Whenever somebody is murdered by the villian, 9 times out of 10, the hero will run in, notice the body, notice the murder weapon nearby, and then, like an idiot, proceed to get his fingerprints all over the murder weapon, and sometimes be caught holding it when the cops get there.
None of the characters apparently have ever heard of “Crime Scene Preservation”.
Snip…Brother what’s-his-name from Happy Days. Used to live in the attic above the garage for a while, and played basicball.
After a season or so he just disappeared, and apparently(so I’ve been told), in the later seasons(by which time I had stopped watching), the dad says “I’ve raised two great childern”(obviously referring to Richie and Jodie).
Nobody ever mentions the brother again.
Chuck. Gone after the first season. They never acknowledged his existance again. Poor guy, disowned by his family like that.
I had a locker in elementary school, but we weren’t allowed to put locks on them. And we did sometimes go to other rooms for reading and math, but it was just across the hall or the next room over, not all over the building. They mixed us up according to what level we were on.
Back on topic…
The house thing Sampiro mentioned drives me nuts as well. No one’s ‘establishing shot’ of the house matches the interior.
I don’t know anyone with two staircases, but on TV, lots of people have them.
Everyone, without fail, even if they have a dishwasher, will have a wooden dishrack by the sink with dishes in it all the time.
In addition to having the sofa in the middle of the room, they always have the phone on a side table by the sofa. Where’s the cord for it? Under the rug?
Hasn’t anyone mentioned the grocery bags that are required to have French bread and carrots with the leafy greens sticking out of the top of them? Every freaking time!
And if the grocery bags are going to be dropped, they must be full of round produce like apples and oranges that will roll and cause people to trip.
Pregnant women. If one gets on an elevator, the elevator will get stuck and she’ll go into labor. Guaranteed.
The “house” (hotel) in Fawlty Towers seemed pretty accurate to me.
HPL writes: “Brother what’s-his-name from Happy Days…
After a season or so he just dosappeared…”
On Seinfeld, George Costanza is supposed to have a brother. George mentions him a few times, but the brother never appears, nor do his parents ever talk about him. It’s as if he exists only in George’s imagination.
I have a special peeve with T2. They spend the whole movie hammering on the T-1000 with weapons they KNOW won’t hurt it and never bother to try acid or electrocution or getting it to chase them onto a boat in the middle of the ocean so they can sink him and have a few weeks of breathing room while it walks to shore.
Isn’t it obvious? The weapons slow him down.
Joanie.
Also, in the first season, “Arnolds” was called “Arthurs” and the Fonz (known then only as Fonzie) didn’t have a leather jacket.
I’m peeved by bad bondage in the movies and on TV, in fact, I’ve got a website devoted to it: The Damsel in Distress Hall of Shame, aka The Loosie Awards. It’s here:
http://www.jollyroper.com/halloshame/index.html
We’re not talking about subtle stuff like poor choice of knots or bad frapping and wrapping here. We’re talking about damsels whose hands are encased in manacles that are about twice the diameter of their wrists (happened a lot on BtVS). But perhaps the best instance was Adrienne Barbeau in the movie “Swamp Thing.” She had to actually keep her fists clenched to keep the manacles looking effective (not uncommon, actually). Well, maybe the worst is in “House of 1000 Dolls” where the damsel’s wrist accidentally slips out of her manacle during a whipping, so the actress grabs the manacle and hangs on so they can get the scene in one take.
We’re talking about damsels who are tied in ropes so loose that the actress has to stay VERY STILL to keep them from coming off (Connie Selleca had a problem of this nature in “Beyond Westworld”).
Along the same lines, we’re talking about gags that are so loose and/or badly tied that they will fall off if the damsel doesn’t actually clamp down on them with her teeth. The worst example of this would be stuff gag, something just stuffed n the mouth, like the doll stuffed in Kirsten Dunst’s mouth in “Small Soldiers.”
We’re also talking about thin little cleave gags that clearly wouldn’t inhibit a damsel’s speech in any way, but which are miraculously supposed to keep them quiet (as seen in “Shadow Dancer,” in which the actress actually has to close her mouth over the gag so her responses to her kidnapper’s questions will at least sound muffled.
