Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
Tonight let’s talk about pet peeves. In films, TV, books, anything culture related.
What makes you crazy?
Getting historical facts wrong? Tech-related stuff that’s ridiculous?
Terrible accents? Characters that are bullshit and unbelievable? Bad writing? Shaky camera work? White people playing characters of other races? Ridiculous plot lines? Just to name a few.
Whatever it is that annoys the hell out of you, culture-related, complain about it here!
As always, PLEASE DON’T JUST LIST THINGS. Tell us about it whatever it is, share examples, explain why it makes you crazy or how they could have done it better, whatever.
Let’s go!
(Sneak peek at next week’s topic: Best Gene Hackman movies.)
For those new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.
Soprano2
Just a general pet peeve – the phrase “one of the only”. This phrase makes no sense!
TBone
Leaving the toilet seat up AT NIGHT. Hubby doesn’t do that anymore, ever hahahaha!
He thought the 3am tornado was bad, until I sat in a cold toilet at that hour!
TS
Foreign films dubbed in English – would much rather just have subtitles.
Chetan Murthy
@TBone: haha, when I was 24, a girlfriend learned me of that. To the point that even today (at 60) I no longer do it and find it disconcerting when guests do it.
Professor Bigfoot
“The Wild Wild West.”
Casting Will as Jim West was abominable; so profoundly ahistorical that I couldn’t even get to the steampunk vibe.
“The Green Mile.”
John Coffey would not have lived to go to trial.
TBone
@Chetan Murthy: larn ’em young, I say! Hubby forgot his toilet training in a rush to get back to sleep but he will never forget again!
hitchhiker
this is a pet peeve ABOUT a pet peeve:
when people who have never watched the West Wing assume they know that it’s just a bunch of liberal fantasy government porn where all the republicans are evil and stupid and all the democrats are noble and smart.
it’s painfully idealistic in lots of ways, but not nearly as partisan as they imagine.
LeftCoastYankee
Commercials, and the idea that ritualized lying would make everything (monetarily) free but not affect the veracity of the “free” information.
Can’t imagine why that popped in my head today….
Alce _e_ardillo
Injections straight into the neck. Would not do anything except bleed into the neck.
Suzanne
I hate movies with supernatural plot lines. It basically breaks every plot. Like, who cares if anything is plausible? It’s magic! Yay!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Stirrups!
Obviously this goes way back in movies and in TV but whenever I see a period piece, yunno something like ‘Gladiator’ and I see mounted troops using stirrups, a yell at the tv.
Back in the day, I sorta excuse it. But anything more recent? No excuse.
As execrable as the Alexander the Great film was, the cavalry as portrayed didn’t have stirrups.
Phylllis
Characters taken by surprise by helicopters suddenly appearing. Those things are LOUD. Continuing with the helicopter them, directors falling in love with a particular type of shot. We watched The Pledge with Jack Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn recently, and I lost count of the number of aerial tracking shots of Nicholson’s vehicle navigating this or that road. Ok Sean, you had money to burn on helicopters. Maybe should have spent it on a more coherent script.
Another Scott
Peeve: Dialog in giant-cast TV shows that could be said by any of the major players. You know, the cop or cop-ish show where the team sits around the office, explaining to the boss where they are in the investigation, before the boss tells them to keep working / working harder to solve the case because (s)he’s getting heat from upstairs!
And one starts talking
and another gives the middle clause
and yet another finishes the sentence.
Examples? Too many to count. :-/
I get it – there are 19 or 43 or whatever minutes per episode and actors need lines. Munch was often lucky to get 5 words in an episode. :-( Still, it’s annoying.
One of the charming things about Brooklyn 99 was that the characters were strong and different and I don’t recall them finishing each others sentences. The writers knew who they were and they had their own voices.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: @TBone:
Come on guys, did I really need to specify CULTURE-RELATED Pet Peeve in a Medium Cool post?
Scout211
I’m an outlier here, but I really dislike superhero movies. I know they come from actual comic books and have a comic book fantasy feel to them, so they aren’t realistic. But when the movie features real actors and not characters in a comic book, the violent killing of all the bad guys in over-the-top killing sprees makes me cringe. I just can’t see anything but people being killed.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: try them while you’re under bright light on an exam table splayed open like a Christmas goose!
Trivia Man
Nobody says Thank You. They get important information, or their life saved, or a gift. Blank look and dead silence or just an immediate turn snd walk away.
Wife is probably sick of me shouting out THANK YOU every time it happens.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
I absolutely hate that things that are objectively not AI are being marketed as “AI”. It’s just not what AI is. Also that these “AI” programs are really not that useful. Sure, there are some tasks they make quicker but that’s a really limited set and “AI” programs make a lot of other things so much worse. For example, Google’s “AI summary” at the top? That got me to finally use another search engine. It was bad enough having sponsored results at the top but adding in a few inches of inaccurate “AI” summary? Made it pretty useless for me. I just want to find the things related to my search, I don’t need some LLM to misinform me about what I want to know/learn.
mvr
Mystery series that start out with cool relatable protagonists who are like real people in relatively believable situations for people like them. And then after maybe 5 books the author gets bored, the scenarios get wilder, the rest of the characters get richer and have more tech to play with and take the protagonist along and they just lose the characters.
TBone
It’s right there in the title:
Peeve
Trivia Man
Too much coincidence. Turn on the radio exactly cued up to the plot story.
sit behind the right conversation.
Drive past tge exact building or person you need. Doesn’t matter if it is NYC or grand rapids… even a small city has a lot going on.
Maybe once or twice, but some seem to use it as a crutch constantly.
WaterGirl
@TBone: Seriously!? 4 comments out of 16 totally now unrelated to the topic. Medium Cool is not a place to talk about toilet seats and gynecological exams
edit: Make that 5 out of 20.
NeenerNeener
When the series finale of a tv show is announced and the writers put out a statement that the final episode will be “a love letter to the fans”. Then they kill off major characters in that final episode. The writers for “Medium” did that and killed off everybody’s favorite character, the husband on the show. The writers for “How I Met Your Mother” also announced they were doing a series finale the fans would love. And then they killed off the titular “mother” character.
Suzanne
@Scout211:
You are not alone. I dislike them so much that it’s really diminished moviegoing for me.
Wileybud
Preventable anachronisms. The first part of Hidden Figures was set in 1961 yet the police car escorting our heroines was a 1964 Ford Galaxy.
Films set during WWII showing integrated US military units. The US military was segregated during that time, desegregation didn’t happen until 1948.
WaterGirl
@NeenerNeener: I know, the writers must be totally disconnected from
realitytheir audience.Old times
Gravity. None of my family or friends are willing to watch a sci-fi movie or show with me because there is no plausible way to generate artificial gravity, except for centrifugal force, which is quite different. There are some very rare exceptions, but almost no one gets this right.
WaterGirl
@Wileybud:
One word. Lazy.
toine
Unbelievably strong hands… Any character who is falling can always grab a rope, cable, cliff edge etc. and stop their fall. I’m pretty sure this would never happen in real life… :-)
Scout211
@mvr: Good one.
That also happens on television mystery and police procedural series. Castle is a perfect example of that. The first few years were clever, fun and they actually solved crimes. In the last few years of the series, the NYC detectives were involved in investigating international spies, international crimes and fought wild crazy over-the-top villains. The show went to shit. They were originally a group of detectives with personal lives and then they turned into a band of international super hero crime fighters. Yikes.
