Unique Properties of Television Worlds

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Not a television world, but in the movie world of Fast and Furious:

*Everyone knows how to proffesionally stunt drive and drive at high speeds innately. FBI agents, cops from Brazil, next door neighbors, etc. Anyone can handle any automobile like the most proficient sports driver in our world.

*Everyone drinks NOS energy drinks or generic beer, exclusively.

*Prison is a minor inconvenience, like traffic at 5pm in most major cities. You may be slightly delayed, but you'll still get home in time for dinner.

*Everyone loves cars, without exception. No one is lukewarm about automobiles. The closest aberration I can think of from the films is the pizza delivery driver from the first movie that seemed moderately upset that the road was closed for a street race. In a deleted scene, the assembled crowd turns on him, points in unison, and murmur, "Unclean," as they rip him to pieces.

*Since everyone loves cars, the entire world is designed for them and their maintenance. NO2 tanks can be purchased at any store, illegal tunnels to Mexico are dug large enough to accommodate cars traveling through them, even graveyards rest in the shadow of giant oil rigs that pump precious petroleum from the earth for all of eternity.

*The world of F&F can only lead to the future world of Mad Max. It is inevitable. This will be confirmed in the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road when a NOS vending machine can be spotted thrusting out of the desert sand like the Monolith from 2001.

*The laws of physics are 2 Lame, 2 Ludicrious for the F&F world. In their place, the law of "Drive or Die, Baby" governs all space and time.

*Fistfights between heroes can cause no significant bodily harm to either person, only surrounding physical structures made of materials much sturdier than the human body. "Drive or Die, Baby."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Interesting you should bring up the Mad Max universe. In a world where gasoline is supposedly extinct, all those cars manage to keep running! Oh, and apparently the Australia of that universe was infested with people having very comical names like 'Rockatansky'.

Unless Mutants were also killed in the attack?

I would expect Magneto not to care about them either - he would probably think they were too 'weak'. He would expect mutants to protect themselves from an attack like that. If any mutant died, he wouldn't consider them worth it.

 

[publiusr]

Something else I've noticed. The villains of yesteryear have better manners than today's protagonists.

Being a bad guy was something of a job all its own, with the whole neighborhood watch sign look of trenchcoats and masks. As it.

People walk into and out of each others houses at will.

In Modrn Family--well, there is nothing modern about it. They have a sense of community.

In real life, we don't talk to our neighbors like we do on TV.

In real life, folks survive falls from great heights on occasion. On TV, if you fall from more than three stories up--you're dead.

 

[the G-man]

People walk into and out of each others houses at will.

Good catch. It's tolerable on "Seinfeld" with Kramer because its a running gag and the other cast members all do get buzzed up...but the rest of fictional New York City has less locked doors than Mayberry RFD.

 

[Christopher]

In real life, folks survive falls from great heights on occasion. On TV, if you fall from more than three stories up--you're dead.

Unless you fall down a hole into an underground cavern or tunnel. Then you can plummet for 10 or 15 seconds and be just mildly sore and bruised upon landing.

 

[Timewalker]

Another thing that's always bothered me is that, when people get shot in the television world, they almost always get shot in the shoulder. From Bonanza to Magnum, , to Sliders, to Person of Interest. It doesn't matter where the bad guy is aiming; the hero always takes it in the shoulder and is completely recovered by the next episode. It's like the bullets can only enter the body through the shoulder.

On Bonanza, the shots that actually kill people are invisible. The bodies get turned over, the audience knows the dead person was either shot in the chest or gut, yet the dead person's shirt or dress is completely clean, without even a rip.

Also re: Bonanza:

If you're a woman on that show, do not under any circumstances fall in love with a Cartwright. You will end up:

Dead from a fatal disease
Dead from getting shot with a gun
Dead from getting shot with an arrow
Dead from being thrown from a horse
Dead in, or shortly after, childbirth

If lucky enough to survive, you might leave town to go:

To San Francisco
Back East
Back to your estranged family somewhere other than east
To prison
Off with the man you decided to marry instead of a Cartwright (unless you're the one who married Cousin Will or Cousin Muley)

There may be more to add to this list, but I'm only part way through Season 7.

Another thing that's always bothered me is that, when people get shot in the television world, they almost always get shot in the shoulder. From Bonanza to Magnum, , to Sliders, to Person of Interest. It doesn't matter where the bad guy is aiming; the hero always takes it in the shoulder and is completely recovered by the next episode. It's like the bullets can only enter the body through the shoulder.

Oh yeah. Adam Cartwright took arrows and bullets to the shoulders so many times his arms should have been useless. No wonder he left the ranch.

He was shot in the leg a few times and a house fell on top of him, too. The latter incident was when his fiancee fell in love with Cousin Will Cartwright while Adam was building the house he intended as the home for himself and his future wife. Since that was in Season 6, I have the impression that Adam got tired of the women in/near Virginia City either dying, leaving town, being unfaithful, etc. No wonder he ended up in Australia (according to the "next generation" TV series that came along years later).

