Most real apartments I’ve been in were rectangular, so that the bedrooms, bathrooms, living room and kitchen were all within a single rectangle. But in Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment, the bedroom and bathroom were beyond the door to the outside hallway, so at the least it was two rectangles.
The New Battlestar Galactica tried to get some things right as far as space travel. For instance, they took into account the fact that there’s no air resistance in space. The ships had small control jets to alter course and to slow down.
Also, when a ship was destroyed, it didn’t just disappear, space flying shrapnel was a real problem.
Small control jets to slow down? Surely you’d want to either spin the ship around and use the main engines to slow down, or have an equally powerful set mounted facing “forward.” The point about there being no [appreciable] “air” friction is that you need just as much energy to slow down as you expended speeding up (absent the effects of gravity).
So you have to ask yourself which is more important for a combat vessel: Having decent acceleration in any direction, or having superb acceleration in one direction. Outside of an emergency situation involving a large obstacle, I don’t see why a spaceship would need to stop as quickly as it can accelerate.
On the topis of space physics, Babylon 5 had the best space battles because, barring the occaisional situation, things behaved normally. (yes, there was sound, but I accept this as dramtic license because in a long space scenem silence in boring, though it is good as an effect in a short scene.)
And even the occaisional screw up can sometimes be explained away. For example, Earth Force fighters are, by far, the best space fighter ever made for TV or movies. They have four arms, in an X shape (at first it seems like a ripoff, but it is actually the most practical wy to do it) and each arm has two thrusters, one forward, one backward. They only burn to accelerate, not maintain speed, and can do crazy flips and turn manuvers, but they do NOT bank. However, some of the laien ships DO bank, but it is superior alien toechnology, and banking could be possible in space if the entire hull were covered in microthrusters, which these alien spacecraft might be, so there 
I knew someone was going to be overly picky about this.
Not necessarily. I’m not speaking from personal experience, but based on some training notes from a course on tactical flashlight handling I read, there’s probably a dozen different methods for handling your flashlight and gun, each with various tradeoffs. For example, holding the light at arm’s length doesn’t give you the bullseye-at-center-of-mass effect, but it also means that your light and gun aren’t automatically pointing in the same direction.
No cite, as the paper was pulled off the web, but it had been posted on the Strategos web site.
In Seinfeld, wasn’t Jerry’s apartment in a rather modern building (probably built in the 60’s or 70’s), and not an old tenement or other walkup?
One of the many things **Hill Street Blues ** got right: the constantly ringing telephone.
Oh yeah, they got the sex right. For example, George, a short, bald, under-employed middle-aged loser was pretty much constantly having sex with hot babes. I don’t think so…
Bouv’s post reminded me: Firefly was one of the few shows that actually followed the “no sound in space” rule, with critics acknowledging that for sci-fi fans who were so used to rocket noise and loud explosions, it rendered some sequences rather dull.
Another KOTH accuracy: suburban alleys. If you watch the show carefully, you’ll notice that Hank and the gang hang out in the alley behind the house. Alleys in suburban areas are a feature of the suburban Dallas built environment that is very rare in other suburban areas.
Jerry’s apartment is supposedly located on West 82nd street on Manhattan’s upper west side. I can’t remember the specific address, although the building shown in exterior shots isn’t actually there though. (I think a Barnes & Noble is situated where it should be.) But the upper west side was pretty much built over with townhouses by the early 1900s (when indoor plumbing became a regular feature.) The inaccuracy in Jerry’s apartment is that the kitchen & bathroom are on opposite ends of the apartment, rather than adjacent to each other - so that they can connect to the same drainage pipes.
The Sony movie theater they often go to IS located at Broadway & w. 84th street, like they’ve mentioned in several episodes. And the upper west side of Manhattan does tend to be a favorite residence of neurotic, frenzied, overly-hysterical types like, oh, Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer, Newman, et. al.
Roseanne was one of the few sitcoms that would show the family realistically sitting on all four sides of the table at meal times. True, the cutaway shots they show of DJ are painfully contrived-looking, but the thought is there.
IANA Medical Professional or even close, but I remember watching early seasons of ER and my med student roommate commenting that medically, they generally got it right, in the sense of the right procedures for the given medical problem, though they of course stripped out lots of boring parts to make it TV friendly.
