The business with the toilet in the Beaver episode? I remember it well.
I believe Larry’s last name was Mondello, not Mundelow.
Something in the same area as the ‘long story’ trope:
Characters are in some sort of a sticky situation and one of them has come up with a plan. Camera zooms in slowly on them and the music as they confidently state ‘here’s what we’re gonna do…’ music then drops off and the screen fades to black, usually for an ad break edit or a jump to the execution of the plan. There’s usually quite a pause in the speech before the edit. It amuses me to imagine the action continuing, with the othrr characters stood there, motioning for them to continue, going ‘yeh, and…? What’s the plan? Why did you pause? Get on with it man!’
There came a point in every single police procedural from the 70s to the 2000s when cops would go into a bar full of shady characters, and for some reason the entire bar decides to go beat up these cops over a minor thing which there’s really no good ending for these bar patrons, as even if they win the fight they’re all still going to jail.
It seemed like every episode of Walker Texas Ranger involved local bar thugs trying to beat up Officer Walker, and also Walker never seemed to just pull his gun out to end the potential bar fight and went out of his way to beat them up.
The final scene where two people hold guns pointed at each other, and then stop for a 3-minute conversation , in which they reveal all the loose ends in the plot.
The guys with guns know each other. Maybe the bad guy is family member, or a rogue cop-gone-bad. The good guy bursts in, gun pointed at the bad guy, who has his gun pointed at a hostage.
The bad guy turns his gun to point at the good guy, and then…nothing happens.
Instead, they engage in deep philosophical discussion.
–good guy: “Don’t do it, John!!! You know you’re better than that. Let me help you!”
–bad guy: “I don’t believe you–why did you betray me last time?”
–good guy: “that was for your own good. Now tell me the secret combination to the safe”
–“If I give you the combination, I’ll go to jail”
–“no, John—you don’t know what’s in the safe, that stuff you put in there is fake… If you cooperate, we’ll all be okay”
This goes on for several overly-long minutes, both guys aiming at each other, with their fingers on the trigger the whole time.
This happened all the time in Hogan’s Heroes. I was always amazed that Hogan could come up with “a plan” on the spur of the moment, and it never ever failed.
I’m sure I’ve said this before, in other threads, but I noticed long ago, as a child watching Scooby Doo, that it is possible to predict with almost 100% accuracy whether a plan will succeed. If we, the viewers, get to hear ahead of time how a plan is supposed to work, something will inevitably go awry when Our Heroes attempt to carry out their plan (because it would be bad, boring storytelling to tell us how something is supposed to happen and then show it happening exactly that way). On the other hand, if we don’t get to hear the explanation of how the plan is supposed to work, things will go according to that plan.
Which is why I found the end of An American Tail so unsatisfying. “Let’s run all the cats in New York out of town by scaring them off with a mechanical Giant Mouse of Minsk!” “Hey, what do you know - we did exactly that, and it worked perfectly!”
IIRC, someone once said that this would’ve been the case in A FEW GOOD MEN, with Kaffee plainspokenly spelling out that, for us to win, Jessep has to say he gave the order — “And you can get him to say that?” “I think he wants to say it! He made a decision, and that’s it! … I’ll lead him right where he’s dying to go.” “That’s the plan?” — but Jack Nicholson is so damned good at getting annoyed by Tom Cruise giving a shit-eating grin that, y’know, Oscar nominations ensued.
Or the typical scene where a cop is confronting a bad guy with his gun drawn, and the bad guy taunts him— “sure, you’re a real tough guy with a gun, aintcha?” After which the cop sets aside his gun and his badge so he can fight the bad guy Man To Man.
Colonel Hogan was entrusted with one of the most deeply held Allied secrets of the war: an espionage/sabotage unit operating in the very heart of Germany itself under the German’s noses. Presumably he was one sharp fellow.
Hey, any Barney Fife can pull a gun; to gain the fear respect of the local yahoos, red necks and good ole’ boys, a lawman has to show that he can beat them to the ground any day of the year.
Subverted in an SNL skit where we open on a wedding reception and the best man is saying, “And that’s how they met.” The groom gets up and says, “That’s a weird speech. You only said, ‘And that’s how they met.’”
Ha, that’s good!
Reminds me of this send up…
American Dad had an episode where Francine is having a one-sided conversation on the phone to “sis” who I think by this point in the series wasn’t even introduced yet. Then she points out that is is indeed weird that she’s saying “sis” for the audience’s sake. Stan later talks to his “bro” and insists that he always talks this way, it’s not weird.
I guess having the robot roll up and blast the device with a shotgun or water canon would be pretty boring.
They also seem to make a big deal about binary explosives. Harmless when the components are separated but HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE WHEN MIXED TOGETHER SO BE CAREFUL!! (like Simon Gruber’s bomb’s in Die Hard 3)
Um…yeah…but they aren’t mixed together, so big scary bomb is harmless. Just keep the components separate and destroy the overly complex mixing and detonating mechanism.
Has anyone ever gone to a fancy restaurant and actually been talked down to by a snooty and pretentious waiter or maitre d’?
YES! We went to a Michelin Star restaurant in Rome and they had a weird beef carpaccio. Quite good but sweet so clearly it was a sweet marinade. The server came up and asked my son how he liked the beef. You liked it? Ha!! It was watermelon made to look like beef, including the white rind to look like fat. OK, great you fooled us but did you have to make my son look like an idiot for thinking it was the food you purposely made it look like?
Otto manipulated Archie in A Fish Called Wanda to do exactly that-and promptly got the gun back.
“I used to box at Oxford.”
“And I used to kill for the CIA.”
fwip right below his groin.