Whenever I watch a show on BBC America (primarily Top Gear), they will inevitably use a word or phrase that I’m totally unfamiliar with. Usually, I can tell from context that it’s an insult and often sounds like “podger” or some such. When you watch American TV, do you have the same experience? If so, what has confused you? Maybe we can help.
Oh man, I don’t understand half the stuff they say on the Inbetweeners. I can only hope the UKers get at least some confusion as payback. 
Depends on the show. Some are harder to follow than others. Often your customs are hard to follow rather than idioms, especially where schools and universities are concerned. Homecomings and valedictorians and phi sigma mama betas … I dunno what any of that stuff is.
I find accents to be more of a problem. Many shows are fine, but I find Glee hard work sometimes.
I think a lot of them are filmed with an international audience expected, so it’s not too bad. But when in the US and I see the less popular shows that don’t make it abroad, they can be close to incomprehensible at times.
I first visited the US at the age of 48, having at that stage lived in England for about 8 years and Australia for 40 years. I don’t remember ever having had any trouble understanding American idioms on film or TV, perhaps because American English dominates the English-speaking world.
bus wanker!
Not normally. We see so much American stuff it mostly pretty familiar.
ps I don’t understand the Inbetweeners - kids are too old for me keep in touch :dubious:
I think we’re exposed to enough US TV and film to be familiar with the basics of American idiom. One thing I will say - since the advent of YoiuTube, I have noticed that some videos made by Americans are a little hard for me to understand, which surprises me, because I thought I had American ways of speech down. Not so much pronunciation, just people speaking faster and less clearly than I am used to from TV shows.
This. And also sometimes geography-related humour. It’s funny that someone comes from there? :S
I also remember being really young and asking my mum what “cute” meant…
Try watching The Wire. I’m an American, and I had to put on closed captioning to make sure I was getting everything.
An example of what I mean: - YouTube (video about technical aspects of an internet browser)
From 2:29 the guy says something that sounds like “punch it back <something-or-other>”, but it’s difficult to make out what he’s saying, even though I generally understand the technical jargon they’re using in the video.
OK, it might be that that guy is just not a very clear enunciator, but that’s the point. There is a lot of material out there now that is not voiced by professional “voice” people.
He says “punch it back and forth steps to kind of boil it all down.” It’s not the full sentence, there’s a lot of rambling before that, so it looks like a mishmash of words here but theoretically makes sense.
I agree though, in that case it’s diction. He’s just bouncing from clause to clause and talking very quickly. I found it kind of hard to follow.
I couldn’t have been the only one that read the title of this thread as “American idiots on TV”. I’m an American and the idiots I see on TV confuse me all the time. So do some of the idioms - those krazy kids!
There are plenty of American cultural references that are lost on me, even though I’m exposed to plenty of US telly. I find myself asking my GF a lot of questions about this or that facet of American culture. The Wire is the only US show where I’ve ever had to carefully pay attention to what characters have been saying, after a while though the lingo becomes second nature. I find myself even using some of the terms from the show. Reup etc.
That was more about a particular street slang, though, wasn’t it? That show was quite popular here, and the general feeling was that it took a couple of episodes to get up to speed with the lingo, but after that you were fine.
He’s saying, “I am an extremely boring person and I’m now going to bore you to death.” I don’t know how you could have a problem understanding that 
Saturated in American culture as we are, it’s rarely a problem. Most of the things that do confuse me are references to advertisements that don’t screen here: Budweiser frogs and the “Wazzup” campaign, “Got Milk?”, Old Spice guy… these are things I’ve looked up on the net to understand a reference.
TV hosts and newscasters are another group that I’m not always familiar with. An example: Bob Barker was an unknown name and face for me until he showed up in Happy Gilmore (and years later on How I Met Your Mother); we had a locally produced version of The Price Is Right with an Australian host. Regis (as far as I know) doesn’t have a show that screens in Australia but he is mentioned a lot in films and other shows (he also appeared in How I Met Your Mother).
I’ve been watching US television programmes since The Mickey Mouse Club, so TV idioms are pretty familiar to me. I have more problem with idioms used by posters on this board. But I find if I sit quietly and read on, I can usually nut out the general meaning.
Do non-Americans (or non-Texans, for that matter) have trouble understanding Boomhauer on King of the Hill? I can understand 90%, FWIW, but I’ve been away from home for a while.
Not really - I’m too used to it. However, I was a teenager by the time I found out what the Americans mean by “wash up,” and they weren’t really all lazy about washing the dishes and only did it just before dinner so they could eat off them.
I always thought he was meant to be partly incomprehensible - his speech is largely ‘dang-diddly-dang, man’ and repeated phrases and stuttering.
The only one that threw us recently was Hell’s Kitchen’s use of the word ‘entree’ for ‘main course’. Here, we have entree/starters, and main/main course. Had to look up Wikipedia for it explain that it’s changed meaning in the US.