I have a tendency to yell at the television. Not constantly, mind you. But sometimes.
I cannot watch medical dramas for this reason. “ER” came out at almost exactly the same time that I entered medical school, and for the first season or so I loved it. The action! The glamour! The nobility and passion of the doctors! I was ready to sign right up for a shift. And then, suddenly I started noticing things they were doing wrong. And then I noticed things they were doing really wrong. The last straw came when I noted that the physicians on the show never seemed to wear masks, even during very invasive, open procedures. I envisioned one of them being approached and told “Congratulations on saving that patient’s life when you did that really bloody, heroic thing yesterday. Unfortunately, the patient died of massive sepsis this morning because you sneezed into his chest cavity.” At the point I started yelling “put on a frigging mask, you morons!” I knew it was time to watch something else. Lawyers, I assume you had a similar reaction to “Ally McBeal”?
(Fun fact, kids! In the pre-TIVO days there was this show called “Ally McBeal” about a woman who somehow managed to hold down a job as an attorney despite gross incompetence that even the most unschooled rube would recognize. Also, her chronic hallucinations were treated as an amusing character quirk instead of a sign of incipient mental illness. Look it up!)
Anyhow, I also sometimes yell at the radio. The triggers are harder to predict for that medium.
For example, the other day one of the nice people on the local NPR station conveyed a sense of apathy by using the phrase “such-and-such could care less.” This particular phrase drives me bananas, because it makes absolutely no sense. I seem to recall its use beginning to take hold when I was a teenager, and even then I knew it was wrong. What people mean to say is that they couldn’t care less, thus communicating absolute, unalloyed indifference. They mean to say they care as little as it is possible to care. If you could care less, that means you care! Maybe a little, maybe a lot! You might be willing to sacrifice your life over the issue in question! It doesn’t make sense in context! AIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!
Sorry… where was I?
Oh, yes. Yelling at things. So that’s this week’s question — ever yell at the TV or radio? Why? What sets you off? Do you give advice to the characters? Do you encourage people to wrap up their acceptance speeches? (I, um… may also do that.) Am I totally alone in this?
Horror movies. I don’t know how many times I have to tell them not to go investigate the strange noise. They just never listen. I can’t watch scary movies any more. People don’t like when I scream like a little girl either.
When watching lawyer shows, I make objections during the trials. Or, often when I’m watching Law and Order, I tell the judge when she makes a bad call ruling on the objections — the writers usually spot the issue in the objections, but the judge almost always blows the call. Maybe that’s selective memory on my part.
I have never seen more than three minutes of Ally McBeal. It was unwatchably bad television. But I think you ought to learn a little compassion for the mentally ill, there, Doctor Saunders. People with mental illnesses can achieve productive, meaningful lives and Ms. McBeal was there to prove it.
And I said “You bastard!” to Thomas during the first season of Downton Abbey at the exact same time that Mr. Bates did when he asked Daisy out to the fair before poor William could work up the nerve.
Bear in mind, sports fans yell at TV all the time, at least when the game’s on. I’m both a much better coach, and a much better referee, than the professionals who get paid tens of thousands to millions of dollars a year in among the most competitive job markets in the world to actually do those things.
My father, a lawyer, also makes objections, and has gotten me in the habit!
Its dangerous for me to watch Fox News while working out. I’m either going to say “lying assholes” a bit to loud since i’m listening to music and can’t judge my volume or i’m so gobsmacked at something i almost fall off the machine.
My Fringe Bookclub posts have 2 hits for “yell at the television” and 1 hit for “yelling at the television”.
So… Fringe.
Me as well. Usually the equivalent of Russell with ER – telling the characters in detail why either 1) their sciences is completely wrong or 2) their lab safety procedures are atrocious.
Every single scene that involves a computer.
I’m having a really hard time following anything that looks like a crime drama, either, unless they make no real pretense whatsoever at being anything remotely plausible.
Seriously, I can’t understand how today, when everybody’s grandmother is on facebook, they still use MovieOS on computers. Jesus.
Ever seen Cold Case? I don’t think I have ever seen a show try less.
Explain further, Patrick. This is related to a post I just wrote that I may need to go back and write some more on.
