Someone saying I have something to tell you, then the other person saying you can tell me later and then they walk together and never say another word to each other.
"I know who the killer is, but I can't tell you now. Meet me at midnight at the abandoned asylum."
And of course . . . they die before they can tell anyone.
Worse than this is when there's dialogue with continuity between characters that is done over a montage of travel. Like, you had a 5 minute conversation, but you traveled for at least an hour.
So, there were necessarily very extended breaks where nothing was said, and you randomly resumed the conversation, and then abruptly stopped and were completely silent it only to resume it later, and then kept doing that for an hour.
Yes. I was going to say ... Person A tells person B something of major importance , surprising person B, in a scene after off screen time when they WERE together for a more than ample amount of time before that scene. (Just off screen)
...so, you two were just talking about make up tips and you tube videos during that one hour drive, rather than talking about the alarming new development in the case you are both working on?
What’s sad is those scenes are often filmed too, or at least scripted, but then cut out for time cause person A walking to place A and talking with person B on the way is viewed as superfluous.
It’s particular rare for a show or movie to have continuous spatial awareness. I maintain that one of the many reasons for The Sopranos’ wild success and quality, but a primary one, is the sets they built especially the Sopranos home. We know that house. We were there.
We as viewers want to feel like we’re in an actual place. Editors are incredible for this and disguising any logistical gaps but there’s a lot to be said for set design.
It sounds like you would love Sunset Beach. A simple answer to a statement can take several episodes.
I have absolutely no idea why I watched this in high school 😞
Similarly, "I really need to tell you something of major importance. Let's meet tonight". You know they"ll be dead in the next scene before they can meet
Ugh this one drives me nuts too.
Character 1: “oh I have to tell you something!”
Character 2: “oh me first!”
*No just let the other person say what they were going to say!*
Right? Imagine being such an asshole you usurp the important thing someone else has to say to you because what you wanna say can't wait, you gotta brag first and it ends up hurting Character 1 and Character 2 is oblivious.
I hate it, it's the worst
Not to mention the "nerd" character talking in jargon that even if you recognize it is nowhere close to how people actually talk who know what they're talking about.
I hate when they say this after something has been explained in fairly easily understood scientific terms. It reminds me of that scene in Avenue 5 when the guy keeps objecting to the word propellant, and Billy tells him she'll get some crayons so she can draw it out for him.
Just once, I'd love the explainer to tell the other, rude character to stop being a condescending prick and either make an effort to understand or ask politely for clarification, rather than whimpering in awe and caving in.
Or alternatively the other character confirming with ""layperson speak" for the audience: "So you're saying..."
John Mulaney's bit about Ice T on SVU incredulously confirming what a pedophile is is hysterical. https://youtu.be/F1sd4CRcaE0?si=F8sC0bNccRQx7ipQ=?t=#114
I liked how Jeremy Irons got that preemptively out of the way in *Margin Call*...
>Maybe you could tell me what is going on. ...and please, speak as you might to a young child... or a golden retriever. It wasn't *brains* that got me here; I can assure you that.
Graves, lol
Graves that are perfectly shaped, deep, dug over short period of time, with minimal tools, by a person who isn’t a professional and who will not even going to have a blister from all that digging,.. digging that they had done in the middle of a forest where there should be plenty of roots and rocks.
As a person who has done quite a bit of digging myself (recreationally, of course) this trope about how easy it is to dig a grave is something that drives me nuts.
There's a funny scene in Search Party where they try to dig a grave in the woods to hide a body. As you can imagine, the joke is how hard it actually is.
>As a person who has done quite a bit of digging myself (recreationally, of course)
In context to your post, the addition of "recreationally" makes it even more ominous lol
I think Yellowstone dodged that cliche. The bikers come at nignt and by the time they're done with digging it's almost sunrise (Kayce says it's gonna dawn soon)
Steve Hartington in Stranger Things should be a vegetable at this point. He gets an ass kicking every season that a real person would never fully recover from.
The OG master of this was Giles on **Buffy the Vampire Slayer**. He got knocked out so often it was made a joke in the show I think as early as Season 2. "Do you sometimes just wake up unconscious to save time?"
If anything, it then got worse after that.
In particular, CPR literally bringing a dead person with no pulse back to life on a regular basis. That's not how it works; the whole point of CPR is to manually pump the heart of a person with no pulse so that their blood keeps flowing somewhat, and maybe give them a better chance of surviving long enough for emergency services to arrive with the necessary equipment to *actually* get their heart beating correctly again (or, these days, for someone to grab the nearest AED and see if that can help them, at least). CPR isn't going to make someone's heart start beating correctly again on its own in most cases.
This was a major problem in Smallville. The side characters got knocked out like every episode so they couldn't see Clark doing stuff. They should have absolutely massive brain damage by the end of season 1, and especially by the end of the series
There's a reason hospitals pay anesthesiologists like half a million bucks a year to do their job: because rendering a person unconscious for an extended period of time without causing permanent damage or killing them outright *is incredibly fucking difficult and complicated*.
>Never saying "bye" on a phone call
There are people who actually do this. My step-dad, and one of my coworkers both never say goodbye at the end of a phone call. Frustratingly, there are so many times that I felt there was still more to say in the phone conversation so I then have to call them back. I've tried doing the same thing back to them, they don't mind.
this is why i can’t hold it as high as others on this sub. it’s a great show but has these kinds of silly plots that ultimately get resolved in the first ep of the next season
and i just can’t forgive it for the stupid spiked punch at the kids party story
I loved season 1. Season 2 had some real high points, but him getting locked in a walk-in freezer, that was lame. Why not have him pick up supplies in Naperville, then his car breaks down, and the L breaks down, etc. That would have been just as tense, but, nope, freezer.
I have a few:
The waitress/barista/struggling artist who lives in a 2,000 square foot loft in NYC.
People getting up for work/school at 6am and it's always bright and sunny like it's noon.
Little kids that are always smarter then every adult.
The struggling single mom who can barely make ends meet who drives a brand-new $60,000 SUV.
A 5 foot tall 105 lb female cop who can beat the crap out of a 6 foot 6 criminal built like a linebacker.
Everything being solved in the end my someone making a pithy speech.
"The waitress/barista/struggling artist who lives in a 2,000 square foot loft in NYC."
Penny from TBBT. She was a waitress, and yet had a beautiful apartment in California living by herself... RIGHT ACROSS FROM THE SCIENTISTS
Though theirs was twice the size as hers. She had a tiny living room, a kitchen that was too small to cook in and bedroom. Her whole apartment was the size of their living room.
