# "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:** 8
**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, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/141 "2020-04-20T20:50:53Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > 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. This reminds me of a parking garage I used in downtown Baltimore maybe 15 years ago, a few blocks north from the Inner Harbor. The indoor, multi-level parking garage labeled each floor with a number (I parked on “4”), and every level had a wall paint of a different color (IIRC, 4 was blue). Then we got into the elevator and each button not only was color coded to match the floor’s color, but also had… An icon of an animal next to it. Like, I was on Floor Kangaroo, in case I couldn’t remember being on “4” or “blue”. I have never seen that before or since, except maybe at a zoo, but the Inner Harbor has no zoo. And the Baltimore Zoo is in a park in Druid Hill a few miles to the NW. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/142 "2020-04-20T20:52:30Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Truth, Justice, and the Austrian way? > The phone booth thing was [already problematic in 1978.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfjTfaeXbp4) Fritz Lang told us about Metropolis well before Krypton exploded. ---
**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, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/143 "2020-04-20T20:53:03Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > _Red Dragon_ AKA _Manhunter_. > > 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? I don’t remember the movie well enough to know if it would work - but people did use that sort of service for transferring home movies/photos to videotapes and videotapes to DVDs ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/144 "2020-04-20T20:54:24Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Fritz Lang told us about Metropolis well before Krypton exploded. That’s not really the same thing. Unless you go here – [https://www.amazon.com/Supermans-Metropolis-Elseworlds-McKeever-Lofficier/dp/B0040EA34A](https://www.amazon.com/Supermans-Metropolis-Elseworlds-McKeever-Lofficier/dp/B0040EA34A) ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/145 "2020-04-20T21:20:42Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > Buying airplane tickets for someone else, or just handing someone your own ticket to use instead as if it was a bus ticket, is something that used to be a thing but hasn’t been since 2001. This is definitely a casual thing in a number of movies as recently as the late 1990s. In I think season 2 of _The Sopranos_, Tony was running some sort of scam involving paper plane tickets, which becomes an important plot point when he gives one of the tickets to his mother knowing it isn’t valid. That’s one of those little details that dates that show. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/146 "2020-04-20T21:37:30Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > My my, somebody’s cage has been rattled. > > I watched it, end to end. I got it. However it played out as his concerns and his activities developed, whatever his motives in the long run, the initial “got cancer, lack of insurance is a problem” _was_ there. In a country with free-at-point-of-delivery healthcare, that initial panic is not there to start the ball rolling, so that comes across as a wouldn’t-happen-here premise. > > Same as “But the cops would have just drawn their guns, there’s only one armed robber and there are four of them, he’d never get away…oh…yeah…UK cops.” > > You don’t have to be smug to notice the difference between different nations and the consequent likelihood of characters from those nations behaving a particular way. > > I know, because I’m not. And what does this have to do with this thread? ---
**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, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/147 "2020-04-20T23:21:56Z")
Yeah, if you have old home movies (on tape or film), and want to convert them to something you can put on your computer, you CAN just point a camera at the screen and record them… but there are companies that will do it for you, and do a much better job of it. Or at least, there were. They’ve probably mostly used up their market by now. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/148 "2020-04-20T23:44:32Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Where is Superman going to change without phone booths? And how was Maxwell Smart supposed to get into Control? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/149 "2020-04-20T23:57:27Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > And what does this have to do with this thread? It’s tangentially related. It’s a case of ‘it couldn’t happen HERE’ rather than ‘it couldn’t happen NOW’. Not quite what the OP had in mind, but that’s a frequent thing on the Dope. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2020, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/150 "2020-04-21T00:07:39Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > It’s tangentially related. It’s a case of ‘it couldn’t happen HERE’ rather than ‘it couldn’t happen NOW’. Not quite what the OP had in mind, but that’s a frequent thing on the Dope. Thanks for that. Yeah, I mentioned something as a sort of silly aside, and even qualified that it wasn’t directly related, before submitting an example of something I’ve watched very recently that had got me asking pretty much the same questions as the OP. I didn’t think Breaking Bad’s inclusion - or my defence of myself when accused of being a smug European who seemed never to have watched something I’ve watched every second of - was that far adrift from acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2020, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/151 "2020-04-21T16:02:35Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > An old guilty pleasure, “When a Stranger Calls.” Carol Kane is babysitting and gets a call and the creep keeps calling back, getting more and more sinister. It’s an urban legend, right? Where the call turns out to be coming from inside the house and OMG there’s a murderer upstairs!!! FTR, _When a Stranger Calls_ was released in 1979. _Black Christmas_ did the “the call is coming from inside the house” thing in 1974. Still, the point remains. [/hijack] > [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > I think it’s accepted as fact that everything from your 1979 Radio Shack flyer is now on your cell phone. I love this sentence! Can’t wait to use it myself. ---