I can’t watch forensic procedural shows, either. I think it was “CSI” where one of the characters used a bit of medical jargon, but she used the exact wrong word. She ended up saying the precise opposite of what she meant to say. Clearly they can gotten a consultant to teach them some fancy-sounding lingo, but hadn’t quite nailed the details.
I, too, would love to know more about MovieOS.
The thing that really bugs me about CSI is how they get the lab work done so fast. They press a button and the results come out instantly. And they don’t even conduct an initial amplification step. And I did not know that micro-array work could be so automated. And the result feeds straight out into an easy to read print out.
MovieOS is from an old UserFriendly comic thread. Other jokes have cropped up here and there, as well.
Generally speaking, when showing anybody doing anything on a computer, rather than use… you know… actual operating systems that people use every day, they show some mocked-up thing that has never existed in the real world and has plainly ridiculous functions that no operating system has ever had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLw9OBV7HYA
“Override All Security” is (to the best of my knowledge) not something commonly implemented. The really stupid thing about this scene is that you don’t even need it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng
This makes my brain hurt, still.
In my unposted post, I comment that MovieOSes seem to be becoming more and more common. It seems to me that it used to be that it would be a fictitious OS when it needed to do something specific. Now, it seems to be generic OS even if they’re on the computer opening their email. Especially on TV (I think movies have always tended towards not using anything real). Is my perception on this off-base? Has it always been rare to actually show Windows?
Also, I didn’t get the Facebook reference with regard to MovieOS.
It actually wouldn’t surprise me to find out that it’s a licensing thing, now that I think about it.
The Facebook reference was to point out that computers are ubiquitous now, not just among the young or affluent, but everybody. I think my mother is the only woman of her generation that doesn’t have a facebook account to see pictures of the grandkids.
When it was the 80s, and even into the 90s, not everybody had a computer. You could put whatever on the screen and it would only jar some peoples’ suspension of disbelief. Now?
Watch that Superman III clip again, would *anybody* buy that today?
My husband with IT and is totally tickled by Movie OS. He also is obsessed with pausing old movies at their computer scenes and checking them out.
He used to be in IT. I don’t know how iPad did that to me.
Then there’s Tron: Legacy. I geeked out when Sam Flynn sat down at the control console and typed in “whoami”! And then “uname -a”! And “history”! And…and…he had an actual Korn shell prompt! Oh wow! But then…he types in “backdoor” and gets a root prompt. Boo!
Also, since most TV shows (especially sitcoms) are so predictable, I like to share what’s going to happen with anyone else who’s watching. (“See how Dawn just put away her home-grown apple juice on the same shelf where Murray is keeping his urine sample? And remember that Tom was making fun of her for being so organic? He’s going to drink the urine by mistake and then make a crack about what kind of fertilizer she must have used.”) This is not always appreciated.
This is not your question, exactly, but I do yell at the computer. A lot. My poor dog gets worried and lays at my feet to comfort me.
Also not your question, exactly, but I was yelling at Suzanne Collins due to a specific turn one of the books made that I strongly disagreed with. I am listening to the audiobook, so it sort of counts as “radio.”
As for TV… not really. I get frustrated at plot-born stupidity sometimes. Some computer stuff, like Mike says.
Clancy verbally points out that the newborn babies they show are far from being newborn. I tell her that I am sure there are reasons that they it’s really hard to take a baby out of a womb and show it on TV before it’s grown out of newborn appearance and that we should suspend our disbelief, but she is unmoved.
I liked Ally McBeal.
Please tell Clancy that I share her reaction to “newborn” infants on TV. Often they’re immaculate as they’re handed to their tired but joyous new mothers, smiling on them beatifically. I generally think “wow, she sure looks happy, considering that she just birthed a four-month-old.” I find it especially amusing when the “newborn” smiles and reaches for the mother.
And, being a fan of whimsy, I liked “Ally McBeal” a little when it first came out. But, as is so often the case, the writers took what were charming little idiosyncrasies and cranked them to 11. So instead of being winsome and offbeat, she struck me as schizophrenic.
There are a couple of scenes in a Korean movie, “The Isle”…Those who have watched it will understand
Me, my drummer, and his sister used to hang out in the basement over at her place, and sometimes we would watch tv with the sound all the way down. We would sit there and do dialogue with voices for the characters, most often very crude, but funny; sort of like MST 3000, except that we didn’t have the dialogue of the show to work off of. We would take turns doing it, or just add little pieces; a group effort.
