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Unique Properties of Television Worlds

On any number of shows, the main characters can take terrible blows to head---hard enough to knock them unconscious for several minutes to possibly even hours---and yet they can stand up and "walk it off," without any debilitating after-effects, physical disfigurement or death. For example, the boys on Supernatural have taken guns, 2 x 4s and even iron crowbars to the head, without any lasting effects or even scars, when they really should be dead or in a vegetative state by now. The sheer number of concussions that they've suffered would leave any human severely disabled or even dead.

But...they have died. Many, many times. :lol:

Maybe whenever they return from Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, etc., their head trauma odometer dials back to zero and leaves them with virgin craniums.
 
I think that must be either to keep viewers from seeing the camera in the back seat or to keep the rear-view mirror from blocking the actors' faces when shooting in through the windshield.

No doubt, but it bugged me when I was a kid. How can straight-shooter cops like Steve Keller and Mike Stone drive around in such a blatantly out-of-code car?

I'm not sure if "softer" is the right term, but I remember that it produced more irregular/less consistently shaped bullets when the Mythbusters tried it, so that they weren't able to be as accurate as the Lone Ranger was supposed to be.

I see, thanks. I'm going to try to catch that one.
 
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A unique property of the (remake of) Battlestar Galactica is how its human civilization is such an absolutely accurate carbon copy of our own - in defiance of all laws of logic and probability. Hell, they even came up with "All Along The Watchtower" 150,000 years before we did! :wtf:

That just proves that true classics are ageless. :p

It seems like there are a lot of Detective/Investigator TV shows with two names:

Dempsey and Makepeace
MacGruder and Loud
Rizzoli and Isles
Hardcastle and McCormick
Tenspeed and Brownshoe
Simon and Simon
Jake and the Fatman
Starsky and Hutch
McMillan and Wife
Cagney and Lacey
Heart to Heart

Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. ;)

It would seem that in the magical TV/Movie land, any cheap-ass security camera or other such surveillance device has absolutely perfect abilities to zoom, down to the molecular level. They could grab a bit of footage that has all the resolution and consistency of a December blizzard, and yet zoom in so precisely that they can read license plate numbers and even the smallest detail on a person's face...

Or else the video software can magically give resolution where it didn't exist.

Next we have Dr Tom who first appears as a stranger on the street. He's a bit of a walnut. I mean, literally.

Literally?

Courtesy of Google, the apartment Sheldon and Leonard share would go for around $2k per month. Penny's would be cheaper as it's one bedroom but unlikley some-one on minimum wage could afford it.

I've always wondered why some of the characters don't make more money. I mean, yeah, they're geeks and losers, but they're also super-geniuses.
 
When it comes to sitcoms, everybody in the world has a paralyzing fear of change. Their love for their friends and family overpowers all desire they may have for career advancement or romantic fulfillment. Also, everybody they ever date will be completely devoted to them for a while, then a couple months later, the littlest of things will be a deal breaker.

In House: All diseases in the world will look a lot like two or three other diseases based on the symptoms.

In Community: Everybody will absolutely devote themselves to a game because it has a nice prize, but nobody will cheat no matter how easy it would be to do so. (Just take off your shirt that has the paint on it!)
 
Courtesy of Google, the apartment Sheldon and Leonard share would go for around $2k per month. Penny's would be cheaper as it's one bedroom but unlikley some-one on minimum wage could afford it.

I've always wondered why some of the characters don't make more money. I mean, yeah, they're geeks and losers, but they're also super-geniuses.

In Sheldon's case, his position at the university is covered by grant money for research so he's not going to be raking it.

None of them have tenue which would give them better pay and job security.

At the end of the day they aren't in commercial research which is probably where the money could be made.
 
Next we have Dr Tom who first appears as a stranger on the street. He's a bit of a walnut. I mean, literally.

Literally?


In the sense that he's an enigma with secrets throughout that he doesn't easily divulge, yes. To someone who initially meets him, he comes across as rather strange and mysterious, a little kooky at times. It's both a part of who he is and what he does, though. As a character, he's one of the best characters I've seen recently on TV.
 
I've always wondered why some of the characters don't make more money. I mean, yeah, they're geeks and losers, but they're also super-geniuses.
Raj does have access to more money than the other, owing to his parent's wealth. In one episode he was able to buy a gold-digger girlfriend a new car as a gift.

it's suggested that Sheldon has more money than the other men, perhaps savings from not dating for so many years.

Bernadette probably makes the most amount of money in the group.

:)
 
Next we have Dr Tom who first appears as a stranger on the street. He's a bit of a walnut. I mean, literally.

Literally?

In the sense that he's an enigma with secrets throughout that he doesn't easily divulge, yes.

Uh, I suspect you mean "figuratively". "Literally" doesn't mean "in the sense" of anything. The only thing it means is "actually"; i.e. he's an actual walnut. :vulcan:

On the other hand, if the character is actually/biologically a walnut from the genus Juglans, then congratulations, you've sold me on the show. :techman:

Sorry, bit of a digression there. Resume your disorder.
 
Uh, I suspect you mean "figuratively". "Literally" doesn't mean "in the sense" of anything. The only thing it means is "actually"; i.e. he's an actual walnut. :vulcan:

To be fair, the use of "literally" as emphasis for figurative expressions goes back centuries. It's common enough that it's hard to really justify calling it wrong -- just undesirable for pedants.
 
