Nobody has window screens.
Shows are forever showing people throwing stuff out the window, or popping thier heads out the window, and there is never a screen in the way.
No one ever has an SO for longer than an episode unless its a plot point. The ex-SO is never mentioned nor seen again.
I don’t know how it was in y’alls houses growing up but if you were just dying to get yelled at in my home you left the front door open whle coming in from outside. What’s with all these shows having people walk through the front door and just leaving it open? Are they air conditioning the neighborhood? Do they not mind if there are a constant parade of insects flying around? Then again I could be bias sense I grew up in Texas where it was hot and flies as large as Cadillacs were known to come in from outdoors.
Another thing that bugs the hell out of me is the vocabulary of some of these characters. I’m sorry but there is no way they are making a brilliant point and using 10 dollar words at the age of 13. I am by no means a genius but even I have to look up some of the words these kids use as ordinary lingo. If they are actualy talking this way as normal “teen speak” then they should all be valedictorians and have graduated from Anywhere High a long time ago.
The local cops always resent and despise any official personnel from outside their town… FBI, Marshals, out-of-town cops, military… anybody. They actually seem to try to PREVENT the outsider from catching the serial killers or aliens or whatever.
Here’s one that I find jarring, even more so than the 555 phone numbers:
You rarely hear “Happy Birthday”. Instead, when a character has a birthday, you’ll hear different song, and the song will vary from show to show. For me this just throws all suspension of disbelief at the window for some reason.
I know that the song is copyrighted and it can’t be used in a show without paying royalties, but I can’t imagine that it would be that prohibitively expensive. Cheapskates.
Everyone lives in houses or apartments that they’d NEVER be able to afford with the jobs they have. Seinfeld is a great example. How does Kramer find the money to live in his apartment?
People on TV never worry about cleaning up. They will spill paint/food/mud all over the place, have a pillowfight until the feathers are everywhere, drive a car through the house, shoot at building making every single window break, or engage in other activities that you know will make a huge mess but who cleans all of this up? They never worry about it and the mess just magically dissapears in time for the next scene. Ehh, i hate TV.
I actually want to see the Quest for a Parking Space become a plot point.
Damsel in distress is in danger of being eaten by the MOTW because the hero can’t find a place to park the Angelmobile.
Of course, I want to make a movie that has a plot that revolved around the notion that Anything You Could Possibly Need is in a woman’s purse. Kleenex, flashlight, Kalashnikov…
Then there’s the ever-popular Pregnancy Death Exemption. No pregnant woman can ever be killed in a motion picture unless she a) doesn’t want the baby or b) is contemplating leaving the baby’s father, in which case she will die horribly.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned the GREATEST ALL TIME TV/Movie cliche.
Someone makes a phone call and the caller has just found out who the murderer, embezzler, villain is. But they can’t tell the other person right then and there while they are on the phone. NO !! They set up a meeting place (almost always at night) and in a VERY deserted area. The person that received the cal gets there just in time to see the caller - get run over by a speeding car - get shot a couple of times - get stabbed in the back as the killer runs away, etc.
Why do TV/Movie car crashes no matter how slight involve cars flipping over and cars exploding? How often does that happen in reality ?
To add to wolf_meister. Car crashes will be big flaming deals even if the car involved has been shown to be running out of gas. No fender-benders. If you so much as look at a car wrong it’ll blow.
When they show that the character is looking through binoculars by having binocular-shaped pictures.
A beautiful woman with long hair will drive by in a convertible. Her hair will be streaming out behind her, usually in slow motion. Every time I’ve driven a convertible (I’ve had two), my hair blows forward.
Julie
James Cameron calls this the “Light of Imagination.” I read an interview with him when * Titanic * was released in which he talked about the scene in which the two main characters are in the water after the ship sank. On the real night in question, it was pitch-black, with no moon. Cameron said, reasonably enough, that IRL starlight wouldn’t have provided enough light to see by, and so he used the soft, blue light as illumination for the scene, hoping it wouldn’t intrude upon the “realism” he was going for.
After watching “The Last Action Hero”, I felt like they missed a zillion opportunities to make fun of established movie cliches. They only touched like 7 or 8.
Related to the Mac/PC thing, I’ve seen so many examples where the computer is clearly one or the other, but is running the wrong operating system. You’d think the people who do that, who would have to work on a computer to make that happen, would point out a discrepancy like that.
Actually, numerous Seinfeld episodes have done this. Remember, this was a show that devoted an entire episode to looking for your car in a mall parking garage. They’ve actually had shows devoted to many of the mundane things we’ve mentioned here. They even had Jerry get called by a telemarketer once, which resulted in a great joke, but had no bearing on the rest of the plot.
If you do something highly irrational to win back the guy/girl, it will ALWAYS work, presuming you are the lead character in the show/film. For example, flying from L.A. to Chicago to try to win back the girl you lost. (This just happened in real life to a friend of mine. She was the girl in Chicago. And she didn’t take him back.)
(Granted, they WANTED to, but still.)
I do, to see the caller ID display. Especially late at night I like to know who’s calling before I pick up the phone.
Speaking of caller ID, it’s been around for what, ten years now, and virtually everyone I know has it, but yet (as far as I’ve seen) it’s never used in modern-day TV shows or in movies, probably because most plot devices involving the telephone only work if the person receiving the call does not know ahead of time who it is.
True. The Simpsons does a great job making fun of this.
The way people start kissing is pretty loony in a lot of movies. I’ve NEVER seen people - even people with some sexual tension between them - start making out in the middle of a heated argument. Likewise, except for previously established couples of course, I’ve never seen people just decide to go at it because they’re bored and in the same room.
Another thing: people in movies/TV seem much better at picking up romantic hints. I was once in a situation with a girl that fit this bill, and there was PLENTY of silence (since I was too embarrassed to explain myself) before she got what I was hinting at. 
Perhaps all these things happen in LA and nowhere else.
I live in Seattle and neither I or anyone I know has Caller ID outside of their cell-phone.
Regular people who SOLVE CRIME. There’s been a grisly murder, and Jim’s been arrested, but since he’s a noble black man™, and the local cops are fat, slovenly rednecks™ it’s up to Jim’s best friend and the girl they’ve both been trying to woo to free him before he gets executed (because in movies, executions happen quickly, and with a minimum of fuss). Luckily, two or so regular schmoes are good enough amateur cops to wrap everything up (though often with the help of the one enlightened, liberal cop™ who goes against the system to help them.
Also, I hate TV shows where nothing changes – people lose their jobs, but get them back in one day, they never go broke, never get rich, never move, never anything – until the last episode, where they invariably make a major life decision and head out to a new life. Which we don’t get to see.
By the way, the 555-phone number thing is done so they don’t give out real phone numbers. Bruce Almighty didn’t do this, and people with the phone numbers used in the movie are complaining about the dozens of calls they’re getting daily. They’re most unhappy. Anybody who has the phone number 867-5309 can probably relate. 