Vincent Manis
I recently had Gladiator 2 inflicted upon me, so I will say: “historical stories in which the writers, the director, and the props department have not even a nodding acquaintanceship with actual history.”
Trivia Man
@Wileybud: especially vocabulary or slang that has changed meaning over time
Bill K
Handrails. In so many movies they have stairs and bridges and catwalks and none of them have handrails! There’s a two-foot wide path over a gaping chasm and no handrails! One example: Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein had this ridiculous spiral staircase and at the top it was a 20 foot drop!
mvr
@Scout211: Yeah, as I was writing that I realized it might well apply to TV as well, though I was focused on books. The people with personal lives or at least characteristic ways of being that make them interesting just get lost when this happens.
Phylllis
While I loved Vera and Brenda Blethyn truly inhabited her as a character, I did tire of her having to tell her staff what to do every episode. Get the CCTV, go through financials, look through social media. I mean, I understand you need dialogue, but damn, at what point do the other officers learn how to do their jobs?
Trivia Man
@Old times: it hasnt been discovered yet!
sab
@TBone: Having a large dog in the house resolves all toilet seat questions after the first time he hears the dog drinking out of the toilet and then sees it wander, drooling, begging for a wet hug.
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: and famous historical figures just happen cross paths with the movie frequently
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: I hate that too!
West of the Rockies
My wife hates the noise of loud on-screen kissing. My father used to leave the room in a rage when actors were talking with their mouths full.
For me it’s beyond-unbelievable action sequences: Willis falling two stories in sn elevator shaft and stopping by grabbing an opening to a floor thirty feet below… Tom Cruise running on the roof of a train car as it’s flying through the air because of an explosive derailment and shooting villains over this shoulder and hitting them.
That kind of crap.
zhena gogolia
Using the death of animals as a cheap plot point, either for horror or humor. I will never see that Jack Nicholson-Helen Hunt movie for this reason. And I turned off Ron Burgundy too.
stinger
@mvr:
This. Partly the fault of the publisher/studio and partly the fault of audiences. We want the familiar, so authors are pushed to write series and studios want to repeat blockbuster hits. But it all has to get bigger, so the small-town sheriff series hero is suddenly investigating an international cybersecurity breach.
Another pet peeve is remakes of classics. You cannot improve upon Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Why not remake something that stunk, but make it better?
Percysowner
In any show where a man and a woman work together they MUST fall in love, or at least “get together”. Jobs are not dating sites! Women can be in the workplace to WORK, not become a love interest.
J. Arthur Crank
@TS:
Somewhat related: shows like Mission Impossible where our heroes go to a foreign country and everyone speaks English with an accent. I think it would be much more interesting if a few of our heroes actually spoke the foreign language in question and the dialog with the foreigners was in the proper language with English subtitles.
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies: Pierce Brosnan in The World Is Not Enough miraculously running between bullets as automatic weapons are being shot at him from short distances.
Melancholy Jaques
I get riled watching any lawyer movie that makes radical departures from reality. I get that writers need some freedom & the real trials are usually not dramatic, but sometimes, they just go to far.
A more specific pet peeve is the tendency of films & TV shows to show criminal defense attorneys as corrupt & dishonest enemies of justice & constitutional rights as “technicalities” that only exist to frustrate noble & true police officers.
zhena gogolia
@Trivia Man: Every office in Washington DC has a view of the Capitol dome.
Scout211
And the trope of either the good guy who rises from near death, riddled with bullets and then saves the day or the villain, riddled with bullets and obviously dead, only to rise again as soon as the good guy turns their back. It’s too many bullets, too unbelievable and it’s also overdone.
sab
@Phylllis: That movie was the biggest collection of pet peeves in a single film ever. My new husband took me and his boys to see it and we still use it to mock him about his movie choices.
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: Another Brooklyn 99 fan!
That said, a new pet media peeve of mine is copaganda shows. And my own weakness for procedurals that keeps me sitting through them.
Brooklyn 99 writers at least had the decency and the sense to inject some real problematizing of police behavior in the last season’s scripts, as well as acknowledgment of the Floyd murder and the resulting backlash in feeling against cops in general.
Chetan Murthy
@Percysowner: Goddamn! This!
One of the reasons I liked _Elementary_ is that this never happened in the series.
lollipopguild
Tv and films-fistfights that go on way too long, People will fight for several minutes and then not even breathe hard.
Trivia Man
@Melancholy Jaques: include the unrealistic portrayal of all cops being disgusted with their racist / law breaking coworkers. Hard working, scrupulously honest, compassionate. Maybe once upon a time.
In a similar vein that “technicalities” like the GODDAMN CONSTITUTION get in the way of justice and public safety.
Trivia Man
@zhena gogolia: and every window in paris sees the Tower.
Juju
@TS: I agree with you about the no dubbing thing, with an exception to Japanese movies about giant reptiles and moths fighting each other and destroying Tokyo in the process. That is the best movie dubbing ever.
Hodge
@WaterGirl: pet peeve: prescriptivism en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
Narrative is all that matters. Be generous to your storyteller
Soapdish
The first Spiderman movie (2002).
Yes, I know there’s a level of suspension of disbelief. Like, I know that when Spidey swings down to snatch the kid out of the way of some falling object that the trauma that would occur to the kid’s body would rip him in half. Fine, fine. It’s an action movie!
But when MJ falls off the top of the building, and Spidey walks up to the edge, peers over, jumps up, does a pike position dive, AND CATCHES UP WITH HER???!?
Naw, fam. That level of disregard for the gravitational constant is a hard “No.”
23 years ago and it’s still bothering me.
Gin & Tonic
Still pissed off about Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies which had guards in overcoats as the Berlin Walk went up. It was built in August.
Trivia Man
@Chetan Murthy: without using “he’s gay” as the reason they dont hook up
J. Arthur Crank
@West of the Rockies:
I can usually tolerate these types of scenes. However, I am at times oddly triggered by the unbelievability:
Indiana Jones running along the rafters while being shot at in The Crystal Skull.
The flying aircraft carriers in one of the Avengers movies (this was in a movie that features some kind of time portal, a dude turning into a big green monster when he got pissed, etc.).
Tom Cruise jumping a considerable distance down to a different ledge when rock climbing at the opening of one of the Mission Impossible movies (at you noted by the end of these movies there were probably at least 50 events where the most likely outcome would have been death or serious injury to our heroes).
Juju
@WaterGirl: Apparently you did need to specify.