I've always wondered why some of the characters don't make more money. I mean, yeah, they're geeks and losers, but they're also super-geniuses.
Raj does have access to more money than the other, owing to his parent's wealth. In one episode he was able to buy a gold-digger girlfriend a new car as a gift.

it's suggested that Sheldon has more money than the other men, perhaps savings from not dating for so many years.

Bernadette probably makes the most amount of money in the group.

:)

It's pretty much stated she does and if nothing else it's definiately a lot more than Howard (something that irked him in the sense that he wouldn't be looking after her, she would be looking after him).
 
Literally?

In the sense that he's an enigma with secrets throughout that he doesn't easily divulge, yes.

Uh, I suspect you mean "figuratively". "Literally" doesn't mean "in the sense" of anything. The only thing it means is "actually"; i.e. he's an actual walnut. :vulcan:

On the other hand, if the character is actually/biologically a walnut from the genus Juglans, then congratulations, you've sold me on the show. :techman:

Sorry, bit of a digression there. Resume your disorder.


No, you're quite right. Thanks for pointing it out :)

But in my original post, I was trying to be funny in the way I was describing it... guess it didn't quite work? :p I was trying to go with some kind of contrast and imagery. As in, 'This guy is so nutty, he seems from a different planet.' kind of deal. It's the kind of society that he belongs to, that we learn more of throughout the series, and that the main character eventually becomes part of. So, maybe not literally a walnut, no. But fun to imagine it that way...
 
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Uh, I suspect you mean "figuratively". "Literally" doesn't mean "in the sense" of anything. The only thing it means is "actually"; i.e. he's an actual walnut. :vulcan:

To be fair, the use of "literally" as emphasis for figurative expressions goes back centuries. It's common enough that it's hard to really justify calling it wrong -- just undesirable for pedants.

"Virtually" is another one that some people misuse.
 
^OY. That would drive me freaking spare.

ANYWAY...back to the topic.

Another unique property of TV land that I've noticed is that rarely do people ever say "goodbye," or something similar, when talking on the phone; they just hang up on each other. In my world, that is considered extremely rude, especially in a very personal conversation and very much so for a business call. I notice this a lot on sitcoms or melodrama. It always bothers me.


They also do this, somewhat famously, in the movies. :lol:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APUQeQalRsU[/yt]
 
Those of us who've been reviewing The Adventures of Superman on MeTV lately have spotted a phenomenon peculiar to that show. Not only do Clark's best friends not recognize him as Superman when he's wearing his glasses...they also don't recognize him as Superman when he's not wearing them! Halfway into the series, there've been multiple episodes in which his supporting cast has gotten a good eyeful of him with his glasses off without even commenting on the resemblance.

Having lurked somewhat in the M:I thread around here, I'm surprised somebody hasn't brought up the topic of how masks worked on that show....

If you look at car chases in early James Bond movies (I think the one I'm thinking of is in On Her Majesty's Secret Service), when the cars crash, they just crash, and that's it.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO88NI16g84[/yt]

God, I gotta watch those movies again....
 
Those of us who've been reviewing The Adventures of Superman on MeTV lately have spotted a phenomenon peculiar to that show. Not only do Clark's best friends not recognize him as Superman when he's wearing his glasses...they also don't recognize him as Superman when he's not wearing them! Halfway into the series, there've been multiple episodes in which his supporting cast has gotten a good eyeful of him with his glasses off without even commenting on the resemblance.

A lot less than halfway, actually, since we're early in season 3 and it ran for 6 seasons.

But yeah, I was thinking that maybe it was the costume that did it, but there was one yesterday where Superman put on a hat and coat as a disguise and Jimmy, who was standing right there, didn't notice that he looked exactly like Clark Kent.

But they did this on radio too. There was a story where Kryptonite exposure caused Superman to lose his memory, and he ended up becoming a record-breaking baseball pitcher. Lois and Jimmy went to interview this pitcher, who didn't wear glasses, spoke in Superman's deep voice, and had demonstrated feats of superhuman athletic ability, and they immediately recognized him... as Clark Kent! :wtf::eek::confused:


Having lurked somewhat in the M:I thread around here, I'm surprised somebody hasn't brought up the topic of how masks worked on that show....

That evolved over the first season. In the pilot, it was fairly plausible -- they brought in Rollin Hand to impersonate someone he already strongly resembled, using various prosthetic pieces, and when he later used a full-face mask to impersonate Dan Briggs (the original lead character), it was very brief and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, and he still spoke in his own voice. (I'm convinced that in some shots it actually was Martin Landau wearing a Steven Hill mask.) Later in the season, such a mask was totally convincing at close range and the voice could be perfectly duplicated, but one still couldn't eat while wearing the mask -- although I think it was in the same episode that David Opatoshu's character briefly wore a Rollin mask and magically lost his paunch while doing so. But by the end of the season, in "Shock," there was an enemy agent who wore a full-face mask for days of imprisonment, ate through it, sweated through it, even underwent electroshock therapy through it, all without the mask sustaining the slightest damage. So in less than a year it went from plausible to pure magic.

But speaking of the rules of fictional universes, what gets me is that, given how ubiquitous perfect masks are in M:I, you'd think that every nation's security forces would learn to check for latex masks as a routine part of a search.
 
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