# Resolved: Don't make a TV show with a premise if you can't do it "right" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 17, 2014, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572 "2014-10-17T06:39:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/41 "2014-10-18T17:34:48Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > My cousin Alex, who actually is a lawyer in a DA’s office (Illinois state’s attorney in Chicago), says that the original _Law & Order_ is fairly accurate on the legal side (he can’t speak to the cop side), but every case is a once-in-a-career case. And he doesn’t normally have as much forensic evidence as they had toward the end of the show, which was something they had to do to compete with _CSI_. And you don’t stand up and yell “Objection!” you just sit and say it; sometimes you don’t even look up. It has to be on the record, though, to be an issue for appeal, and that’s really what it’s for, not to get the jury to “unhear” the question. I’m a longtime fan of _ **L&O** _ but when they went to a judge and got a warrant to search a defense attorney’s office and files, my suspension of disbelief went right out the window. Not only couldn’t they have ever received such a warrant, almost anything that they discovered would have been declared inadmissible. And the judge and the prosecutors would have all been sanctioned and looking for jobs if they allowed such a search to occur. That, coupled with the cops being able to discover in apparently hours or days that someone owns a firearm, even with New York’s draconian firearms laws make it hard to watch _ **L&O** _ for realism and not for entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/42 "2014-10-18T18:05:02Z")
I could never get into CSI because I can’t buy into the premise of lab techs doing the detective work. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/43 "2014-10-18T18:10:06Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > There was also a different episode of Ed, where during the trial the \*defense \*presented first! I remember an _L.A. Law_ episode where the defense made its closing statement first. Presumably, it was done that way as one of the show’s main characters was prosecuting a rape case, so she could make the big speech at the end. And, of course, science fiction has to bend the laws of currently known physics. Who wants to watch a show about interstellar travel if it takes decades to get there, or one where there’s no noise in space? (Hands up, those of you who watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and still expect to hear the explosion when the pod hatch is blown off so they can access HAL.) ---
**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/44 "2014-10-18T19:41:54Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > I suppose, but after reading all sorts of complaints from professionals about how TV twists their jobs (and how sometimes it has real world impact, as I mentioned), I have to wonder if those professionals would PREFER boredom (or at least that TV leave their particular profession alone!). I don’t know. Back when I was a student, I used to watch \*ER \*with two med students. They \*loved \*yelling at the TV about all the inaccuracies, and having huge satisfying bitching sessions about how it would never happen that way and what would actually happen. They got way more fun out of that show than they would have if it had been accurate. The one I’m still in touch with says, like someone said upthread, that \*Scrubs \*is the most accurate hospital show he knows, specially when it comes to details that civilians probably don’t even notice. > [@silenus](#): > > I remember back in 2000 they cam out with a show called “Boston Public” that took place in a fictional Boston high school. After the first couple of episodes someone asked me what I thought about it, and I offered the opinion that, while I’m sure all of the events portrayed on the show happened in a public high school in the US, they didn’t happen at the same school, to the same people, _on the same day_. That’s what my GP says about _ER_. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/45 "2014-10-18T20:45:32Z")
My mother, a retired RN, used to laugh at hospial or doctor based shows, and how unrealistic they are/were. She said they never showed the long boring meetins staff had to sit through. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/46 "2014-10-18T21:02:04Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Sounds like a recipe for boredom to me. I’ve practiced law a long time. If you made a movie or TV series about what lawyers really do most of the time, it would cure insomnia if anybody ever watched it. Here’s Oak, sitting at his desk, frowning over some legal document. OH…here he is, still at his desk, typing something. Now he’s talking on the phone. Wait a minute…he’s…checking a citation on the internet. Typing again. Now talking to someone seated across a table. Now he’s writing a check for a filing fee! > > Even the courtroom stuff just isn’t nearly as exciting as it looks on TV. It’s a lot more palatable if you add in the arguing on the Straight Dope scenes. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/47 "2014-10-18T21:47:15Z")
How many of you have ever held a job or worked in a setting that was a key plotline or setting in a TV series? Now, think of all the times in your life that something happened to you at work that was so interesting, so compelling, that your family and friends who did not also work in that field were actually interested in your story about it. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/48 "2014-10-19T02:48:33Z")
I met someone whose friend did what the show “Criminal Minds” depicts. 2 major deviations from reality: 1. Profilers almost never travel to crime scenes. 2. If they do travel, they travel coach, on their own dime. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/49 "2014-10-19T04:56:07Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#): > > Next Wednesday, it will be shown in Craptastic HD on one of the 3 major networks around 9. {snip} I have checked TV Guide’s synopses for all hour-long dramas starting at 8 pm, 9 pm and 10 pm (Eastern time) and airing on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC and for the life of me, I cannot figure out which show you’re talking about. Wait, I take that back. Based on having been subjected to a couple of reruns of the show (in my defense, I was a guest in someone’s home and they wanted to watch it), I’m gonna go with…um…_Criminal Minds_ on CBS. I like Thomas Gibson and Joe Mantegna, but I simply cannot willingly watch that show. The stupid…it burnssssss. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/50 "2014-10-19T08:49:22Z")