These days, I don’t own a tv, and I think I’m a lot happier for it.
That said, I do spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, but it sees like the only thing I ever watch is the Weather Channel. I never talk to it though.
When a character does something that will humiliate him or herself (think David Brent in the British office, or someone getting up at a party and singing an earnest song), I have to put a pillow on my head and cover my eyes and murmur “no, please don’t do it, please don’t do it.” Does that count?
Yes, yes it does. Because I think I know where you got the pillow thing.
I swear, I did it independently. You just elevated it into the art form that I now currently practice.
This is why we are friends.
And I don’t know how or why it helps, I only know that it does.
I have to leave the room anytime I sense these moments coming on and come back after it’s over.
It always makes me feel much better about this when I see someone else admit having the same reaction.
Plinko, Rose and I share a deep, visceral aversion to scenes of vicarious humiliation and embarrassment, so you’re in good company.
As she alludes and I acknowledge, we get through such scenes by putting throw pillows on top of our heads. I don’t know if it works for everyone, but somehow it makes such scenes tolerable to watch, if only just barely.
It is for this reason that I find shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” impossible to watch.
Stupid embarrassment scenes used to actually make me wince, to the point of squinting, grinding my teeth, and even writhing in my seat or having to stand up and pace (for TV shows). Then, later, I’d remember the scene and wince again. (I’m actually wincing a bit now just remembering how unpleasant this was.) However, I learned how to unplug my emotions entirely from the show or movie to get through parts like that. The upside is that I can safely watch comedies that might have such scenes in them. The downside is that once I unplug, I usually can’t fully plug back in.
I wince at embarrassing moments too, but I turn it off or walk away at the climax. I noticed this when I got married. Turns out other people don’t like when you turn the movie off just as the guy pulls out a gun. I can come back when it is all over, but I just can’t sit through it. Maybe I will try the pillow technique.
It works!
That scene in Swingers where Jon Favreau is making the phone calls? I can’t watch that scene.
Ditto PC. Everytime you think it’s over, he comes back for more. Ugh.
We actually had to stop watching Garden State. So much wincing that our wince muscles got strained.
Garden State was so hit and miss for me. I’m still not sure whether I liked it or not (I saw it for the first time about a month ago).
My wife is like this. It ruined great shows such as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Seinfeld” for her. Her empathy is off the charts. She couldn’t even handle watching (SPOILER) Lou Ferrigno getting fired from “The Celebrity Apprentice” this week.
It makes TV watching hard. But it makes our marriage work. I suppose that is a fair trade off…
Antiques Roadshow or any other show depicting art handling. I am an Art Conservator and it drives me batty to see people handling 100’s of year old artifacts with all the care they would a football.
Now this I find very interesting. Do you mean the owners of the stuff, the appraisers, or both?
Owners can sort of be forgiven their ignorance it is the appraisers and art professionals who should know better that really set me off. On the one hand they are saying “you have a wonderful piece of history here take care of it” while simultaneously flipping pages of FIRST edition Darwin editions with their grubby bare hands. Depictions of museum and others who profession is to preserve the art for posterity shown doing things that can damage said art work also bugs.
I love “Antiques Roadshow” (it’s my televisual equivalent of comfort food), but I’ve often seen the appraisers handling the items in ways that have looked a little bit careless to me. Up until now I’ve thought “well, I guess that must be OK, since they’re in the business after all.” I find it fascinating to learn that no, they really shouldn’t be handling them that way.
I’m very curious to learn the answer to Rose’s question below, too. Do you think they are at least knowledgeable about the items they’re discussing?
I love watching it (we call it art porn) just those times when they shouldn’t that get to me
I always wondered what art porn would look like. Hmm… not as interesting as I hoped.
And are the appraisers looking all that stuff up off-camera or do they really know what year the furniture maker was born, etc?
No some of them really know a lot about their niche, but there is also consultation with other appraisers that are there and I am sure Googling of auction catalogs and such as well
Ideally, people would hold a football as securely as they’d hold a 100-year-old artifact. I mean, drop the latter and you’re out some change. Drop the former and you might lose the Super Bowl!
