Here is one related to the “guys taking turns shooting” thing. Whenever there is a large group of bad guys fighting the good guy, only one bad guy at a time attacks while all the others stand back. They never mob the G.G. Then, they are all shocked as the G.G. knocks them out cold one-by-one with light blows to the head, stomach, knees, thighs, butt, arm, or whatever other body part they happen to contact with.
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*Originally posted by domina *
**Another charming device is when somebody gets amnesia from being clonked on the head, and then regain their memory from being clonked on the head again. Amazing how doctors never took advantage of this method of treatment!
On Days of our Lives, Sami Brady lost her memory and became paralyzed in a wheelchair when Austin hit her with the car. Months later, she received an electrical shock from an iron and not only recovered her memory, BUT ALSO HER ABILITY TO WALK!
Days of our Lives again: Belle was a flower girl at her parent’s wedding. When they came back from their honeymoon, not only was she 15 years old, but all the other children had become teenagers, too. How long was that honeymoon?
1 Everyone has glamourous, well paying jobs. They’re all actors, lawyers, doctors, high ranking execs, etc. If characters are not all white collar workers earning 100 grand a year they are all lower middle class and the whole show is based on being lower middle class (Roseanne, Grace Under Fire, Roc)
2 To be polite, women in tigt clothes are always cold. Did they have Counselor Troi stand in front of a freezer before each shot? Were there anatomically correct bits of rubber in the costume?
I saw this show last night for the first time. It wasn’t bad, but there are some things that just made me nuts. I mean, I realize it’s a comedy and not supposed to be an historical reënactment, but you should at least try to stick by a some historical authenticity. The show is set in 1801 and this Jack guy is involved with a female British operative. Britain and the U.S. were still at considerable odds then, and would have nothing to do with each other. A couple that’s always fighting like they did could at least make a few jokes about how they’re on opposing political sides. I don’t think the writers even think about that. Further, last night’s show featured the girl taking a shower. A shower! How many more years until the shower is invented? Christ. Well, at least their joke about “Mad King George” was pretty good, showing George III as a stark-raving lunatic. Historically out of step, but pretty funny, the way they handled it.
I don’t think TV shows have to keep all the facts straight, but it seems the quality of a program could only benefit if the writers tried to stay within certain parameters.
You should have seem the tangled past love life web of my group of friends in college. We put BH 90210 to shame.
Oops, I just noticed I left out a step in the reloading process…pulling back the little rod under the barrel to eject the empties.
It really looks stupid when somebody shoots a bolt-action rifle two or three times without working the bolt.
But my pet peeve is when someone is being held at gunpoint with a 1911-style .45 auto and the hammer’s down. It’s a single-action, i.e. if you pull the trigger with the hammer down, NOTHING HAPPENS!
I thought of another one.
If a pregnant woman gets on an elevator, you can be guaranteed of two things:
- The elevator will get stuck, and
- The pregnant woman will go into labor.
This whole thread reminds me of a story about Raymond Burr, who while Perry Mason was a very big show, was accosted by a fan. She couldn’t tell the difference between the actor and the role, and accused Burr of jury-tampering or something because he never lost a case. “But madam,” he replied, “you only see the cases I try on Saturday.”
Having injected that does of level-headedness, here’s my contribution:
There’s always a cute neighbor kid or cousin who needs to be adopted right at the time your oldest child is going away to college or getting married.
On TV…
…the garage always has a basketball court over it.
…all pizzas have anchovies.
…all rooms have one sofa, no love seat.
…one light switch illuminates the whole room (as does one candle).
…torches and candles burn through infinity.
…all women must twist an ankle when running.
…all cars make the same screaching sound pulling away (The SAME sound).
… it snows every friggin’ Christmas Eve, no matter in California or wherever.
…jiggling some wire under the hood will always get the stranded motorist going.
…dreams are in third person (you can see yourself), and black ‘n’ white.
…All hospital rooms are private.
…most beer is generic “Beer” brand. Must be tasty…
On TV…
…the garage always has a basketball court over it.
…all pizzas have anchovies.
…all rooms have one sofa, no love seat.
…one light switch illuminates the whole room (as does one candle).
…torches and candles burn through infinity.
…all women must twist an ankle when running.
…all cars make the same screaching sound pulling away (The SAME sound).
