I was watching some of CSI: Miami last night and was stunned by the idiocy with which they portrayed the life of a writer.
It turned out that the victim and two others were ghostwriters for a best-selling author, who provided them novel’s plot and characters after which they did all the actual writing. One of the ghostwriters blackmailed the author asking for a payoff in exchange for not revealing the secret. She is murdered in the same way as the victim in the book, but it turns out
the other two ghostwriters thought she was claiming credit for the work they did, so decided to kill her.
I watched the entire thing wondering why writers are always portrayed so idiotically on TV.*
In this case, while it’s not unheard of for a author to use ghosts (Lester del Rey and Ellery Queen did), there isn’t much stigma attached to it. Nowadays especially, when you see books like Isaac Asimov’s Foundations Fear or the work of VC Andrews™. And three ghosts? That’s TV writing, not novel writing. Even given the assumption, why pay three people when one can do the job? Certainly not to create more books; publishers don’t like to flood the market with one author, and would rather put out one book a year by an author instead of multiple ones. As for killing someone for stealing your ideas – ideas are cheap and given the (ridiculous) situation set up, what does it matter? You’re not getting credit anyway.
I firmly believe that writers are the most poorly portrayed profession on TV. There are certainly lapses in other professions, but I’m willing to accept a little dramatic license (even for writers). But when you see a book author portrayed on TV, it’s going to be like portraying Floridians with gills.
Rant aside, what are examples of portrayals of professions on TV that go far beyond dramatic license and into the Twilight Zone?
*Castle is the exception. Not only do they occasionally show him writing or working on writing problems, but the details of book publishing at his level are usually the way they are in real life.
Lots of TV lawyers routinely save their client by discovering the real killer; IRL, defense lawyers establish reasonable doubt and then call it a day.
Real-life spaceships have 7-8 crew members, tops, and they never meet green-skinned hoochies with flat bellies and humongous breasts. The International Space Station has no holodeck or weapons as such.
Teachers. I realize showing 60 minutes of grading papers, recess duty and trying to get kids to get ready for extended response on ISAT would be boring, but we don’t all have affairs with other teachers, spend endless time during the day talking to each other, and avoiding all actual teaching.
I think the real answer is (with a handful of specific exceptions): every profession. Most jobs are mundane and stunningly boring. Even jobs that are easy to come up with plots for like policeman and soldier are mostly paperwork and waiting.
If you want to make good TV, you have to cut out all the paper work (75% of the job) and waiting around (15% of the job) and then amp up the drama on the remaining interesting bits (10% of the job) and make up the rest out of thin air. So you end up with 10% that’s sort of true but adapted for TV and 90% pure fiction.
But you wanted examples! OK.
I’m in IT, and it pains me to watch basically any show with computers that invariably have giant, easy to read GUIs, can search any database in the world in five seconds flat, have 128-bit encryption but can be hacked by a laptop in minutes, are able to access traffic cameras in Sri Lanka on a moment’s notice, have keyboards that can be used by two people at once, and so on.
My wife works for a hospital, and the rampant HIPAA violations on TV make her teeth itch.
Are all Medical Examiners also police detectives? When I was young I thought so since Quincy sure did a lot of legwork for an ME. Now we’ve got a new show starring the nurse from China Beach (Body of Evidence? Proof of Body?) who rides with the police and goes to suspect’s homes to question them. Bones tries this too but at least her co-workers acknowledge that that isn’t her job and she’s terrible at it.
That’s just part of drama and just good drama; you want to show the interesting parts.
There are also some shortcuts (e.g., getting DNA results in five minutes on CSI) that fit in this. There’s nothing wrong with condensing the timeline in service to the story.
The issue is when what’s left when you ignore this. Authors are consistently portrayed in ways completely inconsistent with reality (most notably, living rich and lavish lifestyles in exotic locations).
The OP was watching CSI:Miami and it’s the way writers are portrayed that bothers him enough to post? I’d think the first profession I’d notice portrayed ridiculously on CSI:Miami would be CSI workers.
I was thinking the other way around, actually - real life naval ships have more than four or five people who work every single watch. I can forgive Battlestar Galactica because theoretically it had a skeleton crew at the beginning, but Star Trek has no such excuse.
If anything, I would think that writers are probably the most accurately-depicted profession. The people writing the show are at least somewhat familiar with the occupation.
Bizarrely enough, the only time this has bothered me is in Law and Order, when Jack and the ADA-of-the-season are always in the office late at night. Now I understand that a lot of people are dedicated to their jobs (I, myself, have worked many a late night), but they do it so friggin’ often that I want to yell at them “C’mon, get a life!”
But the fact that they spend 1/2 of their half of the episode doing Briscoe and Green’s job? Doesn’t bother me at all.
“The DA has some more questions he needs you to ask of Suspect X.”
“I’m fuckin’ busy! He can ask his own damned questions.”
“OK. He’ll just send the ADA.”
The doctors on House. Breaking into and snooping around patient’s homes? Do doctors really do that IRL? I highly doubt it.
I still think it’s hilarious on shows like CSI when the main character and a bunch of back-up police are raiding a building and the main guy, who is not wearing any protection and carrying only a handgun, goes in first while the cops in full gear & weapons follow behind him.
I’ve been in Security for over 30 years, and according to television, books and movies I belong to the dumbest, laziest and most incompetent group of people on the face of the Earth.
