Things that bug you that are standard in film/TV

Cafe Society
41

Every shot of a city has to show some famous landmark so us unedjukated types know what city it is, even if there is a caption that says so.

So there will be a shot of a city with the Effiel tower, and it will say “Paris” (no shit, Sherlock!) Ditto for London with Big Ben, Seattle with the Space Needle, Giza with pyramids, Moscow with the Kremlin, Germany with the Reichstag(sp?) building etc etc.

The lighting bugs me too. This gets really funny, though, in movies like “Pitch Black” where the characters are SUPPOSED to be in total darkness, but there is some mysterious electrical light source dimly illuminating everything from off-camera. I understand they’re kind of limited in how they can show it- they couldn’t show the whole movie in total darkness/through Vin Diesel’s cyber-peepers but I would have hoped they could have come up with something a bit more creative between the booze torches and glow worms.

42

Not true. I read an entertainment column a while ago (I think it was in USA Today) where the popularity of Macs --specifically, the iMac-- in film and TV was examined. The reason it appears so often was said to be because a) For a while it was the ONLY computer with a more-than-functional appearance. It’s actually a little bit stylish. b) The entire machine is contained in one box, with a minimum of cords to run, making it easier to use as a prop.

But speaking of computers, notice how in every show that has a designated “computer expert,” that person is always wearing glasses? Why? And don’t even get me started on the whole glasses = nerd thing.

Small towns are always portrayed as either full of racist rednecks or loveable, goofy eccentrics.

There are tons of fake blondes everywhere, but nobody ever has a bad dye job.

In Showbiz-land, good-looking people are always great in bed. Fat people (who are considered by definition unnattractive), on the other hand, never have sex at all.

43

[quote]
You rarely see the same outfit twice. (Exceptions: Edith and Archie Bunker often wore the same clothes for several seasons, and Tyne Daly on Cagney & Lacey wore the same outfit several times.)

[quote]

And, on the other hand, on cartoons, no-one ever changes their outfit ever, unless the plot requires it.

44

How about whenever someone opens a gift, the box top is always wrapped separately from the box, so it can be easily opened without the requisite tearing and scattering of wrapping paper. Maybe in Martha Stewart’s house, but not in mine.

45

When computer displays are always huge, and text is always gigantic, and interfaces are always on some weird sort of preschool age level of design.

When hackers navigate some incredibly obvious, literal, visualized digital architecture.

This is a “Buffy” one: last few years, it seemed almost all highly obscure supernatural-related information in the world just happened to be available on the Internet.

An “I Love Lucy” one: at night, everyone is always dressed impeccably at home, when they’re not even going out for the night. And sometimes they get all duded up even when they’re just going to be playing cards.

Why is it that so many people don’t have TVs? Or if they do, why don’t they ever watch them?

No one ever has “problem” skin.

Some characters never ever wear the same clothing twice, like they have bottomless closets. Doesn’t everyone in real life have some favorite clothes they wear more often than other clothes?

Some shows, like “ER” for example, are supposed to be set in actual locations (Chicago) but when they mention streets and locations, they’re always either physically impossible (an intersection of two parallel-running streets), or else half made-up.

The whole 555-phone number thing. Aren’t there any other fake numbers that can be used? And sometimes, even when the characters are just dialing on the phone and you can’t see it, you can HEAR that they’re dialing a 555-phone number.

That whole “heroes use Macs, villains use PCs” thing.

Characters get from one location to the next magically. Do they own a car? Do they take a train?

In some homes, objects and decor are never ever moved. A vase can sit on a shelf for years, without even collecting dust.

46

Crawling through ductwork. Also known as “ventilation shaft navigation”. a standard way of sneaking around in action & sci-fi flicks. I’ve installed ductwork, and most of it you can’t fit in. Even in large, industrial buildings. And the return ducts on a large system that you could fit in, you’d make so much goddamm noise crawling around them. And you’d get filthy doing it.

Shooting the tires of a moving car with a pistol from a second moving car. If anyone can actually do this, they’re a better shot than Lee Harvey Oswald.

I’ll think of more.

47

People don’t laugh! How many sitcoms have you seen where one character makes a great quip that sends the laugh track howling, but the other characters just stand there, not even grinning, waiting to say their next line?

As others have mentioned, anything computer-related is absurd, even when it doesn’t add anything to the plot. For example, in one episode of Malcolm in the Middle, the nerdy kids try to persuade Malcolm to wait with them outside a store at midnight for the new release of - get this - NORTON ANTIVIRUS!