I would definitely advise against holding precious artworks while yelling at a football game on TV. As I believe yelling at the TV is correlated with violent hand waving. (especially after footballs are dropped)
During the HRC debates back in 2009, I found that whenever pundits from either party tried to explain to me (incorrectly… each and every single bloody time, astoundingly incorrectly…) how health insurance worked I wanted to let out a primal scream.
Also:
NBA analysts on ESPN who clearly base everything they say about players on fantasy league data. (“Getting both Amare and Melo will definitely make NY a lock for multiple NBA championships!,” for example.)
Because for me “things that are said by sports analysts” and “things that are said in Farsi” share the exact same level of comprehensibility, I will have to take your word on that latter.
Right there with you on the former.
Russ-
There are some moments of sports “analysis” that are so mindnumbingly stupid even a sports noob like yourself would get angry.
For instance, leading up to the first pitch of the Marlins/Cardinals game last Wednesday, the announcers spoke at length about the talent of the Marlins starting pitcher, who unfortunately had his season shortened to just nine games last year due to injuries.
The game starts. The pitcher (Josh Johnson) throws the first pitch for a strike. The announcer says, “And with that, Josh Johnson shows that he looks nothing like a pitcher who was limited to 9 starts last year.”
Surely even someone who knows NOTHING about sports would be able to recognize the issues with sample size. Additionally, how does the successful throwing of one pitch demonstrate that a guy ought to be able to make more than 9 starts, which likely required a total of approximately 900 pitches. ARGHGOURPIURHGPIURP! Stupidity is evident in all languages…
OK, yes. Even I would be able to recognize that it is hard to draw a generalizable conclusion when your n = 1.
My favorite example of this in sports broadcasting was a few years ago, with the local Portland affiliate broadcasting a Lakers v. Blazers game. The Lakers scored the first basket. And then Portland scored. And then the announcer, his voice quivering and dripping with dramatic intensity, said,
“And now we are *deadlocked* at 2 to 2!! It’s always a dogfight when these two teams play.”
I think 40 seconds had elapsed thus far.
You’d be surprised how common that type of inanity is.
In large part, it is because sports broadcasters are largely attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator. They know *I* am going to watch, no matter how bad the announcers are. Worst case scenario, I turn the sound off and some music on. They want my mom, or you, or casual fans to stay tuned, by dumbing everything down and doing things like that goddamned Fox Sports robot (named “Cleatus”… because he wears cleats… and is a robot… an ancient Roman robot… or something). They don’t realize that they ultimately insult everyone’s intelligence.
Then again, my mom does like Joe Buck so… maybe it’s working.
One of my favorite bits of dialogue (by Steven Brust):
“You’re generalizing from one example.”
“Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.”
Anything that comes out of Tim McCarver’s mouth. Ever.
You might think that bad physics would set me off. But no, I’m actually more amused when I see something like Bruce Willis piloting a space shuttle to rendezvous with an incoming asteroid. Now, sometimes, as in Armageddon, this has the effect of causing me to regard the entire rest of the film as a comedy, but often that interpretation, sort of an internal MST3K, can work just as well as entertainment. It’s actually fantastic when I’m watching a movie with Jason and this happens; we were watching Terminator recently (Jason hadn’t seen it before), and we got to that scene where first Ahnold and then the cute, dumb guy timeshift buck naked into the “present” to the accompaniment of wind and lightning, and I suddenly sang “It’s raining men!” We laughed so hard and long that I had to stop the DVD for a long while.
No, what gets me angry is people doing unbelievably stupid things just to move a plot along. I often cannot keep my mouth shut. “Why did you do that?!” If that unbelievably stupid thing moves the plot by resulting in a great deal of embarrassment, then see above in response to Rose’s and your discussion.
There are, of course , alarmingly few philosophers in films and TV. If there are, though, they are usually 1) ironically completely clueless about everyday life, and lack real wisdom, or 2) twinkling with meaningless aphorisms that set my teeth on edge.
My husband and I always joke that we want to see a Project Runway or Top Chef show with philosophers. “Philosophers, your challenge this week is to come up with a previously unwritten version of the trolley problem that poses problems for consequentialism. You have twelve hours and you can only use finger paints. Go!” Ernie Lepore would be a killer judge.