Percysowner
@Melancholy Jaques: I’m a retired law librarian and legal shows make me NUTS. Like you said, the idea that defense lawyers are “the enemy of the good”, when, in reality, what they are doing helps keep cops from overstepping. I hated the original Suits because all I could think was that they were billing clients for Mike at the rate of an actual lawyer and they were cheating their clients! I could kind of buy into Harvey and Mike being frat boys putting one over on the world, but as more and more members of the firm found out and didn’t fire Mike I just couldn’t.
frosty
@Bill K:
Every Star Wars and science fiction movie has that ridiculous catwalk. Galaxy Quest played off the spinning fan blades really well. “What is this thing?” “We don’t know but it was in the script in Episode Y, season X”
Kayla Rudbek
One of my pet culture peeves:
Really inaccurate history in historical shows/movies/books, where they don’t acknowledge it as alternate history. Like “five minutes on Wikipedia is telling you this is wrong” levels of inaccuracy. I was grumbling all through The Tudors TV show when Mr. Rudbek and I were watching because 1) Henry’s sister Mary was the widow of the King of France, not Portugal 2) Catherine of Aragon was a blonde, not a brunette 3) they were making up fake courtiers instead of using actual historical figures. It was to the point that I went over to Archive of Our Own so I could read good alternative Tudor history (personally I love the ones where Arthur Tudor survived, although there’s also some good ones with Anne Boleyn surviving, and one of my favorites is where Princess Mary Tudor wakes up as Prince William Tudor, but with all the memories of being Princess Mary…)
Also, even Eric Flint massively dropped the ball with one of his last series, the alternative history War of 1812, because he was Just Plain Wrong about Andrew Jackson. Even though it was alternate history, Andrew Jackson was a much worse person in real life than Flint portrayed him as, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief for that long and I suspect most of the other readers agreed with me. Which is probably why the series didn’t do well, so Flint only wrote two books in it before he died. If I was a better historian I would be tempted to write the third and fourth books in the series; the romance endgame was that the Kentucky senator’s Black twin daughters manage to marry their chosen beaus, but there’s a war between the USA and the free republic of Black Arkansas which also has to be fought, and I am definitely not a military historian.
WaterGirl
@Percysowner: I find it really annoying when the “will they or won’t they” thing lasts for years.
J. Arthur Crank
@Scout211:
Like that fucker Murdoch in the original MacGuyver series who always survived fatal accidents. That annoyed the shit out of me.
frosty
@zhena gogolia: Serpentine!!! I have to watch that one again. The In-Laws? Alan Arkin and … Peter Falk?
Sorry, WG. I’d post a pet peeve but so far everyone else has them covered.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia:
Pierce Brosnan is just that good! :-)
Phylllis
@frosty: I do love that Sigourney Weaver clearly says ‘f*ck this’ and it’s dubbed to ‘screw this’. Also, ‘this episode was badly written!’.
mvr
@Melancholy Jaques: Yes to disliking the depiction of defense lawyers in crime shows but also in America in general.
Kayla Rudbek
@Melancholy Jaques:
@Percysowner: I hate watching lawyer shows because they get so much wrong. And it’s not the type of law that I work in, but it’s all stuff that I learned in my first year of law school (and at my dad’s military JAG knee as well). There have to be plenty of lawyers who decided to go into Hollywood that the writers could consult with and make it much more accurate.
Citizen Dave
WaterGirl
@Juju: Hey, you got your Juju back! :-)
NeenerNeener
@Phylllis: My sister had the same complaint about Vera. Her other peeve, with an old Brit cop show called Heartbeat, is that the writers were always marrying off the female doctors to the male cops, and then killing off one or the other of the pair in the next season.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Percysowner:
Hah! I love that show and I hadn’t noticed that but YES!
WaterGirl
@Percysowner:
Hey, now! Just consider that the clients were getting the results they wanted, even if Mike wasn’t an attorney!
Percysowner
@WaterGirl: That too! On Law and Order SVU they had Benson and Stabler on the edge of being in love for years. Finally Chris Meloni left the show and I figured I dodged that bullet. Years later he came back to jump start a new series for Stabler and DAMN! they are now pining for each other on 2 different shows. Enough already!
@Chetan Murthy: A thousand likes for Elementary keeping Holmes and Watson platonic.
kalakal
Characters who have lifestyles. eg car, house way beyond what their supposed job could possibly pay
Characters weilding unfeasibly large weaponry one handed, be it a gun or a 5ft long sword
Gratuitous violence
Anything that purports to show computer expertise
Overdubbing rather than subtitles – German TV used to be utterly surreal about this, the overdubbing was always done in flat monotone, made The Muppet Show a trip and a half
NeenerNeener
@WaterGirl: Amen
WaterGirl
@frosty: No “sorry” necessary. It’s Medium Cool, I try to start us out with a topic, but as long as it stays culture-related, I’m happy.
*Note I did learn that it might be a good time to put up a Festivus post so people can air their pet peeves, even if they aren’t culture related.
TS
@Another Scott:
Every British police series ever – I always wonder do British police organisations really promote the most incompetent to be the boss.
Craig
That payphone pic reminds me of a props/continuity error in Die Hard II that pissed me off. Our hero has flown into DC, I think Dulles, and he’s on the payphone, but the phone says PacBell. Oops.
Miss Bianca
@Percysowner:
A thousand likes for Elementary period. It may just be my favorite Watson/Holmes adaptation. Certainly my favorite TV adaptation!
J. Arthur Crank
@kalakal:
Not to mention Star Wars (I saw a trailer of the Phantom Menace(?) that featured Yoda speaking German).
RSA
I’d read so much buzz about Deadpool and Wolverine that when I saw it among the movie selections during a plane flight, I gave it a try. It opened with a massacre of time cops, I guess, trying to capture Deadpool, without much explanatory exposition. Were the cops bad guys? Not obviously. So it was less the cartoon gruesomeness than the injustice of murdering people just doing their jobs (I watched the first season of Loki, for context) that made me turn it off. Maybe this was explained later in the movie. Oh, well, I missed out.
WaterGirl
I LOVED Enemy of the State. But, damn, there were so many tech things that just weren’t possible at time.
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: In the late 1980s they started showing American (and Mexican) soap operas and other shows on Russian TV, but there would just be one man intoning all the dialogue in a monotone over the original dialogue, which you could still hear. It was hilarious.
I watched Santa Barbara and Hearts Afire that way.
Kayla Rudbek
Another pet peeve (books): bad romance tropes.
No, the Mafia are not hero material, nor are motorcycle gang members. Rich bully boys are not suitable romantic heroes either.
I haven’t read much Amish romance or other inspirational romance, but those tropes also raise my hackles on general principle.
And I would dearly love to finally see a “fated mates” book where the heroine decisively and permanently dumps the asshole who is supposed to be her “fated mate”. Preferably into the depths of the Marianas Trench or an active volcano.
Just look at that parking lot
Movies that have a character have a signature line that keeps getting repeated.
Thinking of John Wayne in The Searchers saying “That’ll be the day”, the Blues Brothers with “We’re on a mission from God” or everyone telling Snake Plissken they thought he was dead.
I’ll also include any tic a character keeps repeating. Think Russel Crowe in Gladiator always rubbing dirt on his hands before he picks up his sword.
Extremely ponderous.
zhena gogolia
@Just look at that parking lot: You’d better not watch Hot Fuzz!
kalakal
Really idiotic innacuracies
A couple of the most egregious
Krakatoa East of Java – when even the title is wrong
A claymore swinging John Knox in Mary, Queen of Scots – Knox wouldn’t have known what a claymore was if one fell on him
Historical epics where a character is cast as a weakling, scoundrel, coward etc to make the plot work when in real life they were nothing of the sort
bluefoot
@J. Arthur Crank: This is one of the reasons I love the first Die Hard movie. McClane gets hurt, cuts his feet on glass, all through the movie he’s all “what the hell am I doing.”
A couple of pet peeves off the top of my head:
Time travel. It always seems a cheap plot device, with only a couple of notable exceptions.
Since I spent the early part of my career in a lab: I hate when characters who work crime scenes etc answer their phones, use computers, etc with gloves on. No one with any training would do that.
Juju
Any movie where there’s a violent fight and the fighters do things to each other that would kill or at least incapacitate each other, and yet they continue to fight for at least 15 more minutes.
West of the Rockies
@zhena gogolia:
Doggy deaths were kinda funny in A Fish Called Wanda, but opinions vary.
