Television or movies. What are the plot elements that everyone knows will end badly? Or that just can’t happen in real life because they’re illegal?
I’ll grab a few of the low hanging fruit to get us rolling.
Stupid:
Police/federal agents/investigators/whoever see the person they want to talk to on the other side of the parking lot and then yell out his name before attempting to get any closer. They’re always surprised when the person takes off running.
Impossible:
Enhance that grainy low-light out of focus surveillance video to make out the tattoo on the suspects neck.
Illegal:
Discover that the person they’re looking for has a rare disease or has to take some unusual drug. No worries! I can research that on the master database. Umm. No. You can’t because HIPAA is a thing so massive fines and criminal prosecution are likely outcomes. (Saw this one last night on NCIS)
There are scores more of course, so I’ll stop here and come back later.
ETA: Grmph. Script WRITERS. Can I get a passing mod to edit that please?
Regarding HIPAA, people covered by HIPAA can release PHI to police when it that information will help them apprehend someone that’s a threat to the public or has escaped custody. I don’t watch NCIS so I don’t know the case, but I could see a situation where they know the person they’re looking for was, as you said, taking a drug not many people are on or has a reportable disease (things like (diagnosed) food poisoning aren’t nearly as common as you’d think), so it would be easy for the police to approach medical staff explain the situation and come up with a small list, probably smaller if they have a description and locate the person much faster than blindly searching the city.
Regarding the running thing, in one episodes, when it happened, the main character said ‘why do they always run, don’t they realize it makes them look guilty when they run’.
Patient has AB+ blood. Patient needs a transfusion. The hunt is on for a donor with AB+ blood. No other type will be suitable. And AB+ blood is so super-rare that it’s almost impossible to find a donor.
(In real life, AB+ is called the universal recipient. It can receive blood from A, B, AB or O, and either rhesus positive or negative. And AB+ blood isn’t as rare as all that anyway.)
The suspect cut him/herself at the scene and left a sizeable blood sample. No DNA match as that would be too simple. However tests found traces of busparinacyl (a fictitious but familiar sounding prescription only drug). Our intrepid investigators then use that info to search some pharmaceutical database to find out everyone who has a prescription for it in their metro area which of course ultimately leads to the villain.
The first time that an agency tried that there’s a whole alphabet soup of agencies that are going to come down on them like a ton of bricks.
A computer searching for a password one letter at a time. And each letter takes the same amount of time. (War Games, for example.)*
Something is being decrypted on the screen and individual characters are decoded in random places until they all are. (Sleepers, for example.)
Not sure if all of these can be blamed on the writer. Flunkies in production might cause many of them.
This used to happen a lot in real life due to crappy programs. Very rare now but there have been web login exploits that use this. Of course the “ultra-secure password” systems in these movies don’t fall into this category.
This was done right in Terminator 2 (I think?) Young John Connor is breaking a four-digit PIN, and the time per digit decreased; the first digit took some minutes, but the fourth digit snapped past almost instantly.
(Okay, it still wouldn’t work that way: a real ATM only allows a very small number of attempts before locking down. But, hey, it was a small nod toward a kind of numerical accuracy!)
One little detail scripts get wrong a lot: reporters and journalists never take the extra moment to ask for the spelling of names. In real life, they must take that effort. Johnson? Johnston? Johnstone? Having it on a little hand-held voice recorder won’t cut the mustard!
I have always been poor at math, but even I know that if a guy left town ten years ago and returns to discover his ex has a ten-year-old child it shouldn’t be a shock to him considering that kid would’ve already been born when he left. It’s simple math, script writers: X years minus 10 months = surprise kid’s age. Round up to a full year to make it easier, even.
The speed at which test results come back from the lab. Genetic tests can take months.
The speed at which people respond to new anti-depressant drugs. “We just switched her to this new drug, and she should be better in a few hours.” Um, no, it can take days or weeks for most drugs to build up a head of steam in the system and make any noticeable effect.
Every reprobate, no matter how down and out they are, has perfect Hollywood teeth. Even immigrants, from countries where dentistry is virtually unknown.
Back in the 70s, I’d laugh at all the historical characters with perfectly coiffed hair.
Trendy-haired actors refusing to cut their hair for a military role (Helloooo, Hawkeye and B.J. Hunnicut…) was even a thread here, from the early 00’s.
I think the perfect, overly-whitened teeth are just as jarring. But can we blame that one on the writers? Couldn’t that be taken care of with a few minutes in the makeup chair, painting an actor’s teeth?
In a police procedural or mystery there is always some element that narrows things down in the most unrealistic way. The tests reveal that the murder took place in a building with a super rare form of insulation (just ran across this one on an old episode of Bones. You know what, my cite is every single flipping episode of Bones) or the murderer takes a rare drug or has a super rare disease or heterochromic eyes and a limp that no one else limps like. They make these scientists and detectives out to be super intelligent masterminds but the way the scripts are written they are just so lucky they should be buying lottery tickets every day.
This is so not like real life. That one magic thing that narrows people and places down to just one possibility is about as common as they tell you those magic single disease/building component/soil content things are. Not every single murder can be solved by running a bunch of scientific tests.
At least in the 70’s actors mostly looked like real people. Alan Alda and Mike Farrell simply arn’t going to be confused for male models.
My contribution is a timely one: treason. The writers frequently get the definition wrong and even if not…a case hasn’t been brought in decades.
Tony Almeda lets a terrorist go in an attempt to save his wife?? That’s…obstruction of justice (??) at worst. I may be wrong but the idea of that being a modern benchmark for treason is ludicrous.
Reading a person their rights (actually known as Miranda Rights) anytime they arrest someone. The Miranda rights have little to do with being arrested & more to do with questioning a suspect. If an officer suspects a person of a crime & wishes to question them he/she must advise the suspect of their rights, arrested or not. Likewise, if an officer arrests someone but doesn’t intend to question the person yet the rights don’t have to be read yet.
DUI, caught in the act, general annoying of everybody…the list is endless. They arrest you, transport you, then think about questioning you, if they need to.