What do they expect to do? Run home with their new purchases and relish the joys of a ten-minute virus scan? Whoo hoo, lookit how fast them filenames go by!

48

Well, granted, these are nerdy kids. Maybe they do. :wink:

In most sitcoms, if everybody shares a table for a meal half the family will be bunched up to leave an entire side of the table empty. This is even more absurd in the “family’s over for Thanksgiving so the whiny teen gets to sit at the little kids’ table” episodes.

49

They never watch TV …
When the person on screen phones someone they answer the phone instantly …
They never use the toilet …
They always find a foreigner who can speak perfect English …
Their computers never seem to crash …

50

I second dwc1970’s comments about the moon and add that in movies the moon is full far more frequently than it is in the real world, and it’s always full when something very romantic is happening in a cheesy romantic comedy. Often the moon stays full for many days in a row.

Women in movies wear front-fastening bras way more often than the women I know. And even the lowest paid working girl in the movies has beautiful silky impractical underwear. And it’s always easy for her guy to get her underwear off her, even in the heated madness of their first impetuous fall into bed.

51

I hate the magical disappearing corpse. You know, when the heroine or hero finds a body in their living room or in the trunk of a car or down in the old mine. Then after they run panic stricken to call the cops, the body is gone and everything is back in it’s place. No blood and nothing broken. Even if this means that the bad guys have somehow managed to hoover huge blood stains out of car upholstery. (This happened a lot in the X-Files whenever the mysterious organization once again had to leave Mulder with no evidence.)

Some of the things mentioned above are just cinematic shorthand. OK, yeah, so the hero never has to look for a parking space. But who wants to watch someone cruise around looking for a parking space? Time is precious when you’re trying to fit everything into a 1 hour TV show.

52

When I was in elementary school, we always traded classes-but always as a complete class, or sometimes mixed. But then, I went to a Catholic school, so my experience may not be typical.

High school-there’s always a super popular crowd and the majorly nerdy crowd. And people in between ALWAYS want to be popular and kiss up and complain about not being popular.

No one I knew gave a SHIT about who was popular and who wasn’t-of course, I went to a small high school, but everyone just had their own little group, and we knew people from classes and such, but there wasn’t one big monolith popular crowd.

Oh, and there’s always someone saying, “You HAVE to drink/smoke/do drugs or we’ll make fun of you forever.” No one I knew gave a rat’s ass if you smoked or drank or whatever.

And everything’s so black and white. In my high school, some nerds were popular, some people who would be popular weren’t, etc.

And people always eat breakfast together. What the hell? My family only eats breakfast together on Christmas Day and Easter.

The upstairs-there’s a stairway in the living room AND a stairway in the kitchen! I have never seen this-ever.

53

Ripping clothes off prior to sex. Not everybody has so many clothes that they’d rather destroy them than take them off.

I don’t mind Sex and the City, but I think the amount of outfits are obscene. Actually, on TV and in movies, everybody in New York City has a GREAT apartment, even though they’re impossible to find and mind-blowingly expensive in real life.

54

Oh, here’s another: news and sports announcers. Neither talks even remotely like their real-world equivalent (which is, I suppose, not necessarily a curse). But you’d think SOME writer would have an idea how the news is supposed to sound.
Sports is worse. EVERY sporting event on EVERY level has announcers. Not only that, but they give their commentary over the public address system, which I’ve never ever seen, in order to relay obvious plot information. It’s so unrealistic it annoys me.

55

Bullets (or thrown metal weapons) which miss and richochet always throw sparks from whatever surface they hit, even wood or concrete.

The whole business of being hit on the ehad and knocked unconcious. Getting knocked out by a blow to the head means a severe concussion at least, and quite possibly brain damage, but on TV or the movies you always wake up with no lasting damage.

56

You’re not wrong in principle, but this isn’t really true. I’ve been knocked out (I think) and didn’t have a concussion, much less a severe one.

57

Sitcom characters that are supposed to be middle-class or working class often seem to have a closet full of expensive designer clothes. Rosanne Arnold, I’m looking at you. This was one thing that I liked about Home Improvement: everyone dressed like normal middle-class Americans. Tim (when he wasn’t hosting Tool Time) usually wore jeans and a t-shirt, and Jill usually wore a plain ol’ sweater.

58

I don’t know, alot of the Mexicans I’ve worked with will do it occasionally…I’ll even do it with them too.

59

Homes deep in the suburbs are always within walking distance of downtown. Kids have no trouble walking from their house to town, of course not ever getting lost.

60

Ah, it’s a fighting game.