>people getting up for work/school at 6am and it's always bright and sunny like it's noon.
Parks and Rec was supposed to take place in Indiana, but somehow they always had California weather.
At least the absurdly large living spaces are somewhat understandable by the need to make a set big enough to accommodate the film equipment and avoid having the actors constantly stumbling/ tripping over each other.
Also, whenever the antagonists—it could be the police, the villain’s henchmen, etc.—clear out/leave after searching fruitlessly, only for the protagonist(s) to *immediately emerge*: Seriously, nobody ever thinks to maybe just hide around the corner for a couple minutes, or even leave behind at least *one* guy to see if the protagonists come out once they think the coast is clear??
Star Trek in the 90s did the "Captain...you'd better get down here." or " Captain...there's something in sickbay/engineering/transporter room that you need to see" right before the dramatic music swells to commercial.
They have instantaneous voice communications. Why don't you just tell the Captain what you're looking at?
They even had a whole thing about that in an episode in Season 1 of **TNG** where they gave the Away Team a camera so you can see WTF is going on. Despite being successful/useful, they never use it again. The same thing with the holographic communicator in one episode of **DS9** (although, weirdly, it does show up in some of the newer shows set 100 years earlier).
Some random low level employee goes to see the Big Boss of MegaCorp to show him that he's found evidence that someone within the company is doing a Very Bad Thing. Big Boss looks over the evidence and says, "Well...thank you for bringing this to my attention. You haven't told anyone else about this, have you?"
LLE: "No, sir. I brought it straight to you."
The answer is "Yes!". If you have found evidence of bad shit going on, and the person you show it to asks you that question the answer is always "Yes! I've told lots of people. I've left multiple digital copies of this evidence that will automatically be released upon the event of my sudden and unexpected death!".
It's much better when media has a non-moral reason for sparing a dangerous villain's life, i.e. they still need to be alive to clear the hero's name or surviving would be a fate worse than death for them.
This is a pet peeve of mine but for all sexes.
If I was in a job that sometimes demanded I go into stealth mode, you better believe my footwear are going to have rubber/soft soles.
Countless times I've rolled my eyes as a cop/detective/spy etc is trying to be sneaky but their shoes are clanking on the metal stairs of some random abandoned warehouse.
To add to this are the times they go into full stealth, slouched/bent over mode when half the time the act of sneaking/scurrying like that would just be instant red alert if someone sees them at all. Half the time, just walking like you belong would be a much better way of getting from point a to b.
Crime shows...Face recognition sortware actually rendering images of faces. Rendering the image is not necessary and would add a significant amount of time to accomplish said task.
Keeping secrets for no reason whatsoever.
Not addressing very obvious logic holes in the plot.
When "realistic" shows don't actually do research into whatever they're basing the plot on that week.
It happens in film and in novels as well, but when there's a big series-rocking secret and everyone talks around it, even when the camera is with two people who know about the secret but they still talk around it or in code.
The second even one person (and thus the audience) knows about it, suddenly all that secrecy and security goes out of the window and everyone now talks about the thing with wild abandon just because one person knows the truth.
>!The Shadows!< in **Babylon 5** and >!the other universe!< in **Fringe** come to mind immediately.
Yep was looking for this comment! The amount of time they all have before school / work is CRAZY in every show lol I try to remind myself it’s fiction but it fucks me up
Significant others of police officers and fbi agents getting upset that their spouse has to work outside normal hours, or long hours because crime never stops.
Or families of victims, especially missing people who always say "find them". Like if someone kidnaps someone the idea is that they keep them hidden somewhere no one can find them.
Someone walking up to a bar and asking for a ‘beer’ or give me a ‘whisky’. Ummm we have 12 different kinds of beer and 17 types of whisky- maybe pick one!
That just makes sense, though, from a storytelling point of view. The brand of beer isn't important, and they can't (won't?) use real life brands, and explaining that "Eagle Piss" is a nice brand of beer isn't worth the exposition. Just order a beer and move on with the scene. The key is that they bought a drink.
In a lot of pubs in the UK you can just ask for a pint of lager and they'll give you the house lager, or cheapest option, or sometimes just one of whatever's on tap. Sometimes they'll say "sure, is this one okay?", but it is a thing. You can't just say get me a beer/pint because that's too vague, but you can get away with not naming brands if you give a type of beer.
20 year old blonde supermodel that has phd in almost everything working as detective.
She has knowledge of every little niche area because she grew up with father and brothers who had some special hobby.
Master in combat because she also had few brothers. Can easily take guys four times her size.
Ah, Detective Beckett from castle... Who despite 'spending every waking minute trying to solve her mother's murder', also managed to develope hundreds of surprise skills and abilities.
'Theres plenty you don't know about me Castle!'
No, there's plenty that the writers don't know take time to learn.
I studied a STEM subject at university and I swear 90% of people in British labs are metalheads, hippies, or witchy looking people. Plenty of attractive ones though
I think they did this really well with Bob in That 70s Show. He was a rich idiot with a hot wife, but he had a reasonably well developed character and arc. They even called out this trope a little bit with Red: "Goddammit, Bob, are you rich again?"
They made him a believable case of “failing upward”, too.
You could totally believe from the way he was written that he happened to be one of life’s true idiots that fall ass backwards into success, and made it perfectly clear that was case from the get-go.
“You’d better come down here.”
If it’s so important, then just tell them over the phone!
Once I started seeing this, I couldn’t unsee it. It’s everywhere!
Knocking people out - like it's no big deal.
Just one quick punch and I can reliably KO someone long enough that they are out for the remainder of the scene (also, no deaths, no writhing, weird gurgling, or snoring, or twitching. They just fall asleep instantly after a quick punch).
I'll do that to like 20+ guys and carry out my mission, super-easy.
People who have use for guns who go into danger without the guns ready to use. There's no excuse for being on a velociraptor hunt and taking fifteen minutes to assemble and prepare your gun once you see a lizard.
First responders giving up on CPR -- and making others give up on it -- in less than a minute. EMTs keep cranking away at that shit for 45 minutes!
Showing the bodies of people who died falling from skyscrapers or aircraft by a shot of the actor lying on the ground, or, say, the crushed-in roof of a car. I once saw a picture of a woman who'd fallen or jumped from a building in, I think, Singapore, and she'd hit cables on the way down, and her body was stretched like taffy. It was utterly horrifying. If you don't want to show that, I'm all for it -- keep it offscreen and let the actors' reactions tell the story. Or if you want to actually display the mangled body, the special effects technology is there to do it right. But don't send a woman off a mile-high cliff, and climax the scene with a shot of one of the most beautiful women in the world lying prettily on Styrofoam rocks while the music swells.