Chetan Murthy
I find it difficult to watch -any- police procedurals[1] b/c they all feel like copaganda. Even _The Wire_. Even _Homicode: LOTS_. None of them are even close to the reality that we all know about from the police response we saw to the George Floyd Extrajudicial Execution protests. None of them.
[1] I sometimes watch police procedurals set in other countries, but even then, it’s tough.
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: It’s part of our culture, you hear it everywhere!!! 😂😂😂 on TV, on the radio, in movies, everywhere!!
Starfish (she/her)
The tech-related image enhancement in all the movies and television shows annoys me. It is like you can hit the “enhance” button on all sorts of grainy images and videos taken in the dark, and suddenly the data appears. Nothing works that way!
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: Yep, that was the German approach, read by an ‘I Speak Your Weight’ machine. Fawlty Towers was hysterical
sub titles are great, I learnt a lot of Dutch watching ‘Ik Claudius’
Aziz, light!
Every present or near-future depiction of space flight that pays no attention to the laws of physics.
Salt Water
I recall an historical movie with Meg Ryan and Robert Downey. Set in the 1700s I think. Ryan was poor, dirty, and unkempt. Downey was upper crust but still, the 1700s. They both had preternaturally white teeth. It was SO distracting. (The teeth thing is even worse now with everyone having veneers.)
RSA
My wife and I first came across Star Trek: The Next Generation in Germany, as Raumschiff Enterprise – Das nächste Jahrhundert. When we came back to the States and saw the original American version, what struck us as the most significant difference was Data’s voice. In German, he had a high-pitched goofball voice, almost computer-like, rather than Brent Spiner’s smooth baritone. Data immediately became a much cooler character in our minds.
Soprano2
Nobody pays for anything. They order a drink or food, don’t eat or drink it, then walk away without paying. Also the empty beverage cups are annoying.
kalakal
Nobody has trouble parking
Hungry Joe
Weak premises in otherwise strong movies.
“Hell or High Water” is a good movie (Jeff Bridges!), but the premise falls apart if you think about it for more than a few seconds. Two brothers in Texas are going to lose their ranch because they can’t come up with $30,000 to pay the overdue mortgage. They’re desperate to hold onto it because oil has recently been discovered, and will soon be pumping out $$$$$$ millions. But not soon enough to cover the mortgage, and their bank is eager to snatch the place. So they start robbing banks to come up with the cash.
The premise problem: They could walk into any bank or investment firm in the country, show them their deed to the land and the geologists’ report, agree to give the bank/firm 10 percent of all future revenue, and walk out there with the $30K in crisp new hundreds.
I liked the movie, but it drove me nuts. I kept mumbling, “Don’t ROB the bank, just get a goddam loan.”
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies: Never seen that either, for that reason.
Juju
@WaterGirl: Oh good! I forgot to check to see if it disappeared again.
frosty
Yes, this. Like Friends. Or really, anything set in Manhattan.
Kingsmen. Watched the first. When the family wanted to watch the second I opted out. Too much slaughter with automatic weapons.
Soprano2
@NeenerNeener: Oh, I HATED the ending of “Medium”, it felt like a big “fuck you” to the fans. The ending of “Babylon 5” was a love letter to the fans (mostly).
AnneWith
@stinger:
Yes! In my opinion, there’s only two good reasons to remake a film: because you can greatly improve it, or because you want to twist the original. The best example I have for the latter is His Girl Friday, the 1940 remake of the 1931 film The Front Page. The twist? Hildy Johnson switched from male in the earlier film to female in His Girl Friday, adding depth and a romance to the plot. It’s a rare case where the remake is far superior to the original.
On the other hand, what was the entire point of Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho? He copied Hitchcock pretty much frame for frame. Is there anything from his version that’s better than the original? Why bother?
Phylllis
Characters going to places that in real life are teeming with people and the character is able to swan in and have the place to themselves. No one else there to look at the Mona Lisa? Sure. No line or wait to use the elevator* at the Empire State Building? Absolutely.
*They are tiny and you have to stand in an interminable line to pay admission to go to the upper deck.
Starfish (she/her)
@Soprano2: In that one scene in Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts is eating the breakfast foods, but the scene is discontinuous because she is eating a scone that turns into a croissant and then turns into a pancake.
Trivia Man
@WaterGirl: IVE GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE
PJ
@Kayla Rudbek:
Better Call Saul did a good job of portraying what lawyers actually do (most of which is incredibly boring.)
AliceBlue
@Vincent Manis: I’ve read that there is a scene in that movie where someone is reading a newspaper.
VFX Lurker
I’ve mentioned it before, but Stranger Things took so much care in recreating an 80’s environment…then hung a modern periodic table of elements in the classroom. Ten of the elements on that table were discovered after 1983.
Juju
@zhena gogolia: Not that this is a pet peeve, but I enjoyed that movie for some of the sexy old men, plus it was hilarious.
CliosFanBoy
As a historian, what drives me nuts….
Getting facts wrong—big facts, especially. This does not include movies such as “Django Unchained” or “Inglorious Bastards” because they were historical fantasy. And tiny errors are OK, like using a 1941 model car in a scene set in 1939.
Conspiracy theories taken as historical facts
Making real figures look bad because it’s “more interesting” or it’s “more realistic” because it’s cynical. I forget which movie had Thomas Dewey on the take for the New York mob, but in real life, the Mafia HATED him because he would not go on the take. I’m glad he lost to FDR in 44 and Truman in 48, but he was a very brave and very honest prosecutor and DA.
non-history-related. When they have two characters bickering constantly because they think that adds “romantic tension.” This spoiled most of “Miss Scarlett and the Duke” for me.
.
persistentillusion
@Juju:
We had a really long weekend (broke down in Raton, don’t recommend) watching Home Along movies. Six year old son began counting the deaths that would have resulted from the actions portrayed. Notes and everything.
VeniceRiley
I think it was the tenth time I’ve seen it it less days than that: MAN ANGRY! MAN SWIPES AND DESTROYS Everything ON.THIS.DESK!
Men are always expressing physical anger. Women not so much. And while I’m on the subject, I have, for decades and decades, been freaked out by the wrist grab to keep a woman from leaving move. Soaps to series to movies, I’ve seen it a zillion times and I want to shoot that guy every single time, especially if it’s played as he’s a supposed sympathetic character. I just want him dead and off my screen forevermore.
J. Arthur Crank
@WaterGirl:
Pretty much my reaction. The capabilities of spy satellites were especially exaggerated.
CliosFanBoy
My wife HATES when a show has female nudity but not male. I don’t see the problem myself, but when I say that, she hits me. ;)
Phylllis
@Hungry Joe: Yeah, but then we wouldn’t have gotten the “What don’t you want?” restaurant scene.
Kayla Rudbek
@Hungry Joe: co-signed on this one, also happens in a lot of TV shows as well. I can’t stand watching most TV or movies. I think in part it’s because I can predict the plot line and it’s usually a stupid plot line, so why would I care about what these characters are doing?
FelonyGovt
People in films and TV shows never say goodbye when they hang up the phone. So rude!
Dramas where they completely distort what you can or can’t do in business. I remember watching the soap opera Dallas long ago with my husband and both of us yelling, “he can’t DO that!”
And legal dramas that don’t show or even mention the lengthy prep for trial- instead, there we all are in the courtroom!