To see the fact that this is deliberate you only have to look one place: the way TV treats filming TV. You’ll note that this is completely different from the way TV is actually filmed. Scenes and episodes are filmed in order (so the audience can understand the plot), scripts never go through rewrites, there’s no union nonsense, people get roles in big productions without any real contracts. And so on. In other words: people in the entertainment industry **routinely butcher the entertainment industry in their own shows**. Admittedly, sometimes there are things that are less excusable. Sometimes they’ll try to pseudoscience their way into an explanation by abusing real, well studied theories like “evolution” instead of just making up technobabble. Sometimes using hacking incorrectly can make the audience paranoid even when things aren’t the way they’re portrayed. But by and large pretty much any industry absolutely needs to go through tons of creative license to be interesting, including the entertainment industry itself. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/51 "2014-10-19T09:25:45Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Sounds like a recipe for boredom to me. I’ve practiced law a long time. If you made a movie or TV series about what lawyers really do most of the time, it would cure insomnia if anybody ever watched it. Here’s Oak, sitting at his desk, frowning over some legal document. OH…here he is, still at his desk, typing something. Now he’s talking on the phone. Wait a minute…he’s…checking a citation on the internet. Typing again. Now talking to someone seated across a table. Now he’s writing a check for a filing fee! I think this was the premise of an episode of _The Cosby Show_. One of the children had to make a video for school, so they went to work with Clair because she must have such an exciting job (she didn’t). ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/52 "2014-10-19T13:59:37Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Sounds like a recipe for boredom to me. I’ve practiced law a long time. If you made a movie or TV series about what lawyers really do most of the time, it would cure insomnia if anybody ever watched it. Here’s Oak, sitting at his desk, frowning over some legal document. _ **OH…here he is, still at his desk, typing something.** _ Now he’s talking on the phone. Wait a minute…he’s…checking a citation on the internet. Typing again. Now talking to someone seated across a table. Now he’s writing a check for a filing fee! > > Even the courtroom stuff just isn’t nearly as exciting as it looks on TV. > [@Lobohan](#): > > It’s a lot more palatable if you add in the arguing on the Straight Dope scenes. Nope. See highlighted. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/53 "2014-10-19T15:05:55Z")
Jragon: Do you really believe TV actors are SAG members? ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/54 "2014-10-19T15:50:08Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > Jragon: Do you really believe TV actors are SAG members? I meant AREN’T obviously. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/55 "2014-10-19T23:38:59Z")
Where did he say they aren’t? What he said was there is no union “nonsense”, i.e. the union saying things have to be done this way, or you can’t do such and such, or just delaying through the day, or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/56 "2014-10-20T00:16:05Z")
I’m pretty sure Jragon is saying that they ARE members. But when tv shows depict tv shows, there’s no mention or issue about SAG at all. Thus unrealistic. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/57 "2014-10-20T00:34:32Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > To see the fact that this is deliberate you only have to look one place: the way TV treats filming TV. You’ll note that this is completely different from the way TV is actually filmed. Scenes and episodes are filmed in order (so the audience can understand the plot), scripts never go through rewrites, there’s no union nonsense, people get roles in big productions without any real contracts. And so on. > > In other words: people in the entertainment industry **routinely butcher the entertainment industry in their own shows**. Similarly, it’s very common for musicals (be they stage, film, or TV musicals) to be either _about_ the production of a musical or about the lives of working singers/musicians. These often include a musical number that’s supposed to be a rehearsal, or sometimes a song that one of the characters has just written. But even if there are singers/dancers/musicians present who have supposedly never heard this song before, everyone will know their parts perfectly. Everyone involved must know this is unrealistic, but it probably wouldn’t be very entertaining to watch (or hear!) a musical number that really seems unrehearsed. Even in a comedy like _This is Spinal Tap_ where the band isn’t supposed to be particularly good, they are still competent performers. When things go disastrously/comically wrong onstage, it’s generally due to problems with their equipment or sets. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/58 "2014-10-20T00:52:10Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > And, of course, science fiction has to bend the laws of currently known physics. Who wants to watch a show about interstellar travel if it takes decades to get there, or one where there’s no noise in space? (Hands up, those of you who watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and still expect to hear the explosion when the pod hatch is blown off so they can access HAL.) In science fiction you try to minimize the number of impossibilities, and try to explain them. Faster than light? Call it hyperspace, or inertialess drive, just don’t pretend that if you hit the gas pedal real hard you can go as fast as you want. Want to save on special effects. Say there is artificial gravity. But if they are on a tiny asteroid, they had better be light. You can get away with subtly wrong, not howlingly wrong. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/59 "2014-10-20T05:14:46Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Comedy is not necessarily the opposite of realism. For instance, I’ve read of doctors who’ve said that if you ignore the jokes, \*Scrubs \*was the most realistic hospital series ever made. I knew a couple of cops who said the same thing about _Reno 911_. I assumed that police officers would find it demeaning, but they said that most cops loved the show and considered it realistic (silliness aside). There was an [interview](http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/07/08/reno-911-thomas-lennon-ben-garant/) in Entertainment Weekly a few months ago in which the shows creators corroborated this: > [@](#): > > LENNON: I’ve actually had many, many police officers say that they felt like _Reno 911!_ was the most accurate police show on television. I’m totally not kidding. I think the reason is because we sound very real. I think what they were always surprised by, not the sort of like foolery of _Reno 911!_, but the things we talked about to each other in the briefing room, for example—it just isn’t stilted. > > GARANT: We don’t talk like Aaron Sorkin wrote us, you know? Everybody sounds kind of normal, and I think cops just love that. In cop shows, the police don’t get to rag on each other and rag on their commander and rag on the person they just pulled over. That was all _Reno_ was, and I think that’s all cops do 90 percent of their day. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572/60 "2014-10-20T07:17:08Z")
> [@cormac262](#): > > This “unrealistic” theme goes even further back than “Columbo”. Growing up, our neighbor was a cop, and he used to love, but gripe about “Adam-12”: “They never show them doing all the paperwork cops have to do !!!” He said it was like 20% “activity” on a case, and 80% paperwork. …the movie Hot Fuzz made paperwork [look awesome!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QIUYg5M6w) (Done deliberately by Wright and Pegg from feedback from police officers that they never saw any paperwork getting done in the movies.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-dont-make-a-tv-show-with-a-premise-if-you-cant-do-it-right/701572.md?page=4)