I’d so totally watch that.
Yay! We’d have an audience of at least 3!
4
Make that five. Comedy gold.
I bet you loved A Fish Called Wanda.
Bravo execs, are you listening? An untapped market here.
And of course I loved A Fish Called Wanda!
I was irritated when the first Nietzsche quote was incorrect.
By the time we got around to the fifth or sixth, I was laughing my ass off.
But the London Underground is a political movement.
The central tenet of Buddhism is not “kill or be killed”!
I thought Aristotle was Luxembourgeois.
You mean Nietzsche did not say “yippie kay yay, Motherfucker?”
Bad A##:
I think that was Spinoza.
That was the debate between Freud and Spinoza.
I admire your sangfroid when you see your area of expertise horribly bastardized. I can sometimes view the errors as unintentional comedy, depending on how seriously the entertainment seems to take itself. (Since “ER” obviously took itself very seriously, it got no pass from me.)
The Better Half is an admitted fan of terrible television shows. Until its (blessed and meet) cancellation, this included the remake of “V”. At one point it was revealed that one of the main characters had had his DNA stripped of its base pairs (I may have even posted about it, though I think it was at my old blog). That he somehow kept on living was… implausible. However, given that “V” was schlock at its schlockiest, I somehow managed to view the transgression as funny.
I’ve often thought a TV show based on the life and times of a pediatrician would have to be one of the funniest plot devices, evah. Consider the possibilities: just writing the parent doctor dialogue….. the mind boggles.
I actually think you’re right. It would lend itself perfectly to an “Office”-esque deadpan.
Andy: “Andy have a boo-boo tummy.”
Andy: Would you rather me say, ‘Hey guys my irritable bowl syndrome is flaring up. Crazy diarrhea happening.’ Cause things can get real adult real fast.
This is also why NPR’s Animal House is unlistenable. They could be Car Talk with poop jokes. Instead they’re the animal bits of Wikipedia without poop jokes.
Empty Nest made use of a pediatrician office.
I have trained my wife to mutter “Plot!” when a character does something JUST to move the story. We’ll be watching some show and something stupid will occur and she’ll yell “PLOT!!!”
I’m so proud of her!
Whenever some object is introduced into a movie or show that we’re obviously meant to notice because it will be brought up later to Great Import, the Better Half and I will say to each other “that must be Chekhov’s [object].”
The examples that spring to mind are the pens in “A Beautiful Mind” (“he’s achieved his dreams despite his mental illness!”), and (my personal favorite) the red flying attack reptile that the main character rides at the end of “Avatar,” merely because I delighted in saying “Oh, that must be Chekhov’s flying attack reptile!”
You trained your wife? That sounds terrible.
“Honey, yell ‘plot!'”
“No.”
“Then pull my finger.”
“Okay, fine. PLOT!”
“…”
“God damn it, dear.”
That is hilarious, JB.
Poor Maribou.
At one point it was revealed that one of the main characters had had his DNA stripped of its base pairs (I may have even posted about it, though I think it was at my old blog). That he somehow kept on living was… implausible.
…………….
Yeah, I got nothing. And I thought Fringe had issues with accurate portrayal of science. That’s one of the stupidest science-related things I’ve ever heard.
I wonder if I can fix the unclosed italics above.
Or this?
Done. And you’re right, Katherine. I think it’s nigh impossible to top that.
Sports. Not just bonehead plays. Mostly managerial or coaching miscues, especially when convential wisdom butts up against statistical analysis. Even more than that, though, I yell at bonehead announcers who can’t get out of their own way and are more interested in making themselves the story than the action on the field (JOE FISHING BUCK!).
I yelled at the end of “Lost”. Six years down the drain…
Yeah, I never got sucked into “Lost” and feel like I dodged a bullet.
Dude! Fringe! It’s totally different!
HE’S CHANGED!!!
You know how you have to assume that there’s this one guy out there, somewhere, that really liked Lost, included that last episode?
I’m that guy.
I follow in my TOD’s footsteps
I know many “that guys”. You are not alone…
My main issue was with sloppy storytelling. It is easy to be a “brilliant storyteller” (as many have described Abrams) when you aren’t bound by the traditional rules of storytelling.