CliosFanBoy
@persistentillusion:
Have you ever wondered how many lives your favorite action hero would really need to survive a movie? We asked an actual doctor to answer that question for us in Screen Junkies’ new series “Honest Action.” Next up, The Wet Bandits in Home Alone.
youtube.com/watch?v=8WKgNyvsNDM
bluefoot
@stinger:
That’s another one of mine too. Taking of Pelham 123? The Manchurian Candidate? Why would you remake these?
Kayla Rudbek
@PJ: I have seen bits and pieces of this, I should probably sit down and watch the whole series.
West of the Rockies
Not film related and maybe a bit ageist, but I wish Jimmy Johnson and Terry Bradshaw would retire already. I can’t see Jimmy and not think, “Newt Gingrich is a color analyst?”
CliosFanBoy
@bluefoot:
it’s a rare, rare remake that doesn’t suck. See “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “Hellboy.”
piratedan
films about historical people or events that are filtered thru what passes as modern day morals and ethics. Context matters.
zhena gogolia
@Juju: It’s one of the funniest movies ever made.
But it has a lot of catchphrases! “The greater good!”
CliosFanBoy
@WaterGirl:
And apparently the command “ZOOM IN” works to find teeny tiny details, no matter the resolution of the original image.
CliosFanBoy
I HATE any movie that kills a pet.
schrodingers_cat
Sequels, prequels and remakes. Use some originality, please.
Also Superhero movies
Dev Patel cast as the Indian everyman
Soprano2
@Kayla Rudbek: I can’t watch a military movie with my husband because he’s constantly pointing out things that are wrong. Don’t they have consultants for that kind of stuff?
stinger
@Starfish (she/her):
Yes, this! When you enlarge a fuzzy image, it doesn’t get sharper! Heck, when you enlarge a sharp image it gets fuzzy.
One show had the detectives look at a street cam video that included a car, and they got an image reflected off the car door and figured out the bad guy from that.
XeckyGilchrist
@Alce _e_ardillo: Totally! And people slashing their palms when they need a drop of blood.
persistentillusion
@CliosFanBoy: Thank you! I will watch and forward to the aforementioned boy (now man).
Juju
@Starfish (she/her): I’ve never made it to that point in pretty woman. I may have to look for that scene someday.
The Julia Roberts movie I have a problem with is the movie “ Sleeping with the Enemy”. I think a woman who could figure out a way to fake her death is also smart enough to figure out a big gold wedding band may not flush down the toilet. If I had been in her place I’d have taken it off while swimming to shore, or save it in case I ever needed money.
Dan B
@Soapdish: That fits with my dislike of getting basic science wrong. My family is full of scientists and it irks me that many people get incorrect science from movies and TV. It dumbs down the country. Aaaaaack!
Salt Water
@CliosFanBoy: https://www.doesthedogdie.com
WTFGhost
One minor pet peeve is the idea of “stealing the Mona Lisa” which is painted on *poplar*. You can’t go in and roll it up! Also, do you know how *hard* it is to *find* that particular fact? Wikipedia thinks it’s useless.
Another major pet peeve was people who would use “Ya Mama” by Wuf Ticket to play just a few seconds of it, so, it was impossible to find the name (I grew up in Philly, where it’s “yo mama”), nor the band name, though “Wuf Ticket” seemed especially appropriate for such an obscure song.
A *MAJOR* pet peeve is the planned suicide. Don’t get me wrong: people do sometimes plan suicides, but, it’s a short distance out. Save someone who jumped off a bridge, and they’re desperately grateful not to be dead (in all cases that I know about – though certainly, there must be the occasional “you’ve ruined everything!” save).
People can survive *anything*. With proper support, people are happy to be alive and quadriplegic, no arms or legs, and all the attendant “I’m paralyzed” issues.
Now, earlier, I said, sometimes, there’s a risk. It’s Dec 30, and I get a bad shock. Do I decide I won’t start *another* year? Possibly – but, that isn’t planning suicide for a year, that’s getting a shock that you can’t handle, near an anniversary-of-sorts.
I know some people have a very, very, *strong* reaction to “if I wanted to kill myself it would be a perfectly rational decision!” and will say that, they could hold on to a reason to die for months-to-a-year, even if it wasn’t something better treated with hospice care. Most of them are nowhere near as coldly rational as I, and *I* have wanted to kill myself for irrational reasons. Does that mean they’re all wrong? No – but I do think they’re wrong about suicide, and, I have personal reason to suspect they’re wronger on the subject than I am. But I have learned there’s *no* arguing with someone who’s convinced!
Hungry Joe
@Phylllis: Right. Great scene. As I said, I liked the movie anyway.
Juju
I figured out how half my name disappears. Now that I know, I hope I can prevent or correct it before I hit post comment.
West of the Rockies
Can’t believe Kendrick did Not Like Us! Wow!!
DSC
that anyone can hit someone 100 yards away with a handgun, or 25 feet away while running
that city street cops fire hundreds of rounds when civilians are everywhere
and that Arnold or Indy or the Rock or anyone can run through thousands of rounds of automatic weapons fire and NEVER get hit, but when the “hero” picks one up, he is deadly accurate while running with his weapon in hand
stinger
Two more:
People entering other people’s apartments at will (e.g., Friends, The Good Wife).
The brilliant main character who is always right, but week after week their coworkers never believe them until they are proven right (e.g., Monk).
Scout211
And why is it that in all family sitcoms throughout sitcom history, there never is a television set in the room they all hang out in?
Juju
@persistentillusion: I saw a review of that movie done by ER doctors. It was years ago on YouTube. It was funny and about time someone did that. My younger brother broke his arm swinging on a vine while trying to imitate Tarzan. We are less durable than we think we are.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Dev Patel is cute, but he is a Brit.
And the “Indians” in our neighborhood we thought were Indian are proudly Guyanese. Indian background but that was a couple of generations ago. Guyanan flag bumper stickers on their cars. And here they are in America, stabilizing our neighborhood
ETA My junior year abroad in England the Brit kids had to point out the “American” characters on tv because I could not recognize them as American by either their accents or their behavior.
WTFGhost
@WTFGhost: meh. This response is uselss and offtopic. SOrry – delete as needed.
Hungry Joe
The phone rings in the middle of the night, and a character TURNS ON THE LIGHT before he/she answers the phone. Even worse, the partner in bed never says “Turn off the goddam light!”
I understand that the light is so that we can see the characters (who are usually sleeping in half-light anyway), but please. Let ‘em talk in the dark. We’ll all get it.
sab
@Scout211: Good point. Possibly there would be no plot, just people staring blankly at the screen while eating snacks?
persistentillusion
@CliosFanBoy:
Nice! I don’t recall our count getting that high. Clearly, we’re not medical professionals.
West of the Rockies
Bet the halftime show and some of the commercials are pissing off Trump and his cultists! It is to laugh…
Vincent Manis
@AliceBlue: There actually was a newspaper in those days, it was called Res Gestae (“things that happened”, roughly), and was posted on the walls of the Forum from time to time. Needless to say, it wasn’t printed on paper. The newspaper scene in the film was the basis for my mention of the props department.
DSC
@Salt Water:
@Salt Water:
Restoration–I love that movie
Juju
@zhena gogolia: I think it was supposed to be that way.
toine
@Vincent Manis:
You didn’t like the freshwater sharks?
Another Scott
@kalakal: And they can drive from New Orleans to Austin, or Dallas to San Antonio, in 20 minutes.
[ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
persistentillusion
@Juju:
By a long shot, I’ve found. First PT appt tomorrow.
