I’m a fan of several shows that air on USA. My favorites are probably Burn Notice (which is admittedly past its best days) and Royal Pains (just approaching its own). But though I generally prefer the latter, one thing about it always bothers me a little. Virtually every woman Hank Lawson treats is absurdly beautiful. Oh, every once in while they’ll throw in an older woman as a matron, but even they are generally MILFS.
I’m not sure why this bothers me. There’s a lot more exposed skin on Burn Notice, but it never takes me out of the story the way the paradeofprettily-ailinghot chicks does on RP. I enjoy looking at them; I understand they’re there as eye candy, as RP is anything but a realistic medical show. But looking at them in aggregate, I just can’t help a :dubious:.
But that’s just me. Anybody else ever have a similar reaction to movies & shows populated entirely by the hot?
Yes it does. I may be biased, but this is one of the reasons I like British telly better; it seems to me they use more “ordinary-looking” people, and when an ugly person is called for, they get an actual ugly person and not someone who’s been made a bit frumpy.
It does, and often in books when they’re just being -described- as hot and/or studly. Mostly when I’m reading a book that sells itself as something other than that kind of fantasy, then veers into that format vertiginously without regard to the reader’s expectation.
Same with TV. It used to bother me more in tv/movies, but I think I’ve become less sensitive to appearance as I got older, as now whether or not the actors are too pretty doesn’t tend to mess with my suspension of disbelief as much as it used to. I had trouble following movies over this issue when I was a young teen and in my 20s, I vividly remember it happening, but I can’t recall the last time I did and I know it hasn’t happened recently.
Yes, it sometimes does, especially when the young, hot folk are in jobs like orthopaedic surgeon, police detective, judge, physicist, college professor or similar jobs in which the vast majority of people are middle aged.
What really bugged me was the movie Dog Fight, in which US Marines have a contest to see who can pick up the ugliest girl. And one of the ugliest girls in it is played by freakin’ Lily Taylor.
As much as I love Alicia Witt, and as much as I loved the quirkiness of Ally McBeal, I just couldn’t buy her as one of the top lawyer consultants in Boston, at age 25 going on 12.
Oh yea, I wish there were more unconventional looking actors around to balance shit out.
One movie that would have been ruined by hunky casting was Carpenter’s The Thing, not that any of the actors are ugly but the everyman vibe sells the movie as authentic.
Assuming we’re talking about the original, even that didn’t bother me that much, as there was a common element (Jack McCoy being a perv) to explain it. And not everyone woman in the L&O-verse was absurdly hot.
Though Alicia Witt is indeed lovely, you are thinking of Calista Flockhart.
Honestly, in that case it’s the young that bothers me as much as the hot. I can believe that there’s an occasional Nobel-prize winning prodigy in her twenties – one or two per world – but not as a rule.
It doesn’t bother me unless they make a point of the hot lady being “homely” or whatever. It’s just one of the conventions you have to accept in American movies and television: Everyone’s beautiful.
Of course, there are still quite a few examples where a gorgeous woman is supposed to be ugly, so I still have plenty to be annoyed at.
It’s never particularly bothered me, but I don’t tend to take most TV or movies seriously. Law and Order and CSI have tons of hot lawyers and forensics experts, and I’ve read plenty of bitching about that. Then there was that Bond films that had Denise Richards as an atomical science lady. I didn’t buy it for a nanosecond, but hell I think it was a Roger Moore Bond film so she kinda fit in.
Yeah, Janeane Garofolo as homely in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, especially with the bony-faced Uma Thurman as the hottie. I’d throw Thurman out of bed to invite Garofolo in, in a heartbeat. The movie made no sense, as the homely girl/hottie relationship was a central plot point.
Your link reminds me of a ridiculous bit on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when 16-year-old, high-school student Dawn Summers somehow became fluent in ancient Sumerian.
Well, it applies to original recipe and SVU, and probably the short-lived “Trial by Jury”. Don’t know about CI. And wouldn’t the hiring in a large, governmental office like that go through HR? I doubt McCoy would have had the authority to pick and choose.