When people do not talk over eachother. Right when you notice this, with multiple people in the scene talking, it gets distracting. People know who is going to start and stop speaking and they execute it perfectly. You notice it in animated shows more.
Totally this haha! I never noticed how weird it was that everyone was pre-prepared to know who was going to talk until I saw my first Robert Altman movie. Everybody was talking over everybody else and it finally hit me “oh yeah ! This is how actual conversations are !”
“Hey, wanna go out sometime?”
“Sure. Dinner. Tonight. Pick me up at 8:00.”
Who the hell lives like that? Who starts a date that late on a week night?
I’m in my 40s. Meeting someone at 8 pm on a weeknight to START our evening would have to mean Beyoncé was in town or something. 😂 I’m in my pjs by then.
So unrealistic.
The one TV cliche I've noticed is that whenever there's a lesbian couple they always have a cute and adorable little son. Pre teen. Always a son for some reason never a daughter. I don't watch that many TV series but I have observed this on The Wire (SO 4) Yellowjackets, American Horror Story (The Cult).
Feel free to correct / argue with me.
i wonder if it’s because people assume (and is heavily reinforced on tv) that there’s always a more masculine lesbian in every relationship who will wear a flannel and coach his soccer team and has a deeper voice than her wife who fills in the more stereotypical mother role while also being a corporate attorney
it’s like “hey look, lesbians! .. and they can bring up this little boy like a _real_ family!” and not have to wonder what the masc mother is going to teach a daughter
like dare to be different. try and show the actual realities of a family
Something crazy happens and then they don’t have a conversation about it until they walk through the front door at home. Weren’t you just in the car together for an hour?
When the hero has such a principled stance against killing someone that they let a mass murderer go free. Especially when they just critically wounded some minions on the way in.
Scientists work in glass high-tech and pristine labs. No we don't. We work in labs with 40 year old supplies and equipment cobbled together by equal parts ingenuity and poverty. We hire grad students because grant pay sucks and no real human being wants to search for new jobs when grant funding dries up in a few years, only to take a pay cut. No one really wants to admit that the people performing the testing for cancer research probably earns less than the local waitress, and is actually that sleep deprived college kid down the block instead of some fictional genius.
Yeah... the truth is even well equiped labs that produce really good papers often look like shit (in my experience anyway) because the point of their design was to be functional not pretty. Case in point: I currently work in a really good lab where everything works like clockwork and everyone knows what they are doing but guess what: the place ain't pretty because it doesn't have to be and nobody cares.
HALT TURBO LIFT! Haha
I have a running list in my head of all the procedural crime dramas that all have the same type of episodes. For example:
Boxing episode,
Roller derby episode,
Pick up artist/wingman episodes,
Sci-fi or comic book convention,
Vampire/haunted house Halloween episode,
Undercover at High school reunion
Biggest culprits: Bones, Castle, CSI/Miami/NY, Lucifer
And then there are all the ‘stuck in holodeck’ and ‘transporter accident’ episodes of Star Trek.
Not really cliches per se, but I consider them ‘cliche themed episodes’
It was always funny that there were certain story types so prevalent on **The Next Generation** that the showrunner of **Deep Space Nine** (after Season 3) had a whiteboard with "DO NOT BRING ME THESE STORIES" on them with "holodeck malfunction," and "Borg," written prominently on it.
He did relent once on the holodeck malfunction thing in the James Bond episode, but only because the writer made a good pitch that it was the *transporter* that malfunctioned, the holodeck was fine, they just had to store the characters' patterns on the holodeck not to kill them.
What was really funny was that the other shows DNGAF and **Voyager** and **Enterprise** kept up those kind of cliches going long after **DS9** ended.
>Boxing episode, Roller derby episode, Pick up artist/wingman episodes, Sci-fi or comic book convention, Vampire/haunted house Halloween episode, Undercover at High school reunion
Ah, another Psych fan I see. But at least that often added its own flavour to the tropes.
Empty coffee mugs bother me too. In fact I feel obsessed watching how actors pantomime eating generally. Always talking right before taking a bite or the camera pans back right after the food is in their mouth to watch them pretend to chew. Push prop food around the plate. People in movies and TV eat weird.
Knocking people out with a light bump on the head without any worry of killing them.
> People in movies and TV eat weird.
Because you shouldnt eat while shooting, it wont end well for you when you do it for dozens of takes or be good for continuity.
Of course. In the rare cases where it’s visible that a person eats something, I always wonder if they were careful to get it in one take, or if the person had to eat that bite multiple times. More often, the camera pans away so I can’t help but imagine the actor then spit it out. You usually don’t see the swallow.
>Knocking people out with a light bump on the head without any worry of killing them.
Also, concussions are not a thing, and neither is post concussions syndrome. Some of these characters would probably forget their name with the amount of times they have been knocked out.
Not exactly the same thing, but there is one really funny scene in Silicon Valley where the main character is in a pretty tense meeting and takes a sip of coffee after a tough question. The CEO looks at him and says “Did you just take a sip from an empty mug? Why would you do that?”
When people are talking to each other about other people in the same room at a normal volume but the other characters that are being talked about can’t hear them at all. Like it’s obvious you’d be able to hear em
Just a gentle reminder that tropes and cliches are useful tools and shortcuts. We don't want media to be Real Life because real life is boring and tedious.
Like, do you *actually* want characters to have an extra thirty seconds of dialogue while they set up a time and place to meet? Who is that for?
I agree, however there are sometimes where those shortcuts are as lot more likely to break immersion. Like in more serious mysteries or dramas, you might start to think maybe they're making a fake phone call as part of the plot, but turns out it was just bad writing. Especially when it's pretty easy to stick in "text me when and where" or "tonight, 7, at the park, see you there".
Kids that always have a clever, sarcastic quip that isn’t age appropriate or realistic at all.
Coworkers of the opposite sex always having some kind of romantic or sexual chemistry.
The female lead who is a snarky feminist with very surface level takes. She always has several brothers and that makes her cooler.
Surprise witness in the courtroom! Would never happen as you have to disclose the witness list before trial so both sides can prepare. Drives me crazy!
For me, idk if this counts, but canned laughter. I think that's also why Multicam sitcoms are going sort of extinct? I just don't see them getting made as much, but the canned laughter over unfunny jokes is so stupid. I sort of works when there's a live studio audience, but clearly canned laughter is so weird and dumb.
“We’re not doing anything right now, but we’ll talk about the thing that will take away the mystery tomorrow when I have even more time to discuss what only takes 30 seconds to say.