Trivia Man
@Chetan Murthy: i liked the 3 pines books, but the opening episode of the tv series irked me. “So wrong for police to hate on First Nations people!” It is, but starlight tours are s common we know that sentiment isnt shared
Juju
@WTFGhost:
One minor pet peeve is the idea of “stealing the Mona Lisa” which is painted on *poplar*. You can’t go in and roll it up! Also, do you know how *hard* it is to *find* that particular fact?
Are you telling me Doctor Who was wrong?
Kelly
Jeff Goldblum writing a computer virus that attacked the alien computers in “Independence Day”. In just a few days. Uhmm it’s alien stuff. Oh and understanding how to upload it into the mothership after they docked. They had the alien fighter craft for a few days which was apparently enough time to figure out how to jack in a laptop.
Percysowner
@Chetan Murthy: The only one I can watch is an oldie Cold Case which was on CBS. The entire premise is about solving cold cases and it is built into the show that the cops screwed up the last time. Also, although it is never openly stated, it is very obvious that most of the cold cases that weren’t solved were because the victim was perceived as less important, they were poor, they were black or gay or sex workers or the witnesses were sex workers and not seen as reliable. Not all the cases were that way, but boy a lot of them were. Plus the show can consistently make me cry ugly tears at the end because it focuses on the victim and their life, not the great detectives who solve the case, plus great use of music.
Craig
@AnneWith: you are completely correct. I’ve loved His Girl Friday since I was a little kid.
Scout211
@Percysowner: I loved Cold Case. Such a good series, and the music! So good.
J. Arthur Crank
@Kelly: In the early days of the Internet I saw the alien bug report about the fatal flaw that allowed malicious hackers to gain access to vital control functions. This maybe was in rec.humor?
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl: Or time|budget constraints, e.g. you order one year of car and on shooting day a different year shows up. Though I’m not easy to impress, keeping in mind that movies, even “art” or indy movies for the most part, are business projects prevents me from having many pet peeves.
zhena gogolia
@Juju: I realize it’s a parody of the phenomenon that commenter was complaining about.
kalakal
It’s not really a pet peeve but ever since I heard that a much prized role amongst actors in British cop shows is that of ‘the lawyer’ in the interrogation scenes I can now only watch the lawyer in those scenes. Actors love it because it all they have to do is sit in a chair and look serious for 5 minutes while everybody else emotes. A nice little earner.
The most prized role is the victim in Death in Paradise. Your part only involves a day or so of filming but they keep you around for the full 4 week shoot in case they need to redo bits. A well paid 4 week holiday in the Caribbean
sab
I agree that workplace as a romantic hunting ground is my ultimate pet peeve.
ETA I think that was part of the brilliance of the original Perry Mason. Perry and Stella had a close but purely professional relationship.
Maybe because the show had a woman executive producer.
Craig
I’m sure this has annoyed lots of folks. The procedural scene where the “whatever advanced secret unit” is in their HQ while goofy head of whatever yells at the people to get it together people and they all use highly graphics based non technology to track our hero. See Bourne.
WaterGirl
@West of the Rockies: Sports is part of culture!
WaterGirl
@CliosFanBoy: Yeah, I don’t know why that doesn’t work for me in real life. :-)
Tehanu
Movies set in the Middle Ages where everybody who isn’t a king or queen has dirty faces and unkempt hair. Movies of Jane Austen novels where women don’t wear hats outdoors.
WaterGirl
@Juju: You were missing the “u” at the end this time. I fixed it, but you’ll need to fix it on your device before your next comment.
WaterGirl
@Kelly: You guys are just cynics. Jeff Goldblum is just that good! :-)
WaterGirl
@Percysowner: Everything you wrote. Yes, yes, yes. I wonder if it’s streaming anywhere. Such a great show.
edit: yes, the music set the timeframe and it seems like it was always a perfect choice.
*apparently nowhere I subscribe to.
Misswhatsis
I just watched ‘Small Things Like These’ about the Magdalene laundries. The plot is that a working class man, son of a single mother, in Ireland in the 80s rescues a pregnant girl from one of the laundries.
It was beautifully filmed and I didn’t believe the central plot point for a minute. He might have brought the girl home to his family but you know his wife threw her out 5 minutes later. She’d already told him not to get involved and how powerful the nuns were.
It was deeply annoying.
Starfish (she/her)
Sharknado just wasn’t as realistic as it should have been.
VFX Lurker
Shout-out to Overlord (2018) for showing an integrated US military during WWII.
Still delivered top-tier zombie horror with a top-notch cast of actors.
WaterGirl
@Starfish (she/her): I haven’t seen it, but I laughed out loud at your comment.
Starfish (she/her)
@Misswhatsis: That is based on a book, and in the book it was unclear where they were going in the end. I was wondering, “Is he running off with her and leaving the family?”
WaterGirl
Whoever thought there should be a remake of Overboard should have had their head examined.
NotMax
In TV and movies, women waking up in bed in the morning after a night’s sleep in full, faultless make-up/lipstick.
Chris
Honestly, a lot of my pet peeves are politics related. I want to scream every time I see the way Internal Affairs is portrayed in virtually every police story ever. Or when portrayals of unions inevitably show them as corrupt and synonymous with the mob. Just a whole plethora of little right wing tropes that are damn near ubiquitous in fiction to a point we don’t even notice.
Chris
@hitchhiker:
Shit. The whole problem of TWW is that it isn’t nearly partisan enough. Its “there are good people on both sides” shtick culminating in the Vinick presidency was painfully disconnected from reality even at the time, and it’s only gotten worse since.
JoyceH
This is picky, but nobody at the producer level in Hollywood seems to know the difference between knit and crochet. Example: the younger midwives were going to finish a knitting project of Sister Monica Joan – and we see them sitting there with knitting needles – and a piece of finished work that’s granny squares. Folks, you can’t knit a granny square. And it wasn’t as if they were doing actual work, but for Pete’s sake, call it crochet and put a crochet hook in their hands. Like I say, picky, but it was so glaring and millions of people knit or crochet or both.
Splitting Image
@Scout211:
I’m pretty much the same. I’ve still never seen a single Marvel Cinematic Universe film. And I was a total Marvel Zombie back in the day.
Part of it for me is that some of the directors seem to equate gritty with realistic. So as long as there are bullet holes oozing realistic-looking blood, and possibly some sweaty sex scenes, the film is “realistic”, even if the hour-long fight scene could have been prevented by the pugilists having a cup of tea and talking it over.
My other pet peeve is movies that have been colour-corrected to the point that the characters’ skin is bright orange and almost everything else is this weird teal colour.
Craig
@JoyceH: I love this.
NotMax
TV and movies wherein the music or sound effects overwhelm the dialogue, rendering it aurally incomprehensible.
Streaming services when the closed captioning for an episode is from a totally different one or when the captioning is out of sync with the dialogue.
WaterGirl
@Chris:
I never thought about it like that, but you are so right! Insideous.
zhena gogolia
Just watched the very first episode of Inspector Morse. I’ve seen the whole series at least three times, and I couldn’t figure out why through the first hour I couldn’t remember who the culprit was. Well, it was because that character doesn’t even appear until the last 20 minutes! So unfair! but how can you have a peeve when you’re watching Thaw, Whately, Woodthorpe, and Grout doing their thing.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: The captions on this Morse were hilarious. Morse drives up to a body shop, and the guys say, “There’s a punter outside [which I think means a customer].” The captions say, “There’s a panda outside.”
