It’s even funnier when they have pristine glassware full of colored water and dry ice. Yep that’s realistic.
A real lab would be full of scuffed equipment (stuffed into any available space), scratched glassware, cracked plastic tube racks, dented metal carts with a wobbly wheel, piles of paperwork, dye stained bench tops, refrigerators and freezers with noisy compressors, and Post-it notes decorating all vertical surfaces.
It’s funny how CSI keeps getting mentioned, and for its technical detail errors.
When actually, I once worked for a company (Perkin Elmer) that makes many of the types of laboratory analytical equipment shown on CSI, and they generally, though not always, get it right.
What bugs the hell out of me about CSI, and its popularity, is the unprofessional behavior of the lead character… in the few episodes I’ve seen, he’s got all this scientific equipment and technical expertise at his disposal, but he doesn’t go about his investigations scientifically…
He relies on hunches, makes decisions based on his emotions, breaks the rules, takes shortcuts, and selectively uses the technology to support preconceived conclusions… all BAD, BAD forensic methods. It’s horrid.
In the real world, it’s how you imprison innocent people while the real killers walk free.
But since CSI is the number one show, now everybody thinks that’s how we’re supposed to run investigations as a society… basically we should just use the technology to bring barbaric tribal systems of justice into the 21st century.
Bah! It gives me heartburn just thinking about it…
Oh, and my schoolteacher friends all tell me that Boston Public has absolutely nothing in common with the real world teaching profession.
(I’m just glad that that blonde english teacher moved to NYC and found a job as a NYPD detective.)
My sister, a pediatrician, says she’s generally very happy with the believability of “ER.” This ER is obviously far more exciting and action-packed than any ER in the history of the world, but she doesn’t have a problem with that because she fully understands that they simply couldn’t have a TV show if they didn’t juice it up in this manner.
Funny you should mention this, because it actually did happen at my high school (I was in grade school at the time I believe). He did lose his job, but I don’t know about the teaching license, and I don’t remember criminal charges. The funny thing is, as I recall it, this wasn’t the first time he had done it (fired a starter pistol in class). It was only when members of this particular class complained was there something done :rolleyes: Oh well.
Take care,
GES
Try being a psychologist and watching how your profession is portrayed on TV. Even the usually excellent ER in the first few seasons had a psychiatrist (not a psychologist, but close enough as people mix us up all the time) who was a doofus.
The only fictional psychologist I have ever liked was Judd Hirsch in Ordinary People. The rest of them over-react, sleep with half their patients, get chased by criminals, etc. Not very true-to-life.
Anything, that is, except a functioning raft or boat.
I don’t know about CSI, but I’ve caught Law and Order (or maybe one of its spinoffs) using the “magic image enhancer.” You’ve all seen the magic image enhancer: they show a picture on a computer (say, a frame from a security camera at a liquor store). One of the characters says, “what’s that?” and points to some spot. They enlarge the image until it gets all grainy and pixellated, and then some geek-type character hits a few keys and the pixels resolves into a whole new layer of detail.
Anybody who knows anything about digital images knows that this is impossible. Those pixels are the most basic, fundamental unit of that picture. Nothing is hidden “in between” them; there is no further detail to be uncovered.
To be fair, there’s some pretty nifty filtering and sub sampling software that can do some amazing things interpoating those basic units, but yeah, some of the things they pull on those shows are pretty outrageous. I remember one episode of CSI where they linked the killer to the dead man’s wife by getting a picture of the woman’s living room off the web (she was quickly selling the mansion). In the living room, on the mantel of the fire place was a picture of the killer and the wife (the husband too I believe). So they do the zoom, button press thing, and presto, up pops the smiling faces of the bad guys :rolleyes: .
Take care,
GES
Although I have my own gripes as an audio producer, I can’t complain that much, as so much of it is, while not exactly boring, definately not interesting to someone not enamoured of the profession.
I quite like it that audio stuff is portrayed as, say, a dead cool five minutes while they trace a location from the audio clues, or simulate a whole ransom note from someone’s entirely unrelated phone conversation. This is what people think of when I tell them what I do. Who am I to tell them about the prep; the setting-up; the production ratios; the quality control… Bleh.
However, to more directly address the OP, I grew up with a father that worked in a hospital. To this day I can’t really watch ER shows. I realise they are a lot more realistic these days, but I can still here him shouting from his armchair, “She’s too healthy to be a drug addict, fer crissakes!”.
Good one Diceman. That’s one of my pet hates too.
I also hate is when characters don’t watch the road they’re driving along.
Anyway my area of expertise I suppose would be music and there are so, so many examples of actors not even making an effort to look like they are genuinely playing an instrument. This is becoming a little bit rarer now though as they use musicians as ‘hand doubles’ more.
I suppose the one thing I remember shouting at the screen for was when a character in a film was playing a Mozart piece and then she closed her book and it said Schubert on the cover. :wally
It’s like Unsharp Mask to the 10th Power!
I was in band back in high school, and it drives me crazy when I see this.
I understand that the actor probably doesn’t know how to play the trumpet he’s holding, but jeez, can’t he at least put his fingers on the damn keys?! :rolleyes:
I am a professional computer programmer, and I don’t need to tell you how often there are ridiculous “computer” things done on TV and in the movies. We’ve spent quite a bit of time on this board bashing those wonderful hacking tools that have the 3D graphics depicting the insides of computers as abstract cities which the hacker “flies” through until he finds the bits he wants to tamper with. I add to this my pet peeve - anytime someone says “I fed the data into the computer and its conclusion was…”. An artificial intelligence application with a universal format input module - I should write that!
An example of this (since that was what the OP wanted): Willow on *Buffy * could get the floor plans and history of any building in the small town of Sunnydale in the blink of an eye, using any computer in the school’s computer lab, where supposedly every hacker tool available was installed. :rolleyes:
And don’t even get me started with the characters who open their laptops and instantly start programming - without having to wait for the operating system to load…
I am a lawyer. I divide shows that show aspects of legal practice up into two categories: those that aren’t completely wrong all of the time (Law & Order) and shows that exist in Bizarro-legal-world (Ally McBeal, Matlock).
I have yet to see a show that is a reliably competent reflection of legal practice.
It’s been my experience that the History Channel has it wrong most of the time too, at least as far as coverage of Ancient Egypt, Jack the Ripper, and the history of witchcraft goes – and I suspect I’m just not skilled enough in the other areas they cover to catch mistakes.
As a teacher, I watched **Boston Public ** as a comedy. Only way to do it. But what gets me riled is that what happens in school isn’t esoteric knowledge!!! The writer’s all went to school…so did all of the audience. Did the writer’s just think that we forgot the whole experience?
Don’t get me started on weapons and their usage…
I’ve watched that show for years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually teach anything besides generic “life lessons” crap. I have no idea even what subject that teacher who fired the gun was supposed to have taught.
Don’t even get me started on librarians on TV. :rolleyes:
Computer guys must have it the worst though, because I’m hardly an expert and it’s nearly always laughable to me.
Another computer tech chiming in. The most egregious violation of computer science I’ve seen was on the movie Clear and Present Danger. Harrison Ford is reading something on the computer screen and letters start disappearing off the screen. Therefore he knows someone is deleting the data. I yelled at the TV when I saw that one.
You obviously haven’t seen Enemy of the State. The film where they use image enhancing to turn the picture over so they can see what’s on the other side :rolleyes:
I half-expected to see “Directed by Mel Brooks” in the credits.