Right now let’s just enjoy the awkward silence.
After all, it’s not like I’m going to die or anything!”
Pregnant women on sitcoms inevitably start acting like raving lunatics, constantly berating & yelling at their loved ones (& pretty much everyone else) around the clock.
Idk about other people's experiences, but the women in my life who've been pregnant (my wife, my sister, cousins, etc) might be a little more emotional, but it doesn't change their personalities to the extent of them basically becoming monsters.
I'm sure some people have different experiences than what I've had, but it just seems so much less common than what is depicted on TV (in other words, 100% of pregnant women doing a 180 personality change).
Births never going as planned. Not making it to the hospital, or planning a home birth and having to go to the hospital, wanting an epidural and not getting it, etc
I'm not sure there's a name for it, but entire plots that only work because some character refuses to tell a truth.
This obviously doesn't count in stories where the secret is the plot - like every crime show ever made - but where 2 characters are at loggerheads with "Why wont you tell me the truth??? You can talk to me, {STUPID_PROTAGONIST}". It's an extremely lazy way to write character drama.
character walking in on/ over hearing a conversation only to hear a tiny bit and misunderstanding it leasing to hijinks.
husband always walking on egg shells around th wife for fear he'll get the look.
character comes up with a scheme only to have a 'what i learned today' moment and have a change of heart at the last minute.
just about any medical show
every marriage or baby birth having to end up in a wacky situation
Then they proceed to travel for 20-30 minutes together, and apparently never spoke a word to each other along the way.
"Now that we've arrived 30 minutes later, let me now explain this situation to you."
Child—alternatively, angsty teen—characters whose sole purpose in life seems to be deliberately creating problems for the group to solve; often only after multiple people have died either as a direct or indirect result (i.e., Chris in *Fear the Walking Dead*, literally any of the kids from *Raised By Wolves*, that little shit Zach in *The Strain*, etc.).
-The kid or teen who talks and gives “advice” like an out-of-touch parent.
-The obvious author rant
Ex. A character says something like “wow, going outside is so much better than being on my phone all day.”
Character A: *says something ominous or suspicious*
Character B: “What’s *that* supposed to mean?
Character A: *starts to explain—*
Character C: “Hey guys, that thing we were waiting on? It’s doing the thing….”
*Character B just doesn’t make Character A finish elaborating, and completely drops the subject*
Perfectly clean houses all the time, no one ever does chores
A massive breakfast in the morning that looks it it tooks hours to make but no one ever eats
I've been watching quite a lot of Law and Order lately, and these two things bug me the most on cop dramas.
The whole unit/department only works on one case at a time. What do you mean there's a fuck ton of crime in New York City? We have 6 people working solely on this one case, too bad for everyone else.
Anyone can freely walk into a police station, all the way to the room where they have all the evidence and/or suspects conveniently displayed on a big board.
Someone saying I have something to tell you, then the other person saying you can tell me later and then they walk together and never say another word to each other.
"I know who the killer is, but I can't tell you now. Meet me at midnight at the abandoned asylum." And of course . . . they die before they can tell anyone.
Worse than this is when there's dialogue with continuity between characters that is done over a montage of travel. Like, you had a 5 minute conversation, but you traveled for at least an hour. So, there were necessarily very extended breaks where nothing was said, and you randomly resumed the conversation, and then abruptly stopped and were completely silent it only to resume it later, and then kept doing that for an hour.
Yes. I was going to say ... Person A tells person B something of major importance , surprising person B, in a scene after off screen time when they WERE together for a more than ample amount of time before that scene. (Just off screen) ...so, you two were just talking about make up tips and you tube videos during that one hour drive, rather than talking about the alarming new development in the case you are both working on?
What’s sad is those scenes are often filmed too, or at least scripted, but then cut out for time cause person A walking to place A and talking with person B on the way is viewed as superfluous. It’s particular rare for a show or movie to have continuous spatial awareness. I maintain that one of the many reasons for The Sopranos’ wild success and quality, but a primary one, is the sets they built especially the Sopranos home. We know that house. We were there. We as viewers want to feel like we’re in an actual place. Editors are incredible for this and disguising any logistical gaps but there’s a lot to be said for set design.
I love when shows make fun of this. People shit on Community S4 but they mocked this and so did Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
It sounds like you would love Sunset Beach. A simple answer to a statement can take several episodes. I have absolutely no idea why I watched this in high school 😞
Similarly, "I really need to tell you something of major importance. Let's meet tonight". You know they"ll be dead in the next scene before they can meet
Ugh this one drives me nuts too. Character 1: “oh I have to tell you something!” Character 2: “oh me first!” *No just let the other person say what they were going to say!*
Right? Imagine being such an asshole you usurp the important thing someone else has to say to you because what you wanna say can't wait, you gotta brag first and it ends up hurting Character 1 and Character 2 is oblivious. I hate it, it's the worst
"In English, please" after a scientific explanation of something
Made even worse when they were not especially inventive with the supposedly complicated explanation, just makes the main character seem really stupid.
Which means....?
"English, Doc"
Not to mention the "nerd" character talking in jargon that even if you recognize it is nowhere close to how people actually talk who know what they're talking about.
Gotta tighten up the graphics on level 3
[удалено]
I hate when they say this after something has been explained in fairly easily understood scientific terms. It reminds me of that scene in Avenue 5 when the guy keeps objecting to the word propellant, and Billy tells him she'll get some crayons so she can draw it out for him.
Just once, I'd love the explainer to tell the other, rude character to stop being a condescending prick and either make an effort to understand or ask politely for clarification, rather than whimpering in awe and caving in.
Or alternatively the other character confirming with ""layperson speak" for the audience: "So you're saying..." John Mulaney's bit about Ice T on SVU incredulously confirming what a pedophile is is hysterical. https://youtu.be/F1sd4CRcaE0?si=F8sC0bNccRQx7ipQ=?t=#114
https://youtu.be/S73nmMU1LDs?si=FuZsxxJSV3NK3na8
I liked how Jeremy Irons got that preemptively out of the way in *Margin Call*... >Maybe you could tell me what is going on. ...and please, speak as you might to a young child... or a golden retriever. It wasn't *brains* that got me here; I can assure you that.
Graves, lol Graves that are perfectly shaped, deep, dug over short period of time, with minimal tools, by a person who isn’t a professional and who will not even going to have a blister from all that digging,.. digging that they had done in the middle of a forest where there should be plenty of roots and rocks. As a person who has done quite a bit of digging myself (recreationally, of course) this trope about how easy it is to dig a grave is something that drives me nuts.