As time went by, I softened on the show itself and the ending. It was a fun ride. But I expected more answers and it was annoying for them to claim, “We never promised answers… we never claimed to be a sci-fi show.” In the moment though… I literally screamed. Probably the first and only time I’ve done that with scripted television.
I have no regrets about having watched it. I thought that the ending worked well enough. My main issue with the show remained the dialogue and The Most Anemic Love Affair Ever.
I looked at the last episode as a, “Er… uh… and then it ends!” Neal Stephenson sort of deal. It was better than having the show go on until it didn’t get renewed in the middle of the seasons and there was no attempt at closure.
Admittedly, I jettisoned from Lost early and only had to deal with the second season on as a peripheral viewer.
I made it through the first set of episodes in season 3. Then I realized it was just going to get dumber and dumber. I’d follow the recaps on Television Without Pity and be thankful that I’d saved myself 45 or so minutes a week.
Any movie involving combat drives me apeshit. The opening scene of Saving Private Ryan filled me with hope — at last, someone will attempt to portray the confusion and hell of combat.
Then the platoon goes traipsing off through the hedgerows of France, all clustered together like a bunch of Boy Scouts. “No, dumbasses, an actual combat patrol would keep a decent interval. No enlisted man would ever talk to an officer like that. A combat forward patrol would keep patrol silence. And where’s the radioman? No, they wouldn’t charge a machine gun position like that, they’d call in artillery fire. Why is nobody dug in?”
Etcetera.
What did you think of the standoff at the end?
At turns I wish I was some sort of reptile so I could roll my eyes sufficiently far back to avoid such scenes.
Write a guest post for Mindless Diversions.
I’m curious as to what, if any, military/war cinema Blaise enjoyed, and why.
At least we have Das Boot.
Same reason why I don’t like to watch war movies.
Have you gone to see the one they filmed with actual Navy SEALs? Act of Valor? It would be amusing if that one got combat tactics wrong.
Given the Navy’s support of it, if it’s not what the SEALs actually do, it’s what the Navy wants people to *think* that they do. So it’s probably not too cringeworthy to a an actual SEAL.
Oh, I have an “opening scene of ‘Saving Private Ryan'” story: When SPR hit the theaters, I had just come back from Bosnia. I was Air Force, and this deployment was my first time in a combat zone (I never saw a nanosecond of combat) and my first time working closely with the Army. My experiences there left me with a cynical attitude and a seriously twisted sense of humor (both of which I’ve since recovered from (mostly)).
The scene is the medic desperately trying to save a soldier from a chest wound on the beach. The medic leans back and says something like, “We stopped the bleeding!” PANG! A German bullet catches the patient in the helmet, killing him.
And I laughed, a short, sharp little “haha” that earned me some dirty looks from the folks around me (and rightfully so).
I don’t know what it was about that scene that elicited that reaction from me, but the person I am now wouldn’t have laughed, nor would have the pre-Bosnia Fish.
The ones I like are where the bad guy shoots thirtyseven bullets from a six shooter at close range only to miss and the good guy hits the bad guy with a derringer from a thousand yards while doing a flip. I saw a bad Viet Nam show many years ago where the VC squad missed an American patrol running up a treeless rise from forty yards.
Generic action TV/movie: Defenseless hero/heroine is infiltrating/escaping bad guys’ lair. Comes across armed guard and (somehow) knocks them out. Leaves prostrate guard and DOESN’T PICK UP THE GUARD’S FISHING WEAPON!!!! (I even yell when I think about it). Or, said hero/ine continues on their way with his/her little pistol and leaves the guard’s AK-47 and magaziines behind.
Always pick up the gun. Always.
And I also make objections during lawyer shows.
As far as I can tell, they’d be better off keeping the pistol. Those guard-issue AK’s have problems with their sights.
no all the prison/camp guards all went to stormtrooper academy to learn how to shoot. the good guys have been spending all their working time being shot at by the mooks and have learned to use their plot armor to it’s maximum power.
but i get pissed when they leave the gun to. at worst your leaving more guns for the mooks to shoot at you, at best your just leaving valuable hardware lying around. have these people never heard of the black market(or just the collectors market.) think how much some people would pay for an ak-47 that was fired by REAL terrorists. i mean just think of how well off McClain would be if he kept all the toys the bad guys carry around for him to beat them with.
