In some scifi shows, when a new dealy enemy comes into it, and it takes four hero's 5 seconds of all shooting their weapons at it before it will die.

Then when they are under attack later in the show/series/film and there are many of the new enemy, two shots kill them.

Does anyone recall ever watching a cop show where the cops talked a witness into testifying by saying "we can protect you", and said witness wasn't killed during the show? If watching American cop shows has taught me anything it's that the witness always dies.

In a recent Blue Bloods, the cops, at least, put another cop outside the hospital room of the "protected" witness. Of course the cop was so dedicated to his duty that when a nurse walked up and said "there's free pizza in the nurse's lounge", he immediately vacated his post. And someone came in moments later and killed the witness.

Member Avatar for Warrens80

Law and Oder SVU protects their witnesses..I think

Tons of FBI and NCIS shows where the agents storm somebody's home with their handgun almost attached to their nose. A posture I find silly. Luckily the bad guys always miss.

In a recent infomercial type commercial all of the "satisfied users" had faces with way too much plastic surgery (oh no they aren't actors reading from a script). Perhaps the product only appeals to people who have had plastic surgery. Or they "ordered now" and got a second one free (just pay shipping and handling), saving enough money so they could get a face lift.

A great moment from the original TV series, The Odd Couple, had Tony Randall filming a commercial for some medical thingy. He was wearing a lab coat and opened wth the phrase "Hello. I am a dramatization of a doctor." If only all commercials could be so truthful.

Or they are real doctors who peddle some hyped up stuff, like Dr. Oz.

It's amazing that even after all the times he has been caught he still thinks he has credibility. I loved the segment that John Oliver did on Oz being grilled by congress.

On TV (and in the movies) a gun silencer reduces the sound of a gunshot to not much more than a "click" or "phhht". In actuality, silencers reduce the sound by about 30 dB which is about the same reduction offered by ear protection at a firing range. A typical super-sonic round produces 160-180 dB while a sub-sonic round produces 147-160 db. Using a silencer reduces this to (minimally) 130 and 117 dB respectively. A police siren clocks in at 100-140 dB so the "silent whisper" you see on TV is completely bogus.

Why does every episode of Criminal Minds have to end in the same hostage situation with the perp holding a gun or knife to the head/throat of the last victim?

Also, can we please do away with the phrase "shut the front door" and the descriptive "dumpster fire". When one person refers to another as a "dumpster fire" we all know what D F really means. It's not clever. It's just stupid.

Speaking of Crimiinal Minds, why is it that when they finally give the profile to the local authorities, the entire team lines up and gives the profile one sentence at a time with a random person in the team taking each sentence. Of course it is rehearsed (it is a TV show, after all) but the characters within the reality of the show would have had to take the time to memorize each member's line and order of presentation. Seems like an awful waste of time when time is of the essence. And they do this almost every episode.

Turning from scripted to non-scripted...

Why is it that news shows have so many interviews that immediately descend into "everyone talks at the same time and nobody listens"? Especially in the case in which multiple people appear on monitors from remote locations, it would be so easy to just mute everyone but the current speaker.

I like Bill Maher, in spite of the too-frequent crude language, and in spite of some of his more extreme views. Even he occasionally reaches the point where he just has to tell the panel to "shut up". But at least he acknowledges the problem.

It seems that he, too often, will have a Republican talking head on the panel whose idea of reasonable debate consists of "I will start talking over you if I believe you are about to make a valid point". I've seen the other side do this as well, but not to the same extent.

So let's see a little more judicious use of the mute button.

If it wasn't for my wife(o yes call this true love :) ), I would have no TV and as a consquence no TV shows. It is becoming more and more rarely that I watch any TV show. Tell me how many channels of shit I can choose from?(Paraphrasing Pink Floyd here :) )

Member Avatar for diafol

You would think that heads of democratic parties would understand democracy and the need for inclusive talks. No. Human nature at its worst again. If you have a strong opinion and conviction you should be prepared to listen to counter-arguments and then shoot them down. Wishful thinking.

I watch almost everything via a recording, so I can always skip the ads, but I still have to put with "coming after the break " followed by a preview of the best bits to come, and then after the break a complete resume of the segment that just finished. So by the end of the program I've sem the best bits at least 6 times. I hate that because I'M NOT A GOLDFISH!

SPOILER ALERT: American Gods

When a giant woman shoves a fat man up her lady parts and he disappears, without any explanation as to why, I kind of hate that...

commented: Is this in the Marvel Universe? +0

When a giant woman shoves a fat man up her lady parts and he disappears

I absolutely refuse to ask for an explanation.

I watch almost everything via a recording

Fer sher. Ever since we got our PVR we are effectively commercial free. Unlike a VCR, we can start watching an hour show 20 minutes after it starts recording. We zip through the commercials and catch up to the end of the show at the top of the hour. Gotta love it.

How is it in a thriller/suspense movie or show, whenever someone turns on the TV to see if there is anything about them on the news, when the TV comes on, not only is it on a news channel, the story they are interested in is the one currently airing?