**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 21, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/152 "2020-04-21T16:46:14Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > Thanks for that. Yeah, I mentioned something as a sort of silly aside, and even qualified that it wasn’t directly related, before submitting an example of something I’ve watched very recently that had got me asking pretty much the same questions as the OP. I didn’t think Breaking Bad’s inclusion - or my defence of myself when accused of being a smug European who seemed never to have watched something I’ve watched every second of - was that far adrift from acceptable. The movie _Dirty Dancing_ couldn’t happen now. There are women walking about in public with their heads and limbs uncovered. And without being accompanied by a male relative. And there is dancing! (Says somebody in Saudi Arabia.) ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2020, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/153 "2020-04-21T16:50:03Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > 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. Really? I’ve seen plenty of photos of handheld GPSs at the South Pole with 90 S latitude and dashes for longitude. But walk away a few paces and the longitude gets wild unless you try to keep a due north track. ---
**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 21, 2020, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/154 "2020-04-21T17:37:33Z")
All of the finished products from Radio Shack, maybe, but Radio Shack used to be a place where you could buy individual components, to be assembled into whatever you wanted. Plus remote-controlled vehicles. You might be able to use your phone as a remote for such a vehicle, via Bluetooth or WiFi, but you’d still need the vehicle itself. And speaking of remotes, come to think of it, there are still a lot of home devices with IR remotes that can’t be controlled from a phone. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2020, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/155 "2020-04-21T18:31:00Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > What has always puzzled me about that was the the Griswolds drove through an empty parking lot at what was either late morning or early afternoon, and there were absolutely no other cars there. > > How was it that everybody else in America–except for the Griswolds, and Cousin Eddie and his family–knew that WallyWorld was closed? There wasn’t a website to say so in those days, so it must have been publicized in the media: newspapers, TV, and radio; and it must have been done so much in advance, so everybody could make vacation plans accordingly. > > How did the Griswolds miss all that? You’re asking how _Clark Griswold_ could be that clueless? > [@RivkahChaya](#): > > This thread makes me wonder about something: when I was a kid, I loved old movies. It started with Universal horror movies when I was about 8, then progressed to all horror/suspense movies, until, by the time I was 11 or 12, as soon as the weekly TV schedule arrived with the newspaper, I’d go through it looking for any movie made before 1950. Even if I had to get up at 3am to watch it, I was there. I had a 13-inch B&W TV in my room, and I’d sit about two feet from in with the volume turned low, and a towel stuffed under the door to block any light, on the odd chance on of my parents came by, and have the best time. I’d be nodding off in school the next day, but eventually I learned about coffee. > > When I was 14, I discovered silent movies, and fell in love with those too. > > Now, my son is 13, and he is a huge fan of old movies. It is pretty recent that he is into genuine classics, as in, Golden Age Hollywood films, but now he is having a good time during the lockdown watching lots of films from the 30s and 40s. However, since he was a pretty little kids, he has been open to watching what for him, are old films. The original _Star Wars_, aka, “A New Hope,” has been a favorite of his since he was 4 or 5, and he has also loved the 1967 _Planet of the Apes_ since he was pretty young. FWIW, he has also liked _The Wizard of Oz_, since he was 3 or 4, and the original _King Kong_ for a long time-- albeit, when he was little, he loved fake apes, and also likes the 1976 _King Kong_, and yes, I let him watch it when he was little, but I made an edited version of it on the computer. > > My point is, the boychik and I both seem to have an instinct for suspending our disbelief through historical differences. > > He recently saw _Wait Until Dark_ (and LOVED it), and I never said a word to him about “Oh, these were the days before cell phones, and back when phones were hard-wired into homes, and it was normal to have only one phone,” etc., etc. He just got it. > > I wonder if there is a “family culture” factor, or some genetic ability to assimilate details that allow people to reconstruct an historical period from subtle clues, making suspension of disbelief automatic. You know-- 60s clothes, 60s cars, no TV, turntable stereo-- he’s in the world of the movie, and his brain pulls lots of details from random conversations he’s had, and things he’s read in books that make him ready for other things that happen in the movie, like phone booths, and a refrigerator that needs defrosting. > > FWIW, while they’re not among his most favorite shows, he can watch, understand, and relate to old TV shows. He actually did like _Leave It to Beaver_ when he was about 6, and he’s watched _The Dick Van Dyke Show_, and _I Love Lucy_. **I remember he once said _I Love Lucy_ was “sexist”; (he probably heard his father say it) but he did “get” it, and the fact was, it was a little sexist even for its time. Compare it to something like _The Donna Reed Show_. Lucy is stupid, and Ricky is mean. Fer cripes’ sake, Donna Reed and her husband have their roles, which are sexist by today’s standards, and once in a while, Donna is manipulative because it isn’t “correct” for her to come out and ask for what she wants, but she and her husband at least respect one another. You sometimes get the feeling Lucy and Ricky don’t even really LIKE each other. But that’s beside the point.