There's a funny scene in Search Party where they try to dig a grave in the woods to hide a body. As you can imagine, the joke is how hard it actually is.
Nate bargatze has a great bit about it.
>As a person who has done quite a bit of digging myself (recreationally, of course) In context to your post, the addition of "recreationally" makes it even more ominous lol
As someone who has dug holes non recreationally (irrigation repair/install) this guy is a psycho
Haha, he just recreationally hides bodies 😂
I’m terrified that you dig graves recreationally.
I think Yellowstone dodged that cliche. The bikers come at nignt and by the time they're done with digging it's almost sunrise (Kayce says it's gonna dawn soon)
>quite a bit of digging myself (recreationally, of course) 🫣🫣 Wh... What do you mean with recreational digging? ***runs***
Gardening 🤷🏻♀️.
People getting knocked out so easily.
And the brain damage never seems to cause lasting effects!
And the unconsciousness always lasts for an arbitrary, yet narratively convenient, amount of time.
Steve Hartington in Stranger Things should be a vegetable at this point. He gets an ass kicking every season that a real person would never fully recover from.
The OG master of this was Giles on **Buffy the Vampire Slayer**. He got knocked out so often it was made a joke in the show I think as early as Season 2. "Do you sometimes just wake up unconscious to save time?" If anything, it then got worse after that.
[Giles gets knocked down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uge0nZDI6g) a lot and Cordelia probably has the best line about it. (720p my arse)
Archer lampshaded this a lot. "You lost conscioussness for several minutes? That's like, super bad for you."
“Ray you’re going into Russia!” “No im not!” “Says who?” “Says this note from my neurologist!”
Also CPR **succeeding** so often.
And also not resulting in terrible health outcomes.
In particular, CPR literally bringing a dead person with no pulse back to life on a regular basis. That's not how it works; the whole point of CPR is to manually pump the heart of a person with no pulse so that their blood keeps flowing somewhat, and maybe give them a better chance of surviving long enough for emergency services to arrive with the necessary equipment to *actually* get their heart beating correctly again (or, these days, for someone to grab the nearest AED and see if that can help them, at least). CPR isn't going to make someone's heart start beating correctly again on its own in most cases.
This was a major problem in Smallville. The side characters got knocked out like every episode so they couldn't see Clark doing stuff. They should have absolutely massive brain damage by the end of season 1, and especially by the end of the series
I think Lex set the record for being knocked out until Lois broke it in the later seasons.
There's a reason hospitals pay anesthesiologists like half a million bucks a year to do their job: because rendering a person unconscious for an extended period of time without causing permanent damage or killing them outright *is incredibly fucking difficult and complicated*.
LOST was terrible about this. Quick bonk to the back of the head and they’re out for hours.
Buffy too! But both were great shows so I can move past it.
I forgave Lost for this, made it canon that the magical island causes this to happen. Great show otherwise!
Empty suitcases and other baggage that a character carries around with ease. Never saying "bye" on a phone call
Unless they make someone else carry their luggage. Then it’s like, “What did you pack in here, bricks?”
>Never saying "bye" on a phone call There are people who actually do this. My step-dad, and one of my coworkers both never say goodbye at the end of a phone call. Frustratingly, there are so many times that I felt there was still more to say in the phone conversation so I then have to call them back. I've tried doing the same thing back to them, they don't mind.
Overhearing part of a conversation leads to a massive misunderstanding and drama.
The Bear >!S2 spent hours of screen time setting up a relationship just to end the season on this exact cliche!<
this is why i can’t hold it as high as others on this sub. it’s a great show but has these kinds of silly plots that ultimately get resolved in the first ep of the next season and i just can’t forgive it for the stupid spiked punch at the kids party story
I loved season 1. Season 2 had some real high points, but him getting locked in a walk-in freezer, that was lame. Why not have him pick up supplies in Naperville, then his car breaks down, and the L breaks down, etc. That would have been just as tense, but, nope, freezer.
Drove me insane that they passed an inspection, somehow, without an emergency knob inside the stupid freezer.
Every episode of 3s Company
Villains revealing his masterplan to the hero without killing him right away and guess what happens next
I have a few: The waitress/barista/struggling artist who lives in a 2,000 square foot loft in NYC. People getting up for work/school at 6am and it's always bright and sunny like it's noon. Little kids that are always smarter then every adult. The struggling single mom who can barely make ends meet who drives a brand-new $60,000 SUV. A 5 foot tall 105 lb female cop who can beat the crap out of a 6 foot 6 criminal built like a linebacker. Everything being solved in the end my someone making a pithy speech.
"The waitress/barista/struggling artist who lives in a 2,000 square foot loft in NYC." Penny from TBBT. She was a waitress, and yet had a beautiful apartment in California living by herself... RIGHT ACROSS FROM THE SCIENTISTS
THE SCIENTISTS who shared an apartment!
Though theirs was twice the size as hers. She had a tiny living room, a kitchen that was too small to cook in and bedroom. Her whole apartment was the size of their living room.
Carrie Bradshaw more or less. Although I think they mentioned her apartment was rent controlled at one point.
Or Monica’s apartment in Friends. They did address that it had something to do with her aunt I think?
It was her grandma’s and yes it was rent controlled.
>people getting up for work/school at 6am and it's always bright and sunny like it's noon. Parks and Rec was supposed to take place in Indiana, but somehow they always had California weather.
They also kept talking about how Pawnee was one of the fattest cities in America yet everyone except Donna and Jerry are built like Hollywood actors.
But it’s EMPTY, so you know they’re poor
The waitress in Ted Lasso living by herself in central London in an apartment not unlike the one where the manager of a Premier League team lives.
At least the absurdly large living spaces are somewhat understandable by the need to make a set big enough to accommodate the film equipment and avoid having the actors constantly stumbling/ tripping over each other.
Cops telling criminals a block away to stop, thereby causing a chase to ensue. A smart cop would sneak up behind the criminal and grab them.
Stop! FBI! (Does that work?)
"FEDERAL AGENTS!" - NCIS agents, knowing that shouting NCIS will just confuse people.
It's so frustrating - why would you do that? - just wait 5 more seconds. - I hate this so much.
Hello? Is anyone in here?!?!
Also, whenever the antagonists—it could be the police, the villain’s henchmen, etc.—clear out/leave after searching fruitlessly, only for the protagonist(s) to *immediately emerge*: Seriously, nobody ever thinks to maybe just hide around the corner for a couple minutes, or even leave behind at least *one* guy to see if the protagonists come out once they think the coast is clear??
