I guess I hadn’t noticed, but it doesn’t really seem to me that people on TV don’t say “bye” or the like. I’ve only noticed when some tough guys (like FBI Special Agent Mulder) don’t say it, and then only because it seems rude.
What about when the person picks up the ringing phone and doesn’t say “Hello”. He just stands there with a concerned look on his face for a few seconds and then says “I see” and hangs up. (This would be something The Smoking Man would do.)
How does the person on the other end know someone is there?
Just about every other Law & Order episode ends this way. Lawyers discussing the verdict, phone rings…
McCoy: [pickes up phone] Hello? [four-second pause, his expression darkens] Thank you. [hangs up] We won’t have to worry about the appeal. Kowalski was just knifed in the yard at Dannemora and Fabrisi was found hanging in his cell.
I figure the secretaries in the the New York District Attorney’s Office can talk real fast.
Back in real life people don’t seem to know how to hang up from a mobile phone conversation. It seems to be deemed rude (it seems) to just say “Bye” and hang up so you regularly hear people saying “bye, bye, see ya, bye… b-bye!” or something like that. I think because there’s no hang-up tone or something like that.
The other thing they seem to be trained at is calling exactly as a witness interview out in the field ends.
Elliot: Well, if he comes around again, let us know.
:: ring, ring ::
Olivia: Benson . . . . . They need us down at the morgue.
I thought it was just part of being a smug bastard… Ignorance fought.
I’ve noticed that on Law & Order, but the phenomenon I’m talking about is the person who picks up the phone doesn’t say hello. He just picks it up and says nothing, as if the person on the other end knows that someones is there and listening. I’ve never seen that on Law & Order and it’s something a protagonist would usually do.
I can understand this. They don’t have time to show them walk out to the car and then 15 minutes of Stabler sipping his coffee and drumming his fingers while Benson files her nails before the phone call comes in. Worse yet, could you imagine them filming the entire trip across Manhattan stopping at a traffic light at every corner with a long awkward silence between the two of them? (Sounds like something you’d see on Seinfeld) 
Either that or they’re the only government employees in the world who are actually busy the ENTIRE time they’re on the clock.
Me too!
My favorite TV/Movie phone oddity is when characters move the phone from one side of their head to the other in the middle of a conversation. I guess it’s for dramatic effect or just to have some movement on screen. But I’ve never done this in my life, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else do it either.
Number two on my list is something they always do on “24”. Whenever someone speed-dials on a cell phone, you hear the touchtones quickly in the background. Are there any cell phones in the world that do that? Mine never have.
This reminds me of my trip to Italy this year. We were riding the train between cities and watched a native making a bunch of phone calls during the trip. The number of times he’d say “ciao!” at the end of each phone call was hilarious. I think the record was 6 or 7… started to sound like he was sneezing.
I’ve never seen that either, but it still takes me by surprise sometimes when I dial a saved number in my cellphone and it doesnt make a fast-dialing noise, I guess it’s a holdover expectation from the dial-up modem days.
When they’re out in the field talking to someone, they’re actually pretty good at having one detective get a call mid-interview, leaving the other to continue the conversation. Then the first guy says they need to head to wherever the phone call indicated.
I do that if my arm gets tired, or if for some reason I need to pick up something with the same hand that’s currently holding the phone.
Just like the dial tone you hear coming out of the cell phone when the person on the other end hangs up. I don’t know of any cell phones that get a dial tone unless you’re dialing into a PBX.
I’ve never even gotten an instant dial tone on a regular land-line phone when the other party hangs up.
What always annoys me is when someone on a TV drama answers a ringing phone, says “Hello?”, pauses for perhaps two seconds, says “I see”, then hangs up and says something like “That was the hospital. Dad’s been involved in a car crash. The doctors don’t think he’ll pull through. We’ve got to go there straight away.”
Rather a lot of information to get across in two seconds, don’t you think? I realise they don’t want their show interrupted by thirty seconds of silence while the character listens to the other half of the conversation, but there must be a better way of doing things.
If it’s going to the answering machine or voice mail it’s even less.