… it snows every friggin’ Christmas Eve, no matter in California or wherever.
…jiggling some wire under the hood will always get the stranded motorist going.
…dreams are in third person (you can see yourself), and black ‘n’ white.
…All hospital rooms are private.
…most beer is generic “Beer” brand. Must be tastey…
I think the writers know that, for Generation X’ers, that dying Pac-Man sound is pretty throughly programmed into our subconsious to mean “whoops”.
Wugga, wugga, wugga, wugga…
“Ross, I just got the test back, I’m pregnant.”
Wheoo, wheeo, weeo…Bloop!!
GAH! As a computer animator thats something that REALLY winds me up!
Tikkatikkatikka on the keyboard, you’ve got a 2-D line drawing.
Tikkatikkatikka. The 2-D drawing pops out, and is now a glowing green 3-D wireframe model. It starts doing a turntable rotation so you can see all sides.
Tikkatikkatikka. The wire model starts walking, flying, crashing into earth, etc.
Tikkatikkatikka. Suddenly a texture map glurps over the green wireframe like something from a Pepto Bismol commercial, complete with reflection maps, craters, markings, etc.
And if’s something like a meteor, it’s then shown crashing into earth, complete with fiery particle effects, shockwaves and damage patterns.
Okay, I’m of asian descent; I don’t usually give a shit about these race things but it’s getting on my nerve since one of my friends mentioned it:
-
Equality on screen means only beautiful asian women (an ABC/CBC, naturalized, or new immigrant) dating or hanging out with white crowd
-
Asian guys are on screen as the dumb-headed dorky doctor, grocery/convenience store loser-type clerk-owner, or the evil kung-fu masters getting their asses kicked by some untrained white guy (or woman); if they’re good guys, they get killed in the first 30 seconds of the show and never get mentioned again (with the exception of Bruce Lee, Jet Li, or Jacky Chan)
-
All glossy magazine ads have cute asian girls being super cool; if there are asian guys, they’re just part of the background (e.g. sweeper, grocery clerk, or evil kung-fu master with fu-man-chu mustach) and wears ugly generic clothing
-
In parties, all white crowd; the coloured people are usually beautiful females - all males are white (with the occational spaniard or black guy as the sex-object and nothing else)
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All Asian girls are depicted as being repressed/oppressed by their family and encouraged to leave and dump their culture (well, there is a sense of truthness here, but not as bad as being depicted)
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Once ‘liberated’, they’re top of the world and it becomes a moral lesson for the audience
Okay, that’s it, I’m vented; anyone else got more?
Cheers,
jovius
oh yea one more,
- The racially mixed couple are usually consiting of White guy plus the non-white female (usually asian); If it’s other wise (say a white female) plus, say a black guy, it’s usally about sex and stuff; if asian guy, he’s gay or something or oppressive…
Cheers,
jovius
On TV, no one ever gets stuck in traffic. Must be nice.
Almost 3 pages long now and no one has mentioned the 2 worst offenses:
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When someone on television is looking through binoculars they see things in 2 slightly overlapping circles, not one circle as you really see things.
-
When the lights are turned off in a room at night, the room is almost as bright as it was before the lights were off (or the light through a window shines conviently on the bed). I could never sleep in TV-land because all the bedrooms are way too bright at night.
One thing I’ve noticed is that people will change clothes five times a day. This is especially true of kids – they will appear to be already dressed at the breakfast table, but will be wearing a new set of clothes at school. After school, they’ll have changed clothes (but not into anything that appears more comfortable), and maybe by dinner time they’ll be wearing something completely different. Then, even if they’re just going out to hang out with their friends, they’ll have changed clothes another time. None of these clothes will ever be worn again.
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned that people’s cars have neither keys nor alarms.
It’s almost believable that kids living in one town, all friends with each other, and going to high school, could be all white. But then they go to college, (often in California), and never meet anyone who isn’t their color. Those that aren’t white are either culturally identical to themselves or vastly different – there’s no middle ground.
Hehe, I think Naked Gun made a spoof of that: Nielson and a bad guy were shooting each other, both hinding behind something but were only 3 meters from each other…
NO!NO!NO!,Jovius, they weren’t three meters from eachother, it was much more like 10 feet!!! 