Usually in those situations it is a "breaking news" it is reasonable for the story to be covered by the news - headlines and top stories get repeated so often on 24h news channels it's not really that unlikely. It's more weird that in thriller TV shows everyone has their TVs set to 24 hour news channels all the time.

Plus having commericals on a TV in a TV show that has commercial breaks would so super abnoxious.

I hate shows that need to tell us what is coming up after the break, then after the break, spend two minutes recapping what happened just before the break.

How is it possible that, even in New York, people always manage to get a parking spot right in front of where they want to go?

How is it that one man shooting at ten men can always hit them all while those same ten men shooting back can't hit bugger all?

How is it that you can accomplish any task on a cell phone with a maximum of two clicks and there are never any compatibility problems.

And how is it that cell phones will always work flawlessly except when it is critical that they do.

How is it that no teenagers on TV ever have acne?

How is it that in real life people occasionally cough but on TV/movies that same cough usually means a pending fatal illness.

Most people don't have to eat in some series, unless they are two cops sitting in a car watching a suspect.

And they will only have to pull out quickly when there is a hot beverage on the dash and a mouthful of food.

I hate it there are TOO many TV shows.

Still catching up on all the shows I missed during the summer. We just finished the latest season of American Ninja. All through the season the repeatedly referenced that the winner gets a million dollars but in several seasons we have never seen anyone actually awarded the prize. Then I looke it up. The show defines "the winner" as the person who finishes the final stage (stage four, I think) in the fastest time. Stage four is clearly impossible to finish so in all the seasons they have been on they have never had to award a prize. Competitors do not get paid for participating so basically they have never had to pay their athletes a dime. If the NFL worked this way the players would walk off. In tennis, at least, you get paid for every tier with the payouts increasing as you advance up the tiers. Again, if only the winner got paid their would be no professional tennis.

According to the internet one person has finished it and collected the cash prize. Though considering the challenge doesn't take that long to do, is it even the least ethical reality show? I mean Survivor makes contestants to obstacle course and "ordeals" and half-starves them for over a month and only one of them gets the cash at the end - which is probably the worst payout per-hour-of-suffering of any reality show.

Just doing some back of the envelop calculations:
Survivor = $1,000,000 per ~8,000 person-hours
American Ninja = $1,000,000 per ~1,000 person-hours (assuming an average of < 20minutes per competitor)
Fear Factor = $50,000 per ~6 person-hours
Big Brother UK = £100,000 per ~15,000 person-hours
America's Next Top Model = ~$100,000 per ~2,000 person-hours (assuming each episode takes 1 day to film)

So from a pure "labour" exploitation point of view Big Brother is by far the worst, but Survivor has the physical hardship, and ANTM has the sexual-exploitation & humilitation and for most seasons a prize of questionable value. So they are all pretty bad...

At least shows like The Voice and Project Runway give exposure to people to possibly help launch a career. Big Brother might as well be called America's Top Douchebag. I'm always amazed at how many people are so willing to return to Survivor again and again.

I have to admit to a guilty pleasure in order to rant about this next one. My favourite comic as a lad was The Flash. As such I watch the current TV seties purely out of nostalgia even though I am consistently disappointed in the intelligence of the writers. We have had three seasons in which an almost unstoppable villain is a super-speedster. One was only stopped when Eddie Thawn killed himself to prevent a descendent from ever existing. Another died before killing our hero because he was shot in the back by Iris.

So we've proven again and again that super speed is awesome. Except that The Flash is consistently being overpowered by the villain of the week because super speed is actually pretty lame.

Then (spoiler alert) as we neared the finale of last season (I had to wait until September to see it), the team needs to find a save place to hide Iris. They also need a power source that is only available at one lab and The Flash can't just run in and steal/borrow it because the lab is protected by a field that negates meta-human powers. Follow me here - Savatar is a future version of The Flash. We have a building that is Flash-proof and we need a safe place to hide Iris. Can you think of a place? Nope. Me neither.

The writers are morons for assuming that the heroes (and the audience) are idiots.

I still haven't watched Star Trek: Discovery but I've seen the blue Klingons in the promo and I fear the worst. I smell J J Abrams' hand in this.

My pet peeve for pretty much all superheros stuff is that is almost always comes down to hero X fighting a more powerful version of themselves, which IMO is just the stupidest. Why don't any of the villains actually try to find and exploit the superhero's weakness, instead of just trying to be biggerer and betterer?

Star Trek: Discovery is not Star Trek, and you will be massively disappointed/angry if you go in expecting it to be so. Discovery is closer in tone to the reboot of BSG, but with worse writing. Also none of the races/factions behave as you would expect from previous Star Trek franchises - Klingons don't act like Klingons, Vulcans don't act like Vulcans, and even the Federation is almost a parody of itself. Though the effects & visuals are movie-quality, it's too bad they didn't spend as much time on the script as on the CGI.

What is it with so many shows that have people writing out equations, evidence, etc. of transparent panels in the middle of a room? Things are so much easier to read on a white board, and there is no reason to want to read from the other side where everything is backwards. You can't even get a decent photo of stuff on a clear panel with the background cluttering everything all up.

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