Chris
@mvr:
What I hate is when that sort of escalation happens within books.
It’s been a wicked long time since I read any of them, but I remember thinking the Ben and Danielle novels had promise; nineties/2000s series of novels about an Israeli cop and a Palestinian cop that get partnered together at first during the peace process years. The inciting incidents in the books are always good noir stuff in a setting that we rarely see explored. A serial killer who’s thriving in the Arab parts of Jerusalem because they’re badly policed because nobody gives a shit. A human trafficking network that preys off of children in the Palestinian refugee camps. An arms pipeline developing between the Russian Mafia syndicates in Israel and the Hamas terrorists in the West Bank. One of the later books has the two of them now in Michigan running a private detective agency that’s become a go-to for the local Arab, Persian, Armenian, and other Middle Eastern immigrants who don’t trust the cops in the post 9/11 climate.
… and more and more, the books follow the “minor crime reveals major plot” formula, where that inciting incident is just the hook that eventually points the heroes at the much bigger Huge Terrorist Plot, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Ancient Religious Conspiracy, or whatever. And I’m always like, okay, but I liked the original topic. Can we just have that story carried through to conclusion, without the inevitable escalation? Let James Bond handle the grand world shattering schemes. He’s better at it.
Sister Golden Bear
@Splitting Image:
Why Every Movie Looks Sort of Orange and Blue and yes it’s completely overdone and has been for years. So much so that the article explaining why it’s so overdone is from 2015.
AM in NC
Bad southern accents KILL me. Nic Cage in Con Air; Tom Hanks in Forest Gump. Just no.
evodevo
@WaterGirl: I was just remarking to the hubby tonite about supposed homicide/FBI female detectives in a couple of series, whose VOLUMINOUS hair and deep cleavage is just so unrealistic as regular office costuming…there is NO way that’s anywhere near what would be tolerated if they were professionals, no more than if one of the male characters always came to work in a wife-beater undershirt and Doc Martins…
Seanly
I’m gonna list a couple of my off-the-wall pet peeves (these are in addition to my run-of-the-mill pet peeves):
1) Bridges or other structures that have extra stuff on them. In TWD, there was a scene were a bridge had both girders supporting the deck and trusses on the edges which then blew up. For that span of bridge, we’d just use girders like we have since the 50’s. The arches were very obviously fake.
2) Clear OSHA violations – short handrails, no toe kick on platforms. I jokingly couint the violations in sci-fi movies (obviously no OSHA in the Star Wars galaxy).
3) Instantly adult clones and use of clones to make an army. Terribly inefficient way to get an army – especially on Earth where there are 8 billion people. Why would I need to grow extra ones? Just arm a bunch of poor & desperate people for 3 hots & a cot.
4) Secret facilities with an obscure entrance (like a bookstore or quaint shop) but then the facility is crawling with hundreds of people. Does everyone have to go in through the matron at the counter? Or why couldn’t I just use the entrance that the regular workers use? It should also be noted that many of the top secret lifts in these places violate OSHA.
I am a bridge engineer by trade and one of my early assignments was assessing OSHA upgrades on movable bridges in NJ. Some stuff sticks with ya.
WaterGirl
@evodevo: That’s one of mine, too! So unprofessional, a woman dressed like that would never be taken seriously!
mvr
@Chris: Yes, for me it is books that expose me to this peeve.. But I mostly don’t watch TV, except for the occasional political event and nowadays even those are on the computer. There was a perfectly good series about a defense investigator in the Bay area that I really liked when it first started out, and stayed good for a while. But by the end she was flying in Helicopters with a rich boyfriend saving the whole world. Not the only example of this by any means, but perhaps the one that hit closest to home as I used to do that kind of work (and I only got to ride a helicopter once).
NotMax
@Seanly
See: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and also Get Smart.
;)
Gloria DryGarden
There’s a botanical detail in the book Outlander that has been bothering me. She tells of the character picking rosemary growing in a walled garden in northern Scotland, either in Inverness, or up in the highlands. I don’t believe it. It’s hard to overwinter in Denver, and I don’t imagine Scotland is any warmer. Sure, the Gulf Stream, but it’s the East coast of Scotland, or inland, up in the hills. I need to ask someone who lives up that way.
I’m sure ms gabardine traveled and did some research, but nowadays, anyone can buy rosemary at the garden center every year, as an annual. But surely not then. I’ll have to erase arch it, as soon as life is less jam packed.
The other pet peeve is when women are underrepresented, or given stereotyped characters. I don’t have examples, I usually leave before a movie or book is finished, if it’s annoying like that.
Splitting Image
@Seanly:
Parody writers have been hard at work on this one.
The Death Star Safety Inspection
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
@Chetan Murthy:
Okay, here’s a pet peeve that’s copaganda-related:
Vigilantes.
And specifically, the way they’re justified. (Or not).
If you want a story about a hero, either a private citizen or just a plain criminal, who picks up where the cops leave off, it is not hard to come up with settings that would justify that. A person who made a living solving crimes or settling disputes in communities of illegal immigrants who can’t go to the police with their problems would never be out of work. Neither would a person who specialized in helping victims of sexual assault, the ultimate crime the cops don’t give a shit about. Neither would a person who had clients like the homeless, or left-wing activists, or transgender people, or just people in poor neighborhoods.
But of course you can never have a premise like that, because that would be admitting that there could ever be such a thing as a population that the police isn’t interested in protecting, and you simply can’t do that.
So instead you get a world where the cops are fully engaged and, with rare exceptions, fully trustworthy, when handling every possible crime, but for some reason the vigilantes are there anyway, and more and more their existence is justified just by straight up superpowers. Either literally (too many superhero stories to count) or de facto (Sherlock and every other “quirky detective whose reasoning abilities are actually a superpower” person).
Chris
@Scout211:
The one caveat I’ll make about this is that I actually really like it when heroes branch out into other genres. I liked it when the heroes of Burn Notice and Leverage had to divert attention from their usual helping-the-helpless street-hero thing to take on what were effectively Bond villains. I liked it when the team on Mission: Impossible got together outside of their government missions to solve a crime in Phelps’ home town or to bring down a mob boss who killed Barney’s brother. I liked it when James Bond resigned from MI6 to avenge Felix Leiter. I liked it whenever the heroes from Stargate had to take breaks from fighting aliens to fend off the Iran-contra/White House Plumber type scumbags from NID. And so forth. I like it whenever the heroes are forced to operate outside of their comfort zone and play a different game.
The key being, of course, that it’s supposed to be a break before returning to the regular stuff. If these kinds of new settings actually become the new normal, then it’s not the same show anymore, and that kind of shift is pretty hard to pull off well.
NotMax
Need one mention the marketplaces in both Hercules and Xena with stalls and carts brimming with tomatoes and ears of corn?
Chris
@RSA:
I’ve only seen a few parts of a couple of these movies, but I remember absolutely hating the voice actor that regularly dubs Harrison Ford in French. They stuck him with this overly formal, snooty-sounding patrician voice that’s just the total antithesis of how a Harrison Ford character should sound.
You’re watching Air Force One and it’s like, this is actually a great voice for a politician, but a terrible voice for Harrison Goddamn Ford.
Juju
@zhena gogolia: I figured you did, I should have used the sarcasm thing, or my personal preference, facetious thing.
Juju
@WaterGirl: I did. Thanks for saving my comment.