And the guards, who graduated summa from dumb henchman school, haven’t learned to ignore the sights and just spray bullets in the right general direction.
Bad physics in movies. Not that I’m a physicist, but when I see basic laws of gravity being defied–when willing suspension of disbelief is no longer possible, I go ape-shit. I, Robot was on TV the other night–when Will Smith jumps his motorcycle into the air, lets it fall from underneath him, draws his guns, and accurately shoots robots with both hands…a little piece of my soul dies each time I see that.
Or whenever someone falls off a cliff or building and manages to catch themselves. I’ve fallen while climbing (always with a rope), and that catching yourself business just doesn’t happen. The falling is unbelievably quick, and you just can’t react that fast, and by then you’ve got so much speed you simply aren’t strong enough to catch yourself.
Russ-
How did you feel about “Scrubs”? I heard it was pretty realistic for a comedy and captured a lot of the real culture of hospitals. I loved that show, but am admittedly a hospital noob.
It was actually much, much better than you’d have guessed, at least initially. (They even managed to correct their most glaring error, which is that JD puts the X-ray on backward at the end of the opening credits, by having Elizabeth Smart’s character flip it the right way and then say “that’s been driving me crazy for years” right at the camera. Brilliant!) Over the seasons, they got maudlin and the quality diminished, but they actually did get the culture of hospitals much better than most “serious” medical shows. It had some flaws, but they got enough right that I overlooked some of the mistakes they made. (Plus they didn’t take themselves too seriously; see my comment upthread about “V”.)
Thanks! That is the impression I got.
I’m not even going to venture into the problems with most “school” based shows…
I have a friend who recently finished med school and he would probably agree with you about Scrubs.
OK, y’all. Everyone’s just trying to make me feel better after last week, aren’t you!
That thought crossed my mind about 20 comments ago.
I am so pleased that we can have stupidity on our Tuesdays, and everyone’s in!
What’s our excuse for the rest of the week?
Consistency.
inertia.
Practice
“We sittin’ here… I s’pose to be ‘Franchise Player’, and we in here talkin’ ’bout practice.”
Like Rose with philosophers, I don’t see a lot of TV dramas with historians as the main characters. I could imagine the final scene from the season finale of such a show: the professor yells at his graduate research assistant, “This journal article was due 7 months ago, we’ve got to find a footnote dammit!”
(At the opening episode of the next season, we find out that the journal accepted the professor’s article anyway as a professional courtesy. The research assistant loses his tuition and fee waiver.)
I cannot tolerate any show or movie that features reaction shots from dogs.
I literally yelled at the screen (in a theater, and yes, I do know better) when Luke used “parsec” as a unit of time.
(Han)
That makes it even worse!
Would you like to hear the official explanation?
Tough.
The Kessel Run was a route full of black holes, asteroids, imperial star cruisers, and other very bad things that would make ships blow up. The safest route through the Kessel Run was 18 parsecs long. By flying closer to black holes and other dodgy methods, Han Solo managed to get through Kessel in less than 12 parsecs.
Oh yeah, that’s not an after-the-fact rationalization (rolls eyes.)
You’re really dating yourself here. You saw the originals in the theatre? (Lucky!)
Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977. I was not yet six.
I don’t remember when we actually saw it, but I’m fairly certain it was before my birthday. It had to have been fairly early after release, because the show was sold out and my mother had to convince the guy behind the ticket window to sell her the last seat plus two tickets with no seat attached, and Meg and I sat on the floor. In the middle of the theater, in the front row, Century 21, 70mm.
That Star Destroyer in the opening scene was bigger than anything I imagined could be.
I had bought the storybook that came out in the Scholastic Book order earlier that year and read it I dunno, maybe a thousand times, so I already knew the story back and forth. It was still completely amazing.
Yeah, it was my freshman year of college. A bunch of us drove over from Berkeley to SF to see it (at the Coronet, closed for almost 10 years now), probably the third day it was out (since that was a Friday.) It was fun. I really did yell “Oh, come on!” at the screen, and the guy next to me replied “I know, but it’s only a movie.”
Since we all agree that the first two were good, the third half-crap, and the next three complete crap, I will never understand the reverence given to these mostly adequate entertainments.