Probably the worst, most commonplace mistake is tying a damsel’s hands in front of her, thus “immobilizing” her and then leaving her alone. This actually does little to prevent a damsel from using her hands, in fact, in “Murder in Mind” Kristin Davis’ character manages to escape from the chairs she’s tied to, crawl across the floor, pick up a gun and kill the villain (who’s stabbed her boyfriend) while still gagged and tied at wrists and ankles (her tied wrists even force her to use a proper police two-handed grip on the pistol).
Well, I could go on. But then I’d just need my medications. Let’s just say things are bad out there.
That would be in character for George. Nothing surprises me about him.
There’s also Bobby Martin from All My Children. He was the 9 year old brother of Tara. Seen a few times, went up to the attic to polish his skis, and never returned. I think there was a reference to him being in a military academy once.
link to Henry Winkler talking about Fonzie’s windbreaker ('bout halfway through)
If memory serves, somebody actually designed a clock (shaped like a baseball, I think) that you could shut off by throwing. Don’t know if it worked. I’ve never REALLY seen anyone do this - most clocks are plugged into the wall, which makes throwing less practical. But I can’t even imagine the number of times I’ve WANTED to do it. I think I’ll have to at some point, just so I know how it feels.
In car chases, when the first car goes through the red light, I can understand squealing brakes and crashes from other cars. But the other cars never stop before the chasing car goes through - even if it is a police car with siren blaring.
Ditto the big apartment rented by people who can’t afford it comment. The big apartment always has a great view also.
In shows set in foreign countries, all the characters can speak the language perfectly, and we never see foreign signs - except for the famous “Gaz” that always showed up in Mission Impossible.
Sex scenes - first, the woman is usually wearing something. Second, the positions would never work.
I meant to mention the positions thing earlier. When you stop having sex with someone, abruptly or not, you can’t just ROLL apart. That’s what happens 10 times out of 10 in the movies or TV - the guy just rolls off the girl. 
The guys are doing something wrong if they can do that.
People never lock doors when they’re leaving their homes, or after they’ve entered, even if they live in the roughest neighborhood.
The PI enters his hotel room/house/office, using a key, turns on the light and sees the villain/police detective (sans warrant)/pesky wannabe client sitting at the PI’s desk/in his living room chair.
Cops are always “tuning up” suspects in the interrogation room (see NYPD Blue) and nobody ever gets sued, and evidence is never thrown out of court because it was obtained under duress. Cops can take anybody “downtown” anytime without a warrant or even a pretense of probable cause.
All defense lawyers are brilliant in court…unless it’s Law and Order, in which case the prosecutors are. IRL I’ve seen lawyers in courtrooms whom you’d think needed help getting dressed, much less getting through law school.
Actually, in * The Producers *, there’s a visual joke where Max goes to visit one of his clients and has to wait a minute or so for the client to finish unlocking all the bolts on the other side.
Probably been done - Whenever the person at the other end hangs up (unexpectedly) the actor says ‘hello’ twice. It’s always twice. There’s no-one listening dude, they hung up, you are saying hello to your phone.
Okay, ya got me! I’ve seen that and a few others where people, usually paranoid people, have ten or fifteen bolts on their doors. But often…
No matter how primitive the living conditions are for the Indians, refugees, desert tribesmen, etc., there’s always at least one girl in the group who has perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair, shaved legs, and has miraculously avoided ever getting pregnant, even though she’s in her mid-20’s and lives in a culture where women are typically married off as soon as they start to grow pubic hair.
As a corrollary: this girl is totally uninterested in any of the fine specimens of manhood in her own tribe, preferring instead to chase the strange white man who just wandered into camp one day, and will likely leave pretty soon.
The pregnant woman’s husband/boyfriend, taking her to the hospital for the delivery, always descends into a state of total panic as soon as he hears “my water just broke”.
All baby deliveries are “natural”, with all the screaming and thrashing and cursing, etc. Do women really enjoy pain that much?