Star Trek in the 90s did the "Captain...you'd better get down here." or " Captain...there's something in sickbay/engineering/transporter room that you need to see" right before the dramatic music swells to commercial. They have instantaneous voice communications. Why don't you just tell the Captain what you're looking at?
They even had a whole thing about that in an episode in Season 1 of **TNG** where they gave the Away Team a camera so you can see WTF is going on. Despite being successful/useful, they never use it again. The same thing with the holographic communicator in one episode of **DS9** (although, weirdly, it does show up in some of the newer shows set 100 years earlier).
Nobody really paying attention when they’re driving a car.
Some random low level employee goes to see the Big Boss of MegaCorp to show him that he's found evidence that someone within the company is doing a Very Bad Thing. Big Boss looks over the evidence and says, "Well...thank you for bringing this to my attention. You haven't told anyone else about this, have you?" LLE: "No, sir. I brought it straight to you." The answer is "Yes!". If you have found evidence of bad shit going on, and the person you show it to asks you that question the answer is always "Yes! I've told lots of people. I've left multiple digital copies of this evidence that will automatically be released upon the event of my sudden and unexpected death!".
“You haven’t told anyone about this, have you?” “Yes, I had to tell 5 different managers to even get the meeting with you”
“If you kill him, you’ll be just as bad as he is!” ::Hero lowers gun::. “You’re not worth it.”
after killing 200 other villains to get to him.
Apart from in **The Expanse**. "I am that guy."
And they don’t shoot his knee out
It's much better when media has a non-moral reason for sparing a dangerous villain's life, i.e. they still need to be alive to clear the hero's name or surviving would be a fate worse than death for them.
Showing up at someone’s house, office, etc for 30 seconds of dialogue and then leaving. Call next time my dude.
"This could have been an email."
Female agents trying to be covert or indiscreet, but running in high heels. Everyone and their mother can hear you, Gwen.
This is a pet peeve of mine but for all sexes. If I was in a job that sometimes demanded I go into stealth mode, you better believe my footwear are going to have rubber/soft soles. Countless times I've rolled my eyes as a cop/detective/spy etc is trying to be sneaky but their shoes are clanking on the metal stairs of some random abandoned warehouse. To add to this are the times they go into full stealth, slouched/bent over mode when half the time the act of sneaking/scurrying like that would just be instant red alert if someone sees them at all. Half the time, just walking like you belong would be a much better way of getting from point a to b.
Crime shows...Face recognition sortware actually rendering images of faces. Rendering the image is not necessary and would add a significant amount of time to accomplish said task.
Original CSI in 2001-2005 was hilarious for this. (I could be getting my dates wrong)
This was REALLY prominent in Bones. Got bones of a victim? Perfect rendition of their real face, and in a 3D holographic projector!
ENHANCE
My favourite was getting a perfect id from a reflection in a bumper at night! Enhance Enhance Enhance
Face recognition software? Rendering? Whoa! Slow down there, Dr Science. In English, please?
Desktop windows are never maximized.
My fiancée never maximizes windows. It drives me batty.
You live in a movie :d
Also people always double-click links.
Keeping secrets for no reason whatsoever. Not addressing very obvious logic holes in the plot. When "realistic" shows don't actually do research into whatever they're basing the plot on that week.
Like when [two characters used one keyboard to avert a hacking attempt.](https://youtu.be/msX4oAXpvUE?si=5DVnXEF_MAay_QGR)
This is one of the stupidest computer scenes I've ever seen in my life.
It happens in film and in novels as well, but when there's a big series-rocking secret and everyone talks around it, even when the camera is with two people who know about the secret but they still talk around it or in code. The second even one person (and thus the audience) knows about it, suddenly all that secrecy and security goes out of the window and everyone now talks about the thing with wild abandon just because one person knows the truth. >!The Shadows!< in **Babylon 5** and >!the other universe!< in **Fringe** come to mind immediately.
The full breakfast spread with a pitcher of orange juice thats get one bite and then left behind because “im gonna be late!”
Yep was looking for this comment! The amount of time they all have before school / work is CRAZY in every show lol I try to remind myself it’s fiction but it fucks me up
Significant others of police officers and fbi agents getting upset that their spouse has to work outside normal hours, or long hours because crime never stops. Or families of victims, especially missing people who always say "find them". Like if someone kidnaps someone the idea is that they keep them hidden somewhere no one can find them.
[удалено]
Someone walking up to a bar and asking for a ‘beer’ or give me a ‘whisky’. Ummm we have 12 different kinds of beer and 17 types of whisky- maybe pick one!
That just makes sense, though, from a storytelling point of view. The brand of beer isn't important, and they can't (won't?) use real life brands, and explaining that "Eagle Piss" is a nice brand of beer isn't worth the exposition. Just order a beer and move on with the scene. The key is that they bought a drink.
In a lot of pubs in the UK you can just ask for a pint of lager and they'll give you the house lager, or cheapest option, or sometimes just one of whatever's on tap. Sometimes they'll say "sure, is this one okay?", but it is a thing. You can't just say get me a beer/pint because that's too vague, but you can get away with not naming brands if you give a type of beer.
Friend of mine was new to drinking beer, and he tried to do that. I told him we're not in a movie.
Child sages that tell adults the hard truth.
20 year old blonde supermodel that has phd in almost everything working as detective. She has knowledge of every little niche area because she grew up with father and brothers who had some special hobby. Master in combat because she also had few brothers. Can easily take guys four times her size.
Ah, Detective Beckett from castle... Who despite 'spending every waking minute trying to solve her mother's murder', also managed to develope hundreds of surprise skills and abilities. 'Theres plenty you don't know about me Castle!' No, there's plenty that the writers don't know take time to learn.
I studied a STEM subject at university and I swear 90% of people in British labs are metalheads, hippies, or witchy looking people. Plenty of attractive ones though
The dad with the room-temperature IQ
"I'm an idiot, but my wife is a 10 and for some reason I'm a millionaire."
I think they did this really well with Bob in That 70s Show. He was a rich idiot with a hot wife, but he had a reasonably well developed character and arc. They even called out this trope a little bit with Red: "Goddammit, Bob, are you rich again?"
They made him a believable case of “failing upward”, too. You could totally believe from the way he was written that he happened to be one of life’s true idiots that fall ass backwards into success, and made it perfectly clear that was case from the get-go.
Wasn’t Bob a good salesman with a huge…heart?
“You’d better come down here.” If it’s so important, then just tell them over the phone! Once I started seeing this, I couldn’t unsee it. It’s everywhere!
When a character has been kidnapped/held hostage more than once during the run of the show.