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In all detective shows, just because you're good at your job you can do whatever you want whenever you want with no long term conseqences.

 

[the G-man]

In all detective shows, just because you're good at your job you can do whatever you want whenever you want with no long term conseqences.

I would say that applies to a lot of doctor and lawyer shows too

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

A unique property of the Adventures of Superman version of Supes is that he just stands there, proudly, with hands on hips, as the criminals are shooting at him...but then they run out of ammo and throw their guns at him, AND HE DUCKS!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It sitcom worlds: Everybody has some sort of weird personality disorder where they alternate between being selfish, unreasonable, short sighted, insecure, and easily offended, and being totally reasonable and infinitely forgiving.

 

[Enterprise1701]

For a lot of TV shows in general, nobody notices when a character has a horrified facial expression or their tone of voice changes. Everybody goes on with the task at hand assuming that the person in question is completely fine even if something obvious has happened.

For various police procedurals CSI, NCIS, Law & Order, etc.

Crime scenes are almost always teeming with useful evidence even if the scene is a place frequented by heavy foot traffic from hundreds or thousands of different people daily.

Camera footage/images can be "enhanced" even if the camera is not of good quality.

People being interviewed remember everything that has ever happened to them even if it was a normal day decades ago.

If the cops know just a little bit about the criminals' behavior, then the cops can figure out exactly where the criminals are.

The cops get cases completely outside their jurisdiction and supposed capabilities.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That's another thing, nobody on TV ever notices the obvious patterns that emerge in their lives.

Except Abed.

 

[doubleohfive]

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!

I don't know why I'm bothering to reply to you here because you're going to do what you always do when someone bothers to call you out on your specious assumptions about TV shows you don't watch and just ignore this, but what the hell. I'm having a bad day and I just don't really give two fucks.

First of all, the society in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica was not a carbon copy of ours. This can easily be determined by noting all the little, minor differences: things like the fact that the Colonials "cut corners" on what would traditionally be square or rectangular objects in our world -- picture frames, paper, books, etc. The differences in language ("frak" being the most notable). Then there's the portrayal of polyamory being widely accepted (vis avis Caprica)

As for "All Along The Watchtower," I explined its inclusion to you six years ago(!) (when you still went by "Babaganoosh") because when you were waxing inanely about how its use in the show could possibly be justified (since you hadn't seen the show back then, either) if Anders weren't also somehow Bob Dylan.

The series was not saying that Caprican society was exactly identical to our own or a near or exact duplicate, or even an "absolutely accurate carbon copy." The series was simply postulating that it was close enough to our own to be relatable, and that in all the people born across time and space who could write and perform all the songs across history, there was one song that was composed the same way on Caprica (or, as we learned later,on the 13th Colonial tribe's "Earth") as it would be on our own.

It may be farfetched, but to portray it as you have is intellectually lazy and ignores the contextual relevance of why the song was used and belies your own misguided interpretation of the show.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Here's one.

When people in a TV show talk to each other, they face the same direction in situations when people in real life would face each other.

 

[Timewalker]

Then there's David Banner.

I can imagine some of the conversations when he was scrounging for odd jobs: "Oh, that's okay, I don't need to be paid in cash. But if you have any shirts you don't want anymore, I'd be happy to work for those."

In all crime shows, DNA results take 30 minutes to come back.

Unless it's a soap opera, in which case the results may take longer, but they're more likely to be switched at least once.


People on TV shows rarely watch TV, but when they do, they always eat popcorn.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Also on the subject of David Banner...on TIH and other Fugitive-premise shows, how the protagonist can wander from town to town under assumed names and get job after job presumably with no ID, references, or verifiable background that they'd care to share.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Battlestar Galactica's civilization is meant to be an extension of certain aspects of our culture. Hedonistic excess, anomie. If it were really a carbon copy of our culture, Adama would have told Roslin to go shove it and just called all the shots himself.

 

[Christopher]

If it were really a carbon copy of our culture, Adama would have told Roslin to go shove it and just called all the shots himself.

He did. The first time she did something he didn't like, he declared martial law and deposed her. Which made him a total hypocrite, because just a few weeks earlier, he'd been going on about the importance of the rule of law and respect for civil authority. It didn't last -- they restored the status quo a couple of episodes later -- but he still didn't hesitate to turn on her.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If it were really a carbon copy of our culture, Adama would have told Roslin to go shove it and just called all the shots himself.

He did. The first time she did something he didn't like, he declared martial law and deposed her. Which made him a total hypocrite, because just a few weeks earlier, he'd been going on about the importance of the rule of law and respect for civil authority. It didn't last -- they restored the status quo a couple of episodes later -- but he still didn't hesitate to turn on her.

Yeah, but he waited until Roslin took a military resource without permission.

 

[Christopher]

^And that itself is creepy -- the idea that the civilian leader of the society would need the military's "permission." They were supposed to work for her, not the other way around. And Adama claimed to believe in that principle, then threw it out the window the moment it inconvenienced him.