# "How did anyone think that was a good idea?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 13, 2020, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380 "2020-03-13T02:12:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2020, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/101 "2020-03-20T20:57:50Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Stalag-17 was somewhat a comedy to begin with. It was a drama with occasional comic scenes and situations (i.e., a dramedy even though the term didn’t exist at the time). Also, given the setting, much of the comedy was gallows humor. In contrast, “Hogan’s Heroes” was a broadly humored sitcom with a laugh track. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2020, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/102 "2020-03-23T15:17:07Z")
Crossposted from the “failed pilot” thread: > [@Shows that weren't picked up as a series/never came to be.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-that-werent-picked-up-as-a-series-never-came-to-be/849024/71): > > [Alan Alda adopting an invisible baby from outer space, Dwayne Hickman as a Manhattan lawyer with a 140-year-old client, Dwayne’s younger brother Darryl starring in a live action _Flintstones_…](https://www.handitv.com/lists/6-failed-tv-pilots-from-1966-that-featured-familiar-faces) ---
**Author:** ![eunoia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eunoia/32/97_2.png) [@eunoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eunoia)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2020, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/103 "2020-03-26T03:57:13Z")
There are a lot of ridiculous ideas in popular entertainments people don’t even stop to think about. I’m not even talking about movies like Sharknado, but popular, successful award-winning entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![uncle\_squeegee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b5e925/32.png) [@uncle\_squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uncle_squeegee)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2020, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/104 "2020-03-27T18:27:06Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > For every show that makes it on the air, there are literally hundreds of pilots that are written, cast, and filmed, and don’t make it. > > I think _some times_ the decision makers are not thinking in terms of what they like, but in terms of what they imagine some strawman audience would like. Much of the TV industry at the top is coastal urban educated upper-middle class people making shows for the rest of America, so you can imagine there is often a disconnect. > > But as to your example of the marionette kung-fu fighter, well, that is just one aspect of show rather than the whole story. I can only imagine a late night creative session going off the rails - “What if they have a cat with laser beam eyes? Or OR OR a guy (giggle) who hangs by wires and uses kung fu moves to fight spaceships! THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! No, really guys. We have to do that!” On a slight tangent, there’s a podcast called Dead Pilot’s society, in which scripts that didn’t make it to the pilot phase are read in front of an audience. There’ve been some that would have made entertaining shows. Episodes generally include interviews with the writers, and they’ll often talk about the process and why certain shows get made and others don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2020, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/105 "2020-03-28T12:09:33Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > Jesus that was painful I thought "ok… maybe that’s one way to interact with a sophisticated weapons system in space"and then she started freaking out and I couldn’t watch any more. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/106 "2020-04-30T13:23:26Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I think that shooting down a movie based on the fact that a one sentence summary sounds silly is just foolish. A huge number of very successful movies, especially comedies and kid’s movies, have a real one sentence summary that sounds like ‘nonsense’, and even more can have an absurd summary made. For that matter, lots of movies and TV shows have premises that are stupid or sound stupid and still make a great (even award winning) film/show once they’re actually executed. “A young woman is transported to a strange, new land, where she kills the first person she meets, then teams up with three strangers and goes off to kill again.” A TV listing I once found for _The Wizard of Oz_. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/107 "2020-04-30T18:25:47Z")
> [@Patch](#): > > “A young woman is transported to a strange, new land, where she kills the first person she meets, then teams up with three strangers and goes off to kill again.” A TV listing I once found for _The Wizard of Oz_. > **['Wizard of Oz' movie description goes viral](https://ew.com/article/2012/10/26/wizard-of-oz-movie-description/)** > > 'Wizard of Oz' movie description goes viral ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/108 "2020-05-21T13:21:26Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > ['Wizard of Oz' movie description goes viral](https://ew.com/article/2012/10/26/wizard-of-oz-movie-description/) That’s the one! 😃 There was another one I saw in the newspaper for _Beginning of the End_, a 50s sci-fi movie about giant locusts overrunning Chicago. “Giant green grasshoppers terrorize a tiny town and pulverize its puny people.” ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/109 "2020-05-21T15:16:52Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > In all fairness, that scene would probably look pretty cool if it were in an anime with a decent budget and art direction. > > Also in all fairness, the Aegis defense system developed for the US Navy since the 1970s is capable of automatically tracking at least 100 targets simultaneously, and automatically engaging an unstated but “multiple” number of targets. > > The hovering Kung Fu VR gunner is capable, by my count, of firing at no more than four targets at once. Five if you work in head-banging. Perhaps six, if you work in vigorous butt-shaking. I’ve always wanted to see some space opera where the targeting and fire control are actually as computerized as they assuredly would be in such an era. Or even is these days; what we get most of the time is warmed-over WWII submarine fire control tropes. It seems like it would be a great opportunity for some really tense CIC (yes, they’d need a CIC, not just a bridge) scenes where there’d be very little talking or overt drama- the captain/fire control officer would designate and/or prioritize targets, and you’d get the point-defense systems firing automatically and the main weaponry firing when the solution was right, and you’d get the occasional AI override notifications and damage control reports… but no flaming keyboards, or anything like that. Just a bunch of guys buttoned up in spacesuits calmly going about their business, interposed with external shots of the battle and other interior shots of the ship and damage. If done right, it could be truly harrowing. Sort of like the sub scenes in “Hunt for Red October” were. As for SNL movies… they have about a 40-50% hit rate; there aren’t a significant number of worse ones than good ones. I’d think for a studio, that’s a pretty good gamble to take. And… I always felt like _Coupling_ was essentially a British version of _Friends_. Not a direct clone, but more inspired by _Friends_, which had been on the air like 4-5 years by the time \*Coupling \*came around. What made it so terribly stupid is that whoever pitched it and whoever greenlighted it didn’t get why Coupling was good in the UK, and why it wouldn’t be good in the US. Namely, they were both ensemble comedies centered around young single people, with the concerns and humor surrounding them (within the censorship limits of the respective countries). There wasn’t anything \*\*special \*\*about \*Coupling \*that didn’t mark it as a Friends type show, or worse, what it was, a US remake of a British _Friends_-inspired show. Coupling would have NEVER worked in the US- we already had Friends, and at that point, we’d had 10 years of it. Introducing the same thing with a very slightly different spin wasn’t going to fly in 2003-2004. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380/110 "2020-05-21T15:31:26Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > In all fairness, that scene would probably look pretty cool if it were in an anime with a decent budget and art direction. > > Also in all fairness, the Aegis defense system developed for the US Navy since the 1970s is capable of automatically tracking at least 100 targets simultaneously, and automatically engaging an unstated but “multiple” number of targets. > > The hovering Kung Fu VR gunner is capable, by my count, of firing at no more than four targets at once. Five if you work in head-banging. Perhaps six, if you work in vigorous butt-shaking. I’ve always wanted to see some space opera where the targeting and fire control are actually as computerized as they assuredly would be in such an era. Or even is these days; what we get most of the time is warmed-over WWII submarine fire control tropes. It seems like it would be a great opportunity for some really tense CIC (yes, they’d need a CIC, not just a bridge) scenes where there’d be very little talking or overt drama- the captain/fire control officer would designate and/or prioritize targets, and you’d get the point-defense systems firing automatically and the main weaponry firing when the solution was right, and you’d get the occasional AI override notifications and damage control reports… but no flaming keyboards, or anything like that. Just a bunch of guys buttoned up in spacesuits calmly going about their business, interposed with external shots of the battle and other interior shots of the ship and damage. If done right, it could be truly harrowing. Sort of like the sub scenes in “Hunt for Red October” were. As for SNL movies… they have about a 40-50% hit rate; there aren’t a significant number of worse ones than good ones. I’d think for a studio, that’s a pretty good gamble to take. And… I always felt like _Coupling_ was essentially a British version of _Friends_. Not a direct clone, but more inspired by _Friends_, which had been on the air like 4-5 years by the time \*Coupling \*came around. What made it so terribly stupid is that whoever pitched it and whoever greenlighted it didn’t get why Coupling was good in the UK, and why it wouldn’t be good in the US. Namely, they were both ensemble comedies centered around young single people, with the concerns and humor surrounding them (within the censorship limits of the respective countries). There wasn’t anything \*\*special \*\*about \*Coupling \*that didn’t mark it as a Friends type show, or worse, what it was, a US remake of a British _Friends_-inspired show. Coupling would have NEVER worked in the US- we already had Friends, and at that point, we’d had 10 years of it. Introducing the same thing with a very slightly different spin wasn’t going to fly in 2003-2004. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea/849380.md?page=5)