Sometimes I get distracted by some throwaway detail in a movie or TV show. Whenever Witness for the Prosecution is on, I get distracted wondering how the hell Leonard’s egg beater that separates the egg could work, specific gravity or not.
I also realize that Penny’s telling everyone on TBBT that she did “The Diary of Anne Frank above a bowling alley” is a little like “the Noodle Incident” in Calvin and Hobbes. It’s just supposed to sound funny, and not be taken to seriously, but I still get distracted wondering who the very gentile Penny could possibly play in that show. She’s too old for Anne, too young for Mrs. Frank or Mrs. Van Daan, and all wrong for Margot, who has to fade into the background next to Anne, and too goyish for any of them.
Then just today, I remembered Miep Gies. Yes, she’s actually about 34 when the play is set, but she could be played by a younger actress. That’s who Penny must have played. Duh. OK, now I won’t be distracted for ten minutes every time they mention this on the show.
I could list more, but I don’t want to risk TL;DR. What are other people’s distracting details?
From the film Zelig: The Elder Zelig’s second marriage is marked by constant violent quarreling. So much so that although the family lives over a bowling alley, it is the bowling alley that complains of noise.
There was the time, in TBBT again, when the group was meeting Bernie and Penny commented how both Howard’s and Bernie’s grandparents came from the same town in Poland and probably knew each other and Amy told Penny she’d tell her about that later.
If anyone remembers Talk Talk with Jerry Galvin, he recounted in incident in which, iirc, Pia Zadora was playing Anne Frank, and when the Nazis appeared the audience shouted: “she’s in the attic!”
Bernie said she’d just learned that her family and Howard’s were neighbors in Poland, as she was packing courtesy gifts for her wedding guests in Penny’s apartment. Penny thought that was cool until Amy said sotto voce “No, it isn’t; I’ll explain later,” a reference to the pogroms of East Europe.
In Smallville, how come Clark never learned how to fly, even after he knew it was possible? I’d be out behind the barn two seconds later trying to figure it out.
30 Rock had tons of throw-away lines that could have been entire episodes.
This one didn’t actually happen, but I sent it in to see if they would ever use it. Got no response.
Jenna Mulrooney tells Liz Lemon that she has to accept that some things are beyond her control, “like that time Michael J. Fox tried to take out a restraining order against me.” I suggested they show a breakaway scene of Fox trying to sign his name to the form, but he’s unable to because his hand is shaking too much. As Jenna’s being being hauled away, she screams “Jenna has two N’s, not sixteen, BITCH!”