** > > The boychik has also read some books from other eras, and liked them, although I think for him, they were more like “historical fiction,” but he still enjoyed them. He loved Encyclopedia Brown, and he read some Judy Blume, some Beverly Cleary, and some 3 Investigators. > > I’m just saying, my mother was always a big fan of old movies, and yes, she was closer to them than I was, but she was born in 1940, and still loved 30s film, and silents, not to mention, she loved literature from the 18th & 19th centuries-- \*Pride & Prejudice \*was one of her favorite books. > > So does the ability to look at stuff from another time through its own lens get passed down through families? (Bolding mine) Lindsey Ellis pointed out that the healthiest, most egalitarian marriage on 60’s television was that of Morticia and Gomez Addams. Most passionate, as well. ---
**Author:** ![PatMick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/50afbb/32.png) [@PatMick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatMick)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2020, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/156 "2020-04-21T18:39:41Z")
> [@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”. > > To my great surprise, they found it only mildly amusing. As each of the terrible situations they encounter on the trip occurred, they objected at how contrived or unrealistic it was, only for me to have to explain each time: “That didn’t exist in 1982… Probably not until after 2000.” > > “How could they get so lost? Where’s their GPS?” > “Why are they walking in the desert when their car broke down instead of calling a tow truck on their cell phone?” > “Why would they have to wait 10 business days for a check to clear? They can’t pay with a credit card?!” > “OK, if he could only pay in cash, where’s the ATM?” > “WHAT? The place was CLOSED all along? Wouldn’t the website have said so before they left?” > > What other movies, or TV shows, were set in a context that would be similarly unrecognizable to someone who’s 25 years or younger? > > Note: this should not count “they got the future wrong!” stuff for past movies that were set in today’s timeframe or involved time traveling to now. LOL… This bums me out greatly…because your kids at least watched it with you! I have a 19 and 14 year old and they just aren’t that interested in watching traditional movies, especially “oldies” from the 80s. They watch “YouTube” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2020, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/157 "2020-04-22T00:21:34Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The movie _Dirty Dancing_ couldn’t happen now. There are women walking about in public with their heads and limbs uncovered. And without being accompanied by a male relative. And there is dancing! (Says somebody in Saudi Arabia.) That’s kind of me, before I moved into a shared house. I’d watch movies and think “That’s not real life. People don’t behave that way.” Then I moved into a large share house (10 of us), and … dang. People do behave that way! ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2020, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/158 "2020-04-22T00:43:38Z")
12 Angry Men Jury members wouldn’t be all white males. Someone other than Henry Fonda’s character would have also called out those two jurors who were loud-mouthed bigots. The testimonies of the old lonely man wanting a bit of attention and the woman dressing up to impress without her eye-glasses proved to be too easily flawed by the jurors yet totally missed by the defense. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2020, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/159 "2020-04-22T01:33:21Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > I watched it, end to end. I got it. However it played out as his concerns and his activities developed, whatever his motives in the long run, the initial “got cancer, lack of insurance is a problem” _was_ there. In a country with free-at-point-of-delivery healthcare, that initial panic is not there to start the ball rolling, so that comes across as a wouldn’t-happen-here premise. > [@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. “He can’t afford the treatment, but with UHC he would have had no problem” was literally not the case in the series. Walter White’s initial cancer diagnosis was that his cancer was untreatable, and that he was going to die from it within two years or so. His stated motivation for the original decision to cook meth with Jesse was that he wanted to leave money for his family, there weren’t going to be any significant bills to pay as there wasn’t any treatment. Later in the series when he goes to the second doctor who offers the (not covered) cancer treatments he had an offer for a job that provided insurance that would cover it, and when he turned that down an offer from some former coworkers to just pay for his treatments outright. This is a weird myth about the show that can be dispelled by watching the pilot episode, but people keep repeating it nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2020, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922/160 "2020-04-22T01:37:14Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > … His stated motivation for the original decision to cook meth with Jesse was that he wanted to leave money for his family… But of course, he didnt. The Government will take it all. And then his wife and kids will have to live with the knowledge that their husband/dad was a drug dealer and murderer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-movies-or-tv-shows-with-situations-or-premises-basically-impossible-today/851922.md?page=9)