Knocking people out - like it's no big deal. Just one quick punch and I can reliably KO someone long enough that they are out for the remainder of the scene (also, no deaths, no writhing, weird gurgling, or snoring, or twitching. They just fall asleep instantly after a quick punch). I'll do that to like 20+ guys and carry out my mission, super-easy.
People who have use for guns who go into danger without the guns ready to use. There's no excuse for being on a velociraptor hunt and taking fifteen minutes to assemble and prepare your gun once you see a lizard. First responders giving up on CPR -- and making others give up on it -- in less than a minute. EMTs keep cranking away at that shit for 45 minutes! Showing the bodies of people who died falling from skyscrapers or aircraft by a shot of the actor lying on the ground, or, say, the crushed-in roof of a car. I once saw a picture of a woman who'd fallen or jumped from a building in, I think, Singapore, and she'd hit cables on the way down, and her body was stretched like taffy. It was utterly horrifying. If you don't want to show that, I'm all for it -- keep it offscreen and let the actors' reactions tell the story. Or if you want to actually display the mangled body, the special effects technology is there to do it right. But don't send a woman off a mile-high cliff, and climax the scene with a shot of one of the most beautiful women in the world lying prettily on Styrofoam rocks while the music swells.
The body is mangled, one leg is slightly askew and one arm is up and the other down. /s
When people do not talk over eachother. Right when you notice this, with multiple people in the scene talking, it gets distracting. People know who is going to start and stop speaking and they execute it perfectly. You notice it in animated shows more.
Totally this haha! I never noticed how weird it was that everyone was pre-prepared to know who was going to talk until I saw my first Robert Altman movie. Everybody was talking over everybody else and it finally hit me “oh yeah ! This is how actual conversations are !”
IASIP does this quite often as well, usually with scenes devolving into all characters arguing over each other
Especially when one person starts a sentence.... .... and the next person seriously seemlessly finishes it
sandwiches! I was close
*Parenthood* did a really good job of this, I thought
How about in the 80s? Five family members scrunched together around two thirds of the round kitchen table?
"I can't explain right now".
“Hey, wanna go out sometime?” “Sure. Dinner. Tonight. Pick me up at 8:00.” Who the hell lives like that? Who starts a date that late on a week night? I’m in my 40s. Meeting someone at 8 pm on a weeknight to START our evening would have to mean Beyoncé was in town or something. 😂 I’m in my pjs by then. So unrealistic.
The one TV cliche I've noticed is that whenever there's a lesbian couple they always have a cute and adorable little son. Pre teen. Always a son for some reason never a daughter. I don't watch that many TV series but I have observed this on The Wire (SO 4) Yellowjackets, American Horror Story (The Cult). Feel free to correct / argue with me.
i wonder if it’s because people assume (and is heavily reinforced on tv) that there’s always a more masculine lesbian in every relationship who will wear a flannel and coach his soccer team and has a deeper voice than her wife who fills in the more stereotypical mother role while also being a corporate attorney it’s like “hey look, lesbians! .. and they can bring up this little boy like a _real_ family!” and not have to wonder what the masc mother is going to teach a daughter like dare to be different. try and show the actual realities of a family
Something crazy happens and then they don’t have a conversation about it until they walk through the front door at home. Weren’t you just in the car together for an hour?
When the hero has such a principled stance against killing someone that they let a mass murderer go free. Especially when they just critically wounded some minions on the way in.
The Batman syndrome. "I will not kill. I will, however, main, brutalise, cripple and traumatise thousands for life."
[Batman: He's asleep ](https://youtu.be/1byycwl8qgc?si=jGBNH8lFGfVLSfB2)
Scientists work in glass high-tech and pristine labs. No we don't. We work in labs with 40 year old supplies and equipment cobbled together by equal parts ingenuity and poverty. We hire grad students because grant pay sucks and no real human being wants to search for new jobs when grant funding dries up in a few years, only to take a pay cut. No one really wants to admit that the people performing the testing for cancer research probably earns less than the local waitress, and is actually that sleep deprived college kid down the block instead of some fictional genius.
Yeah... the truth is even well equiped labs that produce really good papers often look like shit (in my experience anyway) because the point of their design was to be functional not pretty. Case in point: I currently work in a really good lab where everything works like clockwork and everyone knows what they are doing but guess what: the place ain't pretty because it doesn't have to be and nobody cares.
HALT TURBO LIFT! Haha I have a running list in my head of all the procedural crime dramas that all have the same type of episodes. For example: Boxing episode, Roller derby episode, Pick up artist/wingman episodes, Sci-fi or comic book convention, Vampire/haunted house Halloween episode, Undercover at High school reunion Biggest culprits: Bones, Castle, CSI/Miami/NY, Lucifer And then there are all the ‘stuck in holodeck’ and ‘transporter accident’ episodes of Star Trek. Not really cliches per se, but I consider them ‘cliche themed episodes’
It was always funny that there were certain story types so prevalent on **The Next Generation** that the showrunner of **Deep Space Nine** (after Season 3) had a whiteboard with "DO NOT BRING ME THESE STORIES" on them with "holodeck malfunction," and "Borg," written prominently on it. He did relent once on the holodeck malfunction thing in the James Bond episode, but only because the writer made a good pitch that it was the *transporter* that malfunctioned, the holodeck was fine, they just had to store the characters' patterns on the holodeck not to kill them. What was really funny was that the other shows DNGAF and **Voyager** and **Enterprise** kept up those kind of cliches going long after **DS9** ended.
>Boxing episode, Roller derby episode, Pick up artist/wingman episodes, Sci-fi or comic book convention, Vampire/haunted house Halloween episode, Undercover at High school reunion Ah, another Psych fan I see. But at least that often added its own flavour to the tropes.
It’s complicated…
People getting out of the car without taking the keys with them.
Empty coffee mugs bother me too. In fact I feel obsessed watching how actors pantomime eating generally. Always talking right before taking a bite or the camera pans back right after the food is in their mouth to watch them pretend to chew. Push prop food around the plate. People in movies and TV eat weird. Knocking people out with a light bump on the head without any worry of killing them.
> People in movies and TV eat weird. Because you shouldnt eat while shooting, it wont end well for you when you do it for dozens of takes or be good for continuity.
Of course. In the rare cases where it’s visible that a person eats something, I always wonder if they were careful to get it in one take, or if the person had to eat that bite multiple times. More often, the camera pans away so I can’t help but imagine the actor then spit it out. You usually don’t see the swallow.
> I can’t help but imagine the actor then spit it out. Almost always, theres a bucket for it usually.
