Unique Properties of Television Worlds

[auntiehill]

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.

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.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

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...

 

[Marc]

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.

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.

And those bullets come from guns that never seem to need reloading.

 

[auntiehill]

^ Only bad guys run out of bullets.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And in Trek:

Phaser beams, inexplicably, take a visible amount of time to reach their targets. You can actually see the beam move. Since a phaser beam is still made of light, this should not occur.

The only time we see a phaser work like it should - the beam instantaneously appears, without taking any time to get where it's going - is the 29th-century phaser as seen in "Future's End".

 

[Masiral]

^ Only bad guys run out of bullets.

Good guys run out of bullets all the time - it adds to the tension.

 

[Richard Baker]

Cars detonate into huge fireballs when shot at or when they hit something.
The perplexed look on Arnold's face in the film 'Last Action Hero' when he is in the real world, empties his gun at a car and nothing happens...

All computers make little blip sounds as info appears on the screen- the info also appears in small pieces consecutively. Home computers have been around for how many years, has anybody's machine ever displayed like that?

 

[JoeZhang]

1) In most TV Universes, the correct way to end a mobile call is just to hang up without saying goodbye

2) Judges are absolutely fine with random people from the back of the court shouting out "that's a lie!" Normally they will ask them to step forward and testify.

3) Women are disproportionately stronger in TV land - a 5ft 2 police woman can wrestle to the crowd a 300 pounds 6ft 5 man with little trouble.

4) Eye hand co-ordination is superior to the real world, officers are therefore taught to shot guns out of a man's hand rather than aim for a body mass.

5) The PhD in fictional world rather than being something specialist that makes you an expert in something nobody else but you and three other people care about - makes you an expert in a wide range of subjects

 

[Christopher]

3) Women are disproportionately stronger in TV land - a 5ft 2 police woman can wrestle to the crowd a 300 pounds 6ft 5 man with little trouble.

KRAD could address this better than I, but I gather that is actually possible with the right training. Leverage matters more than strength.

4) Eye hand co-ordination is superior to the real world, officers are therefore taught to shot guns out of a man's hand rather than aim for a body mass.

I don't think that's ever portrayed as a routine practice, at least not in live action.

The problem is that TV/movie heroes are supposed to be the best of the best, able to pull off extraordinary feats that most people wouldn't have the smarts or the skill to pull off -- but it happens so often that it starts to look routine.

Of course, as the Mythbusters have shown, if you did shoot a gun out of someone's hand, the spray of shrapnel from the bullet as it shattered against the gun could still kill or seriously injure the wielder. I sometimes think maybe this is part of why the Lone Ranger (who always shot guns out of bad guys' hands) used silver bullets -- the softer metal means the bullets would be more irregular and less accurate, but maybe it means they'd be less likely to produce lethal shrapnel.

 

[Melakon]

Characters in their early 20s in entry level jobs live in apartments they could never afford on their salary. Especially common with main characters.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ok, I'll give this a crack. And for this I'll go with Being Erica.

On the surface, the show might not seem to be very original, about a 30-something who gets to time-travel to key points in her life and see how things would be different with different decisions. But it's the execution which makes it extremely fun to watch.

We have Erica Strange, who feels like her life is one bad decision after another, and she's having a crisis. She's wondering how she can put her life back on track and feel good about herself.

Next we have Dr Tom who first appears as a stranger on the street. He's a bit of a walnut. I mean, literally. He's tough to crack. But we learn that for better or for worse, he'll be Erica's best friend through thick and thin for the next 4 years. He's also an enigma throughout the whole show. Who is he and what is he? He's an enigma throughout the whole show. He's a therapist, but not in the traditional kind. He's got the power to whisk her away to different points in her life, and to appear to her at any time. He also loves to quote shakespeare.

Meanwhile, as the show goes on, we learn he's actually part of a larger picture, of a network of therapists. His office is... somewhere, we're never actually quite sure other than it's likely a void somewhere. We learn that there are others like him helping other people sort out their lives. Who these therapists are how they do what they do is never really explained, but it does add an air of mystery, and it's this network of doctors that give this show an interesting element.

But the basic gist is this. Dr Tom is able to send her off into different points in her life to see how different decisions would have affected things, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst.

Ok, I admit, I probably haven't explained it all that well. Someone can jump in with more detail.

 

[Marc]

All computers make little blip sounds as info appears on the screen- the info also appears in small pieces consecutively. Home computers have been around for how many years, has anybody's machine ever displayed like that?

And those computers have IP addresses starting of with numbers like 355.

Characters in their early 20s in entry level jobs live in apartments they could never afford on their salary. Especially common with main characters.

Friends and Big Bang Theory are two that come to mind.