(I had another medically trained roommate who complained that nobody ever washed their hands or otherwise went through anti-contamination routines, but I’m OK with that – I’m not turning on the TV to watch people wash their hands, and that’s the kind of boring part they rightly should strip out.)
The drama-filled workplace situations, though, were not representative of a real emergency room, of course.
In other words, while the plots were far-fetched, and boring routine aspects of the ER were not shown, the medical techobabble was generally accurate, at least as reported to me.
Actually, now that you mention it, I do recall an early episode in which Dr. Benson (the prickly surgeon) showed a still-green Dr. Carter how to properly scrub in. After they enter the OR, Carter scratches his nose, and is promptly told to leave the room and scrub in all over again!
And on Roseanne: This is probably not the first time it’s ever appeared on tv, but the first time I noticed that characters on a tv show actually watched television! And not just in one special episode. The Conner family were frequently seen parked in front of the boob tube. And “Roseanne” deserves credit for showing the most realistic gay couple on tv: Martin Mull and his partner (forget the other actors’ name) weren’t P.C. saints, weren’t superhero-buff, didn’t flail their wrists at every moment, and didn’t seem to fixate on Madonna or Liza.
From some medical professionals I’ve talked with, they tend to agree…mostly. What they say is right, but how they say it isn’t. That is, in a typical ER, doctors and nurses don’t shout things madly in the heat of passion. It’ smuch calmer, very little yelling, at at a slower pace. The few times I’ve watched “real ER” shows on TLC/Discovery channel seems to confirm this.
Roseanne also had a character’s business go under (Dan’s motorcycle shop) and not miraculously get saved or run itself without supervision or anything else, for that matter. They also had their power turned off, and while they joked about it it was because they had to because it was a serious issue for their family, not some dumb screwball mistake. I was home for some of the later episodes on one of the girly networks on the high channels a few months ago and I’d forgotten how much I really liked the show. (I cried when Dan was upset because Becky ran off and got married, and he wouldn’t give in and talk to her. Waaah!)
Since we’re on the subject of Roseanne, I think that its portrayal of abuse within families was probably the most realistic of any sitcom. “Roseanne” showed how those who grow up in abusive households can end up internalizing feelings of guilt, shame, distrust, and self-loathing that never entirely go away. The Harris girls’ nightmarish childhood frequently bobs to the surface in unexpected ways, from Roseanne’s horror at herself for spanking DJ to Jackie’s struggle to break away from her abusive boyfriend Fisher. It enabled the show to tackle “serious” issues while largely avoiding the trap of the Very Special Episode, most remarkably in the episode where Roseanne’s father dies: far from the usual sitcom clichés about death, Roseanne and Jackie end up struggling once again to overcome their confining childhood roles of angry defiance (Roseanne) and forgiving peacemaker (Jackie). We end up seeing new dimensions to the characters, not just a bunch of actors carrying on in the hope of bagging an Emmy.
Dan had his own troubled childhood to deal with: an emotionally (and physically) distant father who tried to buy his son’s affections with gifts, and a mentally ill mother whom Dan came to idolize, blaming his father for her eventual breakdown. Powerful, powerful stuff.
On Third Watch, one of the characters lives in a smallish two-bedroom apartment with their two kids (a boy and a girl) sharing a bedroom because it’s all they can afford (they live in NYC) on the salaries of a cop and a package delivery guy. In one episode they also had the electric turned off because they couldn’t pay the bill on time.
I also love the episode where Dan goes to his dad’s house (complete with new woman and son, I think) drunk and furious (and guilty) about his mom and busts the place up - he idolized her and learns that his dad had kind of let everybody blame him for her craziness. It was a really moving scene of an adult son forming an adult relationship with his father and figuring out that his parents’ relationship was a lot more complex than they showed to him. They also did a great job with the “man I was such an idiot for getting drunk and scaring the crap out of people” thing - it was funny but rang very true. And it was really clear that behind all of that was a lot of guilt on Dan’s part.
I wish John Goodman did more work. I think he’s a fabulous actor in comedy and drama, and also he sings.