Chris
@CliosFanBoy:
I read a few W.E.B. Griffin novels back in the day. Remember being genuinely pissed off that it, even as a sidenote, suggested Fiorello LaGuardia was on the take from the mob and affiliated with Tammany Hall, and in the same book, suggested that an alliance with the Mafia in the interests of the war effort would have to go through the OSS because Hoover who ran the FBI was simply too pigheadedly incorruptible to go along with it.
(As an aside, Dewey might be the very last Republican candidate I actually respect, though I’d have to read more about him to be sure. Yeah, I think Eisenhower’s overrated as fuck, why do you ask?)
Gloria DryGarden
@Gloria DryGarden: diana gabaldon
auto correct zinged me again
Chris
@sab:
As much as Joss Whedon’s star has fallen, I really like how many times his stories averted that temptation and went with a strong platonic friendship instead.
Like, in any other director’s hands, Angel and Faith would absolutely have ended up having sex when Faith hit rock bottom and Angel was the one there to catch her in the first season. Likewise, in any other director’s hands, Mal and Zoe would have been the lead couple on Firefly. I doubt if the “Black Widow and Hawkeye, best friends and platonic lifelong partners” pairing would’ve occurred to anyone else either.
Chris
@WaterGirl:
The worst part about it is that it’s been getting worse over time.
I remember being a teenager in the 2000s and going back to watch reruns of “old” TV shows from the eighties like MacGyver and Miami Vice, and being shocked at just how much more hardcore liberal they were than anything that was on the air at the time. Then last year I watched the first season of Special Ops: Lioness and was like… my God the politics of this are so bad that I actually miss 24. As horrific as that show was on so many levels, I also can’t imagine any modern show having the courage to do anything like the second season taking an unambiguous stand against the Iraq War (and in 2002-2003, exactly at the period when it was hardest to do that), or having an explicitly Republican villain as prominent as President Logan.
Steve Finlay
My pet peeve is the psychopathic genius supervillain who is everywhere at once and miles ahead of everyone else. Red John. The Grim Reaper. Kaiser Sose. James Gillies in Murdoch Mysteries — if you aren’t Canadian, you haven’t seen this show. Whether you are Canadian or not, you don’t want to.
I blame Arthur Conan Doyle. We should have seen from the start that Moriarty was a waste of words, a plot gimmick served up by a writer working at peak laziness. Moriarty is the only Holmes villain for whom there is never any explanation of how a crime was committed. With one exception (the death of Birdy Edwards), Conan Doyle does not even bother to identify WHAT any of his crimes were.
prostratedragon
@Steve Finlay:
Have to admit I usually take a pass on the Gillies episodes of Murdoch Mysteries, a series I generally enjoy. Even so, I guess they serve to emphasize that evil is never vanquished permanently. After all, consider the White House situation.
Ramalama
@VFX Lurker: if this thread isn’t dead yet Stranger Things bothered the crap out of me, my own timeline as the main character, a girl with shirt hair. In Indiana. And NO ONE gave her grief about her shirt hair making her look like a boy. Which happened to me alllll the time without fail any time my mom had my hair shorn because I never brushed it. So. Much, Grief. From everybody. Saw one episode, couldn’t believe it. Did not go back to it.
sab
@Ramalama: Is “shirt hair” meant to be “short hair”?
On my tiny keyboard i is right next to o. Also n is right next to m, which is why I always type m when I mean to type n.
ETA I had friends in junior high whose parents didn’t let them wear makeup. I had other classmates whose fathers wouldn’t let them come to school without makeup.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Old times: thank you! The shoe The Expanse had a lot of issues but I loved the fact that mag boots were needed to keep people from floating in space ships! My other pet peeve is engine roars and laser burst sounds in wide space shots. The reboot of Battlestar Galactica did it right. Silent explosions! Dog fights in space with flippy fighters as there is no up or down out in space
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@evodevo: I have a similar problem with medical shows with surgeons, usually women who have long hair flying all over the place, especially the interns. First it’s going to get in every thing and second it always looks like a shampoo commercial, all shows by and bouncy. And some of these doctors have multiple kids at home and not sign of childcare workers. Yeah sure!
zhena gogolia
@Splitting Image: So funny!
zhena gogolia
@Juju: “Playtime is over!”
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl:
Actually, I would watch the hell out of a cop series that made Internal Affairs guys/gals the heroes.
Chris
@Steve Finlay:
90% of the time there’s absolutely no reason why these villains should be able to get away with what they do. It doesn’t always mean I don’t enjoy the story anyways, but especially when it tries to take itself too seriously, it often ends up with me rolling my eyes.
The Dark Knight is a good enough movie and Heath Ledger is a good enough actor that you can mostly just turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. But it keeps trying to be one of those post-9/11 movies asking tough questions like “how far are we willing to go to be safe?” “how many rules are we willing to break to deal with an extraordinary threat?” and after the first couple times, it’s hard to miss the fact that there is absolutely no goddamn reason for the Joker to be an extraordinary threat. A serial killer who’s trying to go to war with the police, and the Mafia, and the billionaire-oligarch-vigilante who owns the entire city, all at the same time? The Joker would’ve turned up dead in a gutter less than 24 hours after he got started. The only reason he doesn’t is because the writers don’t want him to.
Yeah, The Final Problem is probably the most disappointing Holmes story in all, because Moriarty is so transparently just a plot device for Holmes to go out with a bang, and because of how much it violates “show don’t tell.” We’re told he’s a genius as smart as Holmes, but we never see him doing anything smart. We’re told that he and Holmes have just spent months in one of the most epic mind games of all time, but we never see the game, we come in at the end when Holmes has checkmated Moriarty already.
The conversation between Holmes and Moriarty in Holmes’ apartment is the only thing that saves it, and that one is genuinely good.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
Murc at LGM has been wishing for a Law And Order: Internal Affairs series since forever, though I don’t expect it to ever get made.
The only franchise I’ve ever seen that actually does a good job in how they treat Internal Affairs is actually Lethal Weapon. They pop up in the third movie, and there’s the expected amount of jurisdiction friction because why wouldn’t there be, but it becomes clear very quickly that they’re not bad people, they’re just another police department, which happens to have an especially thankless beat. It also becomes clear very quickly that their involvement is completely justified, since the villain of the movie is a cop-gone-bad supplying the street gangs in the movie’s version of the LAPD Rampart scandal. And of course, by the end, Riggs and the IA detective are a couple, which gets married in the next film.
(I will die on the hill that these movies are much better than they’re given credit for, despite the mix of Mel Gibson, some unfortunate eighties attitudes, and the fact that, well, they’re still cop movies with all the baggage that comes with that).
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: ‘Only’ can be a set of more than one.
Paul in KY
@Old times: They have sekret, super-advanced technology 21st century barbarian.
Paul in KY
@zhena gogolia: Don’t watch the The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Paul in KY
@Kayla Rudbek: The young Duke of York was heading towards being imprisoned/executed (for imagining the king’s death), before he passed away.
Paul in KY
@kalakal: Parts of Krakatoa might have been East of Java after it blew up :-)
Paul in KY
@VFX Lurker: Good catch!
Paul in KY
@Hungry Joe: The actors certainly want it that way so they can emote. Also in that vein are the medieval style war scenes where none of the talent is wearing a helmet.
JDM
I love The Sting. I think it gets really close to perfect. But then there’s not one, but two, silenced revolvers in the hands of professionals. So close.
Jado
@Soapdish: Spidey has the proportional gravity powers of a spider – he can fall faster if he wants to. Just like a spider.
/Sarcasm