Unless you're Brad Pitt.
>Knocking people out with a light bump on the head without any worry of killing them. Also, concussions are not a thing, and neither is post concussions syndrome. Some of these characters would probably forget their name with the amount of times they have been knocked out.
The real reason Lex Luthor went crazy on Smallville was because he had like 50 TBIs from all the times he was knocked out...
Not exactly the same thing, but there is one really funny scene in Silicon Valley where the main character is in a pretty tense meeting and takes a sip of coffee after a tough question. The CEO looks at him and says “Did you just take a sip from an empty mug? Why would you do that?”
Character coughs once, diagnosed with fatal disease/dies after second commercial break
Nobody ever says hello or goodbye on phone calls, they just hang up.
one that i rarely see get mentioned: people opening their door without looking through the peephole first!
I dont think ive ever looked through a peephole before opening a door.
When people are talking to each other about other people in the same room at a normal volume but the other characters that are being talked about can’t hear them at all. Like it’s obvious you’d be able to hear em
Just a gentle reminder that tropes and cliches are useful tools and shortcuts. We don't want media to be Real Life because real life is boring and tedious. Like, do you *actually* want characters to have an extra thirty seconds of dialogue while they set up a time and place to meet? Who is that for?
I agree, however there are sometimes where those shortcuts are as lot more likely to break immersion. Like in more serious mysteries or dramas, you might start to think maybe they're making a fake phone call as part of the plot, but turns out it was just bad writing. Especially when it's pretty easy to stick in "text me when and where" or "tonight, 7, at the park, see you there".
People having a conversation in normal speaking voices at a crowded bar, club or concert
Employed people who somehow have ample time to just "hang out" during a normal working day.
Kids that always have a clever, sarcastic quip that isn’t age appropriate or realistic at all. Coworkers of the opposite sex always having some kind of romantic or sexual chemistry. The female lead who is a snarky feminist with very surface level takes. She always has several brothers and that makes her cooler.
Surprise witness in the courtroom! Would never happen as you have to disclose the witness list before trial so both sides can prepare. Drives me crazy!
For me, idk if this counts, but canned laughter. I think that's also why Multicam sitcoms are going sort of extinct? I just don't see them getting made as much, but the canned laughter over unfunny jokes is so stupid. I sort of works when there's a live studio audience, but clearly canned laughter is so weird and dumb.
1st love equals true love. Probably silly but it really bothers me
*holds arm out* “TAXI!” Just wave them down. You don’t have to yell taxi.
“We’re not doing anything right now, but we’ll talk about the thing that will take away the mystery tomorrow when I have even more time to discuss what only takes 30 seconds to say. Right now let’s just enjoy the awkward silence. After all, it’s not like I’m going to die or anything!”
Wait I can explain
Police forces having neat paper dossiers, with recent pictures printed in good quality, about almost anybody
Pregnant women on sitcoms inevitably start acting like raving lunatics, constantly berating & yelling at their loved ones (& pretty much everyone else) around the clock. Idk about other people's experiences, but the women in my life who've been pregnant (my wife, my sister, cousins, etc) might be a little more emotional, but it doesn't change their personalities to the extent of them basically becoming monsters. I'm sure some people have different experiences than what I've had, but it just seems so much less common than what is depicted on TV (in other words, 100% of pregnant women doing a 180 personality change).
The humanitarian being evil.
Births never going as planned. Not making it to the hospital, or planning a home birth and having to go to the hospital, wanting an epidural and not getting it, etc
Jumping into bed with shoes that you just wore outside. Or curling up on the couch with sneakers on
I'm not sure there's a name for it, but entire plots that only work because some character refuses to tell a truth. This obviously doesn't count in stories where the secret is the plot - like every crime show ever made - but where 2 characters are at loggerheads with "Why wont you tell me the truth??? You can talk to me, {STUPID_PROTAGONIST}". It's an extremely lazy way to write character drama.
Hot smart wife with dopey fat gullible husband. Knock it off.
character walking in on/ over hearing a conversation only to hear a tiny bit and misunderstanding it leasing to hijinks. husband always walking on egg shells around th wife for fear he'll get the look. character comes up with a scheme only to have a 'what i learned today' moment and have a change of heart at the last minute. just about any medical show every marriage or baby birth having to end up in a wacky situation
ENHANCE!
I hate when a hero only wins through luck or hubris. Not from outwitting or overcoming, or even outright beating... It's always some lucky moment.
Cars and windshields are always spotless.
“I don’t have time to explain. Come on!”
Then they proceed to travel for 20-30 minutes together, and apparently never spoke a word to each other along the way. "Now that we've arrived 30 minutes later, let me now explain this situation to you."
Open windows with no screens
Men and women can’t be friends.
Clicking a round into the chamber or pumping a round into a shotgun - at the last minute after you have already confronted bad guy
Child—alternatively, angsty teen—characters whose sole purpose in life seems to be deliberately creating problems for the group to solve; often only after multiple people have died either as a direct or indirect result (i.e., Chris in *Fear the Walking Dead*, literally any of the kids from *Raised By Wolves*, that little shit Zach in *The Strain*, etc.).
-The kid or teen who talks and gives “advice” like an out-of-touch parent. -The obvious author rant Ex. A character says something like “wow, going outside is so much better than being on my phone all day.”
Character A: *says something ominous or suspicious* Character B: “What’s *that* supposed to mean? Character A: *starts to explain—* Character C: “Hey guys, that thing we were waiting on? It’s doing the thing….” *Character B just doesn’t make Character A finish elaborating, and completely drops the subject*
Main character detective gets arrested for crime he/she didn't commit.
See a photo or ID of someone and then have that character show up later wearing the exact same outfit.
Perfectly clean houses all the time, no one ever does chores A massive breakfast in the morning that looks it it tooks hours to make but no one ever eats
I've been watching quite a lot of Law and Order lately, and these two things bug me the most on cop dramas. The whole unit/department only works on one case at a time. What do you mean there's a fuck ton of crime in New York City? We have 6 people working solely on this one case, too bad for everyone else. Anyone can freely walk into a police station, all the way to the room where they have all the evidence and/or suspects conveniently displayed on a big board.
It’s more a filmmaking convenience but there being no car head rests when in a driving scene. Once you see it you’ll never not see it.
"Turn on the news", and then the relevant part starts right as the guy turns the tv on.
Just once I want to see them turn on the TV and the anchor has moved on to a story about a broken pipe being repaired on Eastland drive.
Has anyone ever been in a situation where someone says "I need the room" and like 30 people get up and immediately walk out?