# Things that bug you about It's A Wonderful Life **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 25, 2003, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941 "2003-12-25T01:45:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/21 "2003-12-25T04:40:33Z")
scared a librarian? you get 8-to life for that here. 😉 vanillla,who notices an attractive librarian at her library.:o ---
**Author:** ![Krisfer\_the\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Krisfer\_the\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krisfer_the_Cat)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/22 "2003-12-25T04:43:16Z")
I saw it years and years ago as a teen. M dad had raved about it forEVER. So I watched it with him. I had the feeling after it was over that I needed a shower. It was just such a dreary little film… made want a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200 shot range Model Air Rifle! **if for no other reason than to SHOOT the cast of AWL** ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/23 "2003-12-25T04:48:53Z")
For me the part about Mary - gasp - becoming a librarian (as if that was so horrible) just ruined the movie for me. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/24 "2003-12-25T04:51:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by NoClueBoy \* > **You’re brother wasn’t there to save them becuase you weren’t there to save him."** Is this your mistake? ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/25 "2003-12-25T04:55:01Z")
It’s supposed to be “your” and not “you’re” because “you’re” is a contraction of “you are.” ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/26 "2003-12-25T04:55:24Z")
yes ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/27 "2003-12-25T05:33:10Z")
We watched it a few years ago. It’s very dark and grim for a Christmas “classic”, I thought. Make sure and stay in your small town! Let “duty” and stuff guilt trip you into staying in a crummy small town, your dreams are unimportant otherwise. Interesting related article: “All Hail Pottersville!” from Salon. [http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/12/22/pottersville/index.html?sid=1062306](http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/12/22/pottersville/index.html?sid=1062306) ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/28 "2003-12-25T05:34:26Z")
YAY! I rule. Okay no, not really…just let me have this one, K? ---
**Author:** ![drpepper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8baadc/32.png) [@drpepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drpepper)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/29 "2003-12-25T05:39:28Z")
I like the fact that, even in the real Bedford Falls, Martini’s bar is packed and hopping on Christmas Eve. The teacher’s husband is there, even with his wife at home previously reduced to tears earlier in the evening by George’s phone conversation. Huh. What a wonderful bunch of God-fearing townfolk. Nonetheless I too _still_ cry at every viewing. (_sniff_) ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/30 "2003-12-25T05:45:52Z")
Good one, **DrPepper**! I missed that little problem. ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/31 "2003-12-25T05:52:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Wrong Girl \* > \*\*I used to love this movie, and I watched it again last night, and the main message of it really bothered me. I mean, “yeah, your life sucks, but just be happy about it.” \*\* I disagree on this one. I think that the only real reason that George was always unhappy was that he was continuously worried about what he _didn’t_ have, that he never took the time to look at what he _did_ have. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Yeah, sure, world travel and riches is everyone’s goal and it sounds pretty sweet. But having a lot of friends and a great family is pretty damn cool, too. He needed to stop his life for a second to realize that his version of “success” wasn’t necessarily the best one. While he was waiting to succeed, he had already achieved more success than many dream of. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Wrong Girl \* > Donna Reed was gorgeous in that movie, though, wasn’t she? \*\* Donna Reed was gorgeous in pretty much anything, as far as I’m concerned. ---
**Author:** ![Roadwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19b73/32.png) [@Roadwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadwalker)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/32 "2003-12-25T05:52:36Z")
I don’t like how the bush Mary is hiding in shakes. It’s too unrealistic and looks like a crewman is shaking it, not a naked woman. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/33 "2003-12-25T06:30:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by NoClueBoy \* > \*\*Sometimes, the dark parts work. Like the graveyard. “Every man on that transport died, George. You’re brother wasn’t there to save them becuase you weren’t there to save him.” Feel the pathos. That was a cool line in a cool scene. \*\* That quote always bugged me. “Yes, George, because there weren’t TONS of other brave pilots around, all those men died. Because EVERY OTHER PILOT in the U.S. airforce was a crosseyed jackass masturbating in his cockpit, incapable of performing heroic deeds, all those men died.” I ran across an interesting term while reading about Harry Turtledove and his alternate histories: the second-order counterfactual. According to this notion, if one small event is changed in a timeline, something else is probably going to occur to bring the timeline back on course because, well, 99.999999 percent of events WEREN’T changed, and the momentum of all those events not being changed is hard to derail. So if George’s brother wasn’t there, pilot Bob Smith or whoever would have been there to do the saving. In any case, I quite enjoyed the movie – “what if” scenarios are a favorite of mine – although I don’t feel the need to ever see it again. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/34 "2003-12-25T06:45:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Snooooopy \* > \*\*That quote always bugged me. > > “Yes, George, because there weren’t TONS of other brave pilots around, all those men died. Because EVERY OTHER PILOT in the U.S. airforce was a crosseyed jackass masturbating in his cockpit, incapable of performing heroic deeds, all those men died.” > \*\* I always accepted it for “He wasn’t in the right place at the right time” and thus event Y happened instead of Event X. There probably were other pilots around, but maybe they weren’t fast enough or decided to go after another plane and missed the ones that hit the transport. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/35 "2003-12-25T06:48:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Baldwin \* > \*\* > I love the fact that Mary’s horrible fate in the alternate history is to be… **the spinster librarian**! How awful, not to be able to fulfill her womanly existence by marrying and pumpin’ out babies. > \*\* What always bugged me and the rest of my family was: “So nobody else EVER wants to marry Mary? And of course, if she never meets george, she becomes as mousey as humanly possible?” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/36 "2003-12-25T06:51:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Krisfer the Cat \* > \*\*I saw it years and years ago as a teen. M dad had raved about it forEVER. So I watched it with him. I had the feeling after it was over that I needed a shower. It was just such a dreary little film… made want a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200 shot range Model Air Rifle! > **if for no other reason than to SHOOT the cast of AWL** \*\* You’ll shoot your eye out, kid. I remember one critic describing this movie as “Capra-corn” and I couldn’t put it better. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/37 "2003-12-25T06:57:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by wolf\_meister \* > \*\*Okay 2 things bother me: > > 1. At the very end of the Pottersville segment, Bert the cop fires his gun at an escaping George Bailey. What law had he broken? Mary the librarian was frightened that “some man” was following her. Wow, Pottersville had aserious police brutality problem !!! \*\* And of course the fact that Bert and Ernie get on this guy for wanting to explore an old abandoned house. How horrible. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/38 "2003-12-25T07:03:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by HPL \* > \*\*I always accepted it for “He wasn’t in the right place at the right time” and thus event Y happened instead of Event X. There probably were other pilots around, but maybe they weren’t fast enough or decided to go after another plane and missed the ones that hit the transport. \*\* Yeah, I’m kind of being contrary for contrariness’ sake. But it is fun to ponder the ramifications of altering events in a timeline, as well as the idea that a timeline can “heal” itself when something is altered. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/39 "2003-12-25T07:06:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Baldwin \* > \*\* When Gower examines the medicine and realizes that he had misfilled the prescription and almost given a poisonous dose to a sick child, his expression is a bit of great acting by H.B. Warner. Gower is a good man seen in a terrible moment in his life. > > Wasn’t he Jesus in the 1927 KING OF KINGS? > By the way, did you ever see the parody they did on SNL, where Uncle Billy suddenly realizes that Potter got the money, and the whole gang breaks into Potter’s house and beats him to death? > > My brother had just said two weeks prior to that airing- “I wish they had a scene where Uncle Billy remembers.” > \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2003, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941/40 "2003-12-25T08:09:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by vanilla \* > \*\*I’ve never seen it. > Really. > Whats its about? \*\* What it’s about: [spoiler]The main character is the owner of the town of Bedford Falls’ Building and Loan, George Bailey. Bailey is an intelligent, ambitious man, who, his entire life, has had one dream in life…to get out of Bedford Falls, and become a success. However, he’s always been trapped in town by his sense of responsibility (after his father died, he found himself forced to take over the Building and Loan to prevent it’s acquisition by the town plutocrat and rival banker, the evil Mr. Potter). On Christmas Eve, George’s drunken Uncle Billy takes a $8000 deposit (of the bank’s funds) to Mr. Potter’s bank. Unfortunately, he puts the money inside a newspaper he’s carrying (showing that George’s brother is going to receive a medal from the president for saving a troopship in WWII), and forgets he’s carrying it. Uncle Billy throws the newspaper on Potter’s desk to gloat, and thereby loses the money. When he realizes it’s lost, he goes back to tell George he can’t find the money. Meanwhile, a bank examiner has come to the Building and Loan to inspect its books. George, hearing that Uncle Billy lost the money knows that he’s ruined. When the bank examiner discovers $8000 is missing, the assumption will be that George embezzled it. George’s reputation will be ruined and he will probably go to jail. He goes to Potter to beg for a loan of the money, but Potter just laughs at him. Distraught, George ponders his life insurance policy, and comes to the conclusion that he’s worth more dead than alive. The suicidal George goes to a bridge and is ready to jump to his death, when he sees a man fall into the water. Instead of jumping in and drowning, George saves the man. It turns out that the man he saved is really an angel (in training) named Clarence. Clarence knows what George is about to do, and was sent by God to stop him (and in fact, the beginning of the movie is a flashback of George’s life up to that night, described to Clarence in heaven). To save George, Clarence shows him what the town would be like if he had never existed. Without George to stop him, Mr. Potter has managed to take over the town, and the formerly wholesome, middle class Bedford Falls has turned into decadent, slum ridden Pottersville. (Without the Business and Loan, the people of Bedford Falls were unable to get cheap mortgages to own their own homes.) His wife, Mary, is now a spinster librarian, and his childhood employer, Mr. Gower, is now a bum. (George worked in Mr. Gower’s pharmacy as a child, and prevented him from accidentally poisoning a young child…without George, there was nothing to stop Mr. Gower from screwing up the prescription). Finally, because George as a boy was unable to save his brother from drowning, his brother died, and never was able to save the American troopship, so all the soldiers on the ship died. Seeing how terrible things are, George realizes that he did make a difference, and that he’s not a failure after all, and he goes home to his family. When he gets there, he sees that his friends and all the people who he helped have gathered there, and they take up a collection for him, paying off the $8000 debt. The clocks chime midnight, and George, his family and friends break into “For Auld Lang Syne”, George realizing that he’s a rich man because he has friends.[/spoiler] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-its-a-wonderful-life/220941.md?page=3)