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.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Prosecuting attorneys (such as Hamilton Burger) always fail in Perry Mason-world.

(seriously, did "Ham" Burger ever win a case? EVER?)

 

[JoeZhang]

All computers make little blip sounds as info appears on the screen- the info also appears in small pieces consecutively. Home computers have been around for how many years, has anybody's machine ever displayed like that?

And those computers have IP addresses starting of with numbers like 355.

Characters in their early 20s in entry level jobs live in apartments they could never afford on their salary. Especially common with main characters.

Friends and Big Bang Theory are two that come to mind.

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 could be wrong but I am sure that at least the Girls' flat was explained as being rent-controlled in friends. As for Big Bang Theory - I've only seen it a couple of times (I thought it was terrible) but are they meant to be in their 20s? At least two of them look 45.

 

[Melakon]

Next we have Dr Tom who first appears as a stranger on the street. He's a bit of a walnut. I mean, literally. He's tough to crack. But we learn that for better or for worse, he'll be Erica's best friend through thick and thin for the next 4 years. He's also an enigma throughout the whole show. Who is he and what is he? He's an enigma throughout the whole show. He's a therapist, but not in the traditional kind. He's got the power to whisk her away to different points in her life, and to appear to her at any time. He also loves to quote shakespeare.

Meanwhile, as the show goes on, we learn he's actually part of a larger picture, of a network of therapists. His office is... somewhere, we're never actually quite sure other than it's likely a void somewhere. We learn that there are others like him helping other people sort out their lives. Who these therapists are how they do what they do is never really explained, but it does add an air of mystery, and it's this network of doctors that give this show an interesting element.

But the basic gist is this. Dr Tom is able to send her off into different points in her life to see how different decisions would have affected things, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst.

I've never seen the show, but 50 years ago, shows had the same kinds of characters. But back then, they were called angels, witches, or genies.

 

[J.T.B.]

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.

Cars detonate into huge fireballs when shot at or when they hit something.

That was big on '70s private eye shows, Cannon, Charlie's Angels etc. If a car ran off the road it seemed to have about a fifty-fifty chance of exploding.

Plus they were always driving around without rear-view mirrors. That would make me a nervous wreck.

Of course, as the Mythbusters have shown, if you did shoot a gun out of someone's hand, the spray of shrapnel from the bullet as it shattered against the gun could still kill or seriously injure the wielder.

Rustler's Rhapsody did address that a little. Rex O'Herlihan The Singing Cowboy is such a good guy he only shoots guns out of people's hands, and has a supply of wooden gun/hand targets for practice. The bad guys complain about the pain of having the guns shot out of their hands, and they use going to the doctor about it as an excuse to leave when their boss wants them to stay and chat. The town doctor later tells Rex about a sudden rash of hand injuries, which he quite wrongly assumes is caused by some skin-splitting virus.

I love that movie.

I sometimes think maybe this is part of why the Lone Ranger (who always shot guns out of bad guys' hands) used silver bullets -- the softer metal means the bullets would be more irregular and less accurate, but maybe it means they'd be less likely to produce lethal shrapnel.

Silver softer than lead?

 

[Chris3123]

As for Big Bang Theory - I've only seen it a couple of times (I thought it was terrible) but are they meant to be in their 20s? At least two of them look 45.

When the show started the guys were all in their late 20s, but now they're in their 30s. Sheldon and Leonard are 34 (actors are 41 and 39, respectively), and Howard and Raj are 33 (actors are 34 and 33, respectively).

 

[Owain Taggart]

I've never seen the show, but 50 years ago, shows had the same kinds of characters. But back then, they were called angels, witches, or genies.

Yeah, he could be considered a kind of angel, I guess. Though the show never attempts to explain it. At their core though, they're all very philosophical. The show was a breath of fresh air.

 

[Christopher]

That was big on '70s private eye shows, Cannon, Charlie's Angels etc. If a car ran off the road it seemed to have about a fifty-fifty chance of exploding.

I think it was a little bit less unrealistic back then, since some cars' gas tanks did have a tendency to explode in crashes (the Ford Pinto being a notorious example). These days, cars are designed to prevent such things, so the risk of explosion has gone down. Meanwhile, the risk has greatly increased in fiction. 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. But there's a later Bond movie, I forget which one, where there's a snowmobile chase and the bad guys' snowmobiles blow up after sustaining even the gentlest of impacts. It's cliche inflation.

Plus they were always driving around without rear-view mirrors. That would make me a nervous wreck.

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.

Silver softer than lead?

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.

 

[Gaith]

Someone really ought to put together a web site to list these sort of tropes appearing on TV... it could be called... er... I've got it! "Tropes of Television"!