe to launch a lengthy and laborious investigation to find the baby’s mother in order to indirectly determine the likelihood that my late husband was the father. Or, I could just find an old hair brush that belonged to Richard (with at least one complete hair follicle still lodged in it) and have that tested against a sample of the baby’s DNA.” Umm, no. Mrs Vadon accepted the baby could have been fathered by her late husband, she really wanted to know who was the Mother. That’s why the book is called The Mother Hunt. And of course there’s a murder, too. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2020, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/124 "2020-04-19T20:16:40Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > It’s a HIPAA requirement. > > 😉 The thought did cross my mind! (worked 10 years in healthcare IT) ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/125 "2020-04-20T00:03:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > GPS works _everywhere_ on the surface of the planet, be it big cities, small towns, or uninhabited atoll islands in the middle of the Pacific. But not at the poles. The orbits don’t give good coverage. I don’t know what the orbits are like now, but when I was a lad, that was one of the reasons for using dual Russian/American navigation systems. The Russian system gave better coverage at high latitudes. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/126 "2020-04-20T03:58:47Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > My SIL is pretty careful about words like “racist”–I don’t believe she meant that Chinese people found the book an embarrassing reminder of their past, but rather that many of them do indeed perceive the book to be, well, racist–expressing incorrect and unhelpful stereotypes. > > Buck saw herself as at least as much Chinese as American, perhaps more so; the impression I got in this admittedly brief conversation is that Buck was perhaps not as immersed in Chinese ways and Chinese people as she thought she was. I think my SIL would take issue with the claim that the book’s depiction of rural Chinese life is “pretty much accurate.” But as I say it was a short conversation, and goodness knows I’m no expert. “Accurate” for rural China of the late 1800s to early 1900s? I think so. It ended with the protagonist Wang Lung’s dying around 1930, so the story basically traces Wang Lung’s life from his getting married about 50 years earlier, yeah? I understand that modern China would not like depiction of backwards “superstitions” or rural practices as “typical”, including the buying and selling of children, concubinage, foot binding, girl infanticide in times of famine, … But that DID happen. My own parents and their generation, me being a 50 year old Chinese American here, joked about such things being done “in the near past”, meaning in their parents’ memory. In fact, my own grandmother had had her feet bound initially as a girl… A few years older and she’d have had those permanently deformed feet. And she was never formally educated, she taught herself to read by doing her brothers’ homework with them. The CCP tries to play down that aspect of Chinese history, as even in the early Republican era (before the Communist takeover) such cultural aspects were already viewed as a major reason the Chinese people had been so shamefully weakened from their natural place at the center of the world since around 1750. The idea that this would be a source of how Westerners formed their image of current Chinese people would be very upsetting. But taken as a work on its own, The Good Earth is not “racist” in patronizing way. But it is easy to say it’s sensationalist in that it hits nearly every “traditional” practice modern Chinese people are embarrassed about, as if with a checklist, excepting eating dogs and cats (which for the record, my parents’ crowd also used to joke about was a “Cantonese” thing to the Cantonese friends among them). But all those jokes were among Chinese and verbal. A written work by a Westerner, even one who grew up in China (as the child of missionaries… Also associated with Western colonization and patronization), is another thing. ---
**Author:** ![road\_lobo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d78d45/32.png) [@road\_lobo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/road_lobo)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/127 "2020-04-20T10:53:28Z")
> [@flip-68](#): > > getting personal information about other people over the phone happens a lot in old movies. > > my wife and I watched Midnight Run last night and Deniro’s character has his credit card cancelled by a rival who calls up the help line to find out where it was last used - no security questions asked. I haven’t seen this film, but things like this are still pretty common. This is social engineering. A modern analogue is the SIM swap scam. ---
**Author:** ![Loggins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Loggins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loggins)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/128 "2020-04-20T13:02:37Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > “Seinfeld” would have been a lot different if everyone had cell phones. Take a picture of where you parked the car in the parking garage, reserve a table online at the Chinese restaurant, call or text each other when getting together to see a movie and nobody shows up… You get the idea. I have never taken a picture of where i parked. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/129 "2020-04-20T14:10:15Z")
> [@Loggins](#): > > I have never taken a picture of where i parked. I have, but only in lots/garages where they have signs like B4 for different sections. Pre-cellphone, I would write the section down if I could, 'cause chances were I wouldn’t remember it. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/130 "2020-04-20T14:14:45Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Umm, no. Mrs Vadon accepted the baby could have been fathered by her late husband, she really wanted to know who was the Mother. That’s why the book is called The Mother Hunt. And of course there’s a murder, too. She certainly accepts that it’s _possible_ that her late husband fathered a child with another woman, yes. Nonetheless: > [@](#): > > “But the problem is, was Richard Valdon this baby’s father?” She gestured. “There!” > > Wolfe snorted. “Pfui. Never to be solved and you know it. Homer said it: no man can know who was his father. Shakespeare said it: it is a wise father that knows his own child. I can’t help you, madam. No one can.” > > “…When you know who the mother is you can find out about her and Dick, how sure it is, or anyway how likely it is, that they were together then. That won’t prove this baby is his son, but it can come close–close enough.” And a few pages later: > [@](#): > > “My commitment would be to learn the identity of the mother and establish it to your satisfaction, and to demonstrate the degree of probability that your husband was the father, with no warranty of success. Is that correct?” So the identity of the baby’s _father_–was it Richard Valdon or not?–is very much the crux of the matter; it’s just that everyone agrees that the _only_ way they can hope to even make a probabilistic determination of that is to track down the mother, and demonstrate that she was or wasn’t an acquaintance of Valdon, and that she wasn’t off in Timbuktu or Kathmandu around the time the baby would have been conceived. And of course there’s murder. Archie doesn’t bother to write up the cases for us that don’t involve a murder or three. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/131 "2020-04-20T15:04:31Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > My first thought was Breaking Bad, but that’s not a time difference thing. It was more: > “I’m afraid you have cancer, Mr. White” > > - “Oh my god! I’ll have to cook wicked-strong blue meth in an RV with one of my old students to be able to afford the treatment!” > “…erm…no? The NHS will be sorting that out for you, obviously. And it’s called a ‘motorhome’, FYI.” Of course, White was a public school teacher, who generally have significantly above-average benefits, so this motivation was implausible from the get-go. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/132 "2020-04-20T15:05:34Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > I saw some cheesy movie that had the killer, a rising Hollywood star, murdering her blackmailer. > > Leading me to wonder if that movie was made today, what on earth somebody could blackmail her for in the '20s? > > Unwed mother? Would not be a secret and she would have custody. > > She’s really black and has been passing? Sure, pal. > > Child is a different race? Hmpf. > > Lived with lover without marriage? Nope. > > Lesbian? Nope. > > Made a porno early in her career? No, that’d be on the internet, she’d be even more famous, she’d probably have a reality show. > > Worked previously as a hooker? See above. > > Secretly born a man? Nope, she’d be a media darling, probably have a reality show. > > Any of those things would have worked so well at various points in the past but today? No. And she’s too young and wrong sex to be a Korean war deserter, Vietnam war deserter, that kind of thing. > > She can only be secretly a murderer. And who would blackmail her knowing that she was already a murderer and might just do it again? > > End of plot. > > I don’t actually remember what the Hollywood rising star was getting blackmailed for. She might have voted Republican the last time around… In Hollywood, keeping that under wraps would be well worth murdering your blackmailer. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/133 "2020-04-20T17:11:31Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > Of course, White was a public school teacher, who generally have significantly above-average benefits, so this motivation was implausible from the get-go. …and his former business partners offered to cover all his medical costs anyway, so it’s not about health care. Anyone who watched BB and thought that Walt needed money for his medical bills, or that the show would have been over if UHC was in play, _missed the whole point_. It was Walt’s ego and desire to build his own empire (and to leave money for his family) that drove the show. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/134 "2020-04-20T18:07:39Z")
It is, at least, amusing that at the time _The Mother Hunt_ was written, it was still taken for granted that paternity could _never_ be known. Even if genetic paternity testing was impractical, they should at least have had some inkling of the possibility. Surely, they at least knew (for example) that certain blood types couldn’t be the offspring of certain other blood types. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/135 "2020-04-20T18:41:43Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It is, at least, amusing that at the time _The Mother Hunt_ was written, it was still taken for granted that paternity could _never_ be known. Even if genetic paternity testing was impractical, they should at least have had some inkling of the possibility. Surely, they at least knew (for example) that certain blood types couldn’t be the offspring of certain other blood types. That just eliminates, it doesnt confirm. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/136 "2020-04-20T18:42:48Z")
Where is Superman going to change without phone booths? ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/137 "2020-04-20T18:43:04Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > About five years ago, when my two oldest kids were young teenagers, I put on a movie I remembered from my own youth at around the same age: National Lampoon’s “Vacation”. > [snip] > “WHAT? The place was CLOSED all along? Wouldn’t the website have said so before they left?” > [snip]. Yeah, you’d think that. Me, having driven over two hours into the hell-and-gone of Nevada to find the Little Ale’e’Inn, whose website SAID it was going to be open that day… > [@MEBuckner](#): > > She certainly accepts that it’s _possible_ that her late husband fathered a child with another woman, yes. Nonetheless: > > And a few pages later: > > So the identity of the baby’s _father_–was it Richard Valdon or not?–is very much the crux of the matter; it’s just that everyone agrees that the _only_ way they can hope to even make a probabilistic determination of that is to track down the mother, and demonstrate that she was or wasn’t an acquaintance of Valdon, and that she wasn’t off in Timbuktu or Kathmandu around the time the baby would have been conceived. > > And of course there’s murder. Archie doesn’t bother to write up the cases for us that don’t involve a murder or three. I guess with all this DNA testing, that _Lace_ miniseries with Phoebe Cates (“Which one of you bitches is my mother??”) goes right out the window. * * * I’m certain that I have pointed this out before on a similar thread, but… _Red Dragon_ AKA _Manhunter_. Francis Dolarhyde finds the families he wishes to kill because he works in a film-processing laboratory \*\*specializing in developing home movie film. \*\* Yeah. Hell, even when the book was originally published, home video recorders were starting to become ubiquitous. Mind you, the film _Red Dragon_ (made after _Silence of the Lambs_ become an instant classic) tried to update this by having him work at a “video compilation company.” Apparently the idea was that families would send their home videotapes in and this company would edit them together complete with graphics and nifty transitions. What??? Has anybody even heard of this sort of thing? I mean, even before video-editing software came free on your computer along with web browser and email client. Did people use to send their videotapes of Jr. bar mitzvah in to be jazzed up in such a fashion? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/138 "2020-04-20T19:16:09Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Where is Superman going to change without phone booths? That’s easy; Superman relocates from Metropolis to Vienna, Austria, where all the public phone booths are still in place. (And I still regularly see people using them, too!) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/139 "2020-04-20T20:28:22Z")
Truth, Justice, and the Austrian way? The phone booth thing was [already problematic in 1978.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfjTfaeXbp4) ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/140 "2020-04-20T20:49:11Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Truth, Justice, and the Austrian way? > The phone booth thing was [already problematic in 1978.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfjTfaeXbp4) [Deadpool manages to make it work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3khanND3t8) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922.md?page=8)