Cop sitting at a computer, another cop standing behind them looking at same screen over their shoulder (because reasons).
“Okay, give me a list of everyone who went to a middle school west of the Mississippi River between 1986 and 1993… who had an L or an R in their middle name… and sat fewer than 3 desks away from a Presbyterian… and roots for a Western Conference NBA team, and had a vegetarian aunt.”
click click clack.
“5 results. Here are their current addresses.”
You know good and damned well there’s no databasing like that.
Of course it doesn’t happen in real life - how often do homicide detectives show up to talk to you about some heinous crime? (Ok, maybe 2-3 times a week if you are New Yorker in the 1980s.) In Law and Order it was an unrealistic but useful dramatic device, because it’s visually more interesting than watching people just standing still and talking. But the fact that it happened like clockwork as part of the routine set of scenes in every single episode turned it into a standing in-joke for devotees of the show, I think.
I don’t think that’s what it is. You actually see the same thing in print literature where this doesn’t apply. (Not so much the guy continuing to do his thing, but the disinterest in talking to the cops and eagerness to get back to whatever mundane task he was doing.)
I think it’s about making the obstacles facing the detectives greater, in that they have to overcome the disinterest/disinclination of the witnesses (among other obstacles). And yet, despite it all, they manage to solve the case and bust the perps!
Next you’ll tell me that working chemistry labs aren’t stuffed full of huge, elaborate arrays of test tubes, glass piping, and Erlenmeyer flasks full of brightly-colored liquids bubbling over Bunsen burners!
IANA scientist, so I don’t know what a real chem lab looks like. But I suspect that the six-foot racks of laboratory glassware that look like a hamster run on steroids is Hollywood exaggeration, just to establish that a character is one a’ them brainy scientist-types. Probably wearing glasses and a lab coat.
This is probably also the motivation behind the “cryptic, yet all-knowing advisor” trope. Don’t leave me vague, but actually useful, clues for me to figure out. That’s about the worst thing you could do. You either want me to solve the mystery or not. Giving me a half-assed yet truthful answer isn’t helping you toward either goal. But it makes the heroes look soooo much more heroic!
I will not tell you that! In fact, physics labs have lasers so powerful they burn holes though the walls if pointed at them, yet teenagers can easily work this equipment - don’t worry, they wear protective goggles (which apparently the laser can’t burn through). Also, lasers can be easily redirected to any direction using a sequence of ordinary mirrors, which can be aligned perfectly on the first try just by eyeballing.
Well I would say it is both.
In a long-running episodic show, it can be nice to give episodes a background theme, so instead of a standard interview in a private room (that might visually be hard to distinguish from an interview of a perp at the station) we get say, a tennis coach, walking along courtside with the cops while people are still practicing in the background, and maybe he’s even still giving some instructions. And the cops get to use various tennis puns.
(Actually this made me think a funny example would be a diving instructor, and the cops needing to put on full diving gear to follow him while he continues to do his job )
One show that used it very consistently was Columbo, where the murderers generally brushed off Columbo in this manner in the early stages. In that series, it’s likely that it was intended to convey the initial hubris of the murderers and their dismissal of the unassuming Columbo, only to have him steadily close in on them.
This never struck me as strange - but that’s probably because I never assumed that they were working overtime just because they were working during the day and at night. And that’s because at my non-police agency, the officers work 37.5 hours a week. Whichever 37.5 hours fit their caseload. They don’t work 8-4 Tuesday through Saturday - they might work 6am to 8:30 am Tuesday and then again from 5-10 Tuesday night.
That’s definitely a common trope, but I can think of one counter example. In the 2005 remake of Fever Pitch, a high-earning businesswoman agrees, with some trepidation, to a date with a schoolteacher. But when he arrives to pick her up, she tells him she’s sick; she ate at this new place, and she has to cancel. At first he thinks she might be faking to get out of the date, but when he hears her vomiting in the bathroom, he goes in and takes care of her all night, thus proving his good guy cred.
A man who is drinking down his rotten luck and sorrows late at night in a bar alone gets the best advice in the world from a total stranger unsolicited and later when his life turns around in a happy ending that stranger is there at a distance, never revealing himself, but proud.
Conversely, the guy on top of the world, drinking in a crowded club/bar is approached by a silent, lone stranger who ends up assassinating the drinker after a long, prolonged, non-silent gunfight.
Tripler
. . . with lots of broken glass and people scrambling off the dance floor.
(tangent)
I recommend not doing this IRL, unless you think there’s a likelihood of them being in danger. When I’ve had a stomach bug, I really resented people insisting on coming to look after me, since it just added to my discomfort (while at the same time I understand it is a nice gesture).
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