TV Myths

[DawnM]

Not quite a myth, but on practically every TV program, if they show the exterior of the house, there's NO WAY the actual floor plan of the interior matches it.

I love the King of Queens set. The exterior shots have no front porch, but they often have the actors standing outside on this fairly large front "non existent" porch!

 

[spacemountainmom]

Not really a myth, but I hate when shows are set in Northern parts of the country and all the women are wearing tank tops or sleeveless tops in the winter. Trust me, no one in Minnesota is going sleeveless in December.

 

[chartle]

Not really a myth, but I hate when shows are set in Northern parts of the country and all the women are wearing tank tops or sleeveless tops in the winter. Trust me, no one in Minnesota is going sleeveless in December.

Of course its worse if its a Xmas movie shot in So Cal with palm trees and fake snow shot in the summer. And of course its also a Hallmark Movie.

 

[scoutie]

Most infertility/pregnancy storylines. On FRIENDS, Phoebe had IVF and hours later got a positive pregnancy test (impossible) was pregnant with triplets, overdue, not on bed rest.....

 

[Gumbo4x4]

FBI agents who travel hundreds of miles to a hot crime scene & manage to always arrive before local PD.

 

[phorsenuf]

When people pull food out of a fridge and it's just on a plate. It's not wrapped or packaged in any way.

 

[SirDuff]

Whenever someone gets a present, it’s in a wrapped box with a separately wrapped top so it can be opened without ripping the paper or cutting or untying ribbons. In real life, who wraps like that?

I always found that weird too, and, as a kid, just figured that Americans wrapped weirdly (I'm Canadian).

 

[PollyannaMom]

Whenever someone gets a present, it’s in a wrapped box with a separately wrapped top so it can be opened without ripping the paper or cutting or untying ribbons. In real life, who wraps like that?

Like others have said, sometimes friends and neighbors just walk in the door. But if they knock or ring the doorbell, there is always someone right there in the living room, close to the front door, ready to answer it. And no one ever has a screen door or storm door (maybe also a regional thing representative of a warmer climate?)

Also, there is always a couch and chairs in the middle of the room, so people can walk around them; never against a wall. Who arranges their furniture that way?

We have one of those boxes that we reuse like a gift bag....It was harder than I thought it would be.

I get you about the doors! Nobody knocks, and the only screen I've seen is on The Walton's.

I do have a "floating" couch, but that's because my kitchen and family room are one big room. The path between the counter and the couch kind of divides the space. (But in my previous house and the apartment before that, it was against the wall. So my very un-scientific count is 2-1.)

 

[tvguy]

The one that always sticks out in my mind is the last episode of Friends. Chandler and Monica are able to take home twins just hours after they were born. No observation of the babies or anything?

In the mid-1980's that was pretty close to being true. My mom was an RN and when she retired in 1985 she said she felt she was working in at McDonalds. Giving birth to going home often spanned just 8 hours, the insurance companies didn't want to pay for overnight. When my wife gave birth in 1987, we had to fight to get 2 days in the hospital and our son.

 

[NHdisneylover]

The first two things that popped into my head are not on the thread at all--maybe they are too serious?


TV/Movie seizures are always of the highly noticeable, lots of shaking variety, which is really not all that common.

and worse, I think loads of people actually expect drowning to be easy to identify, loud and noisy thanks to how it is portrayed on screen when in reality it is generally silent and involves very little movement.

Any birth on any sitcom EVER!

The wife is casually doing whatever not even planning on labor and then BAM!, instant massive contractions or the water breaks and they are needing to push immediately. Ensue yelling and screaming and blaming husband for "doing this to her."

Then ... to make the situation more unrealistic the dopey Dad is all frazzled and so nervous he can't do anything. He doesn't know his name, can't drive a car, etc.

Usually, when they make it to the hospital it is one or two pushes and ta-dah! A magically clean 3 month old looking baby appears. Mom is perfectly coiffed and refreshed.

Ugh! I have never seen one realistic birth on a sitcom.

The one that always sticks out in my mind is the last episode of Friends. Chandler and Monica are able to take home twins just hours after they were born. No observation of the babies or anything?

My problem with birth scenes is the portrayal of the pain. The acting usually suggests a sudden, sharp pain that comes out of nowhere and causes the actor to shriek and grab her belly. Then the pain appears to stop as suddenly as it started. My contractions they were a slow cramp that built up gradually, ate me alive, then faded away again. I had lots of warning before the bad pain came. Maybe I'm unusual; I've never discussed this with other moms! But it always bugs me when an actor, often one who is a mother in real life, acts as though a contraction feels like being stabbed in the gut.

Everyone is different. I had more of a "TV labor" 90 minutes of pain (sharp, obvious when it happened, grab the towel bar and pull it out of the wall while screaming stuff, with not much in between) and a baby delivered by DH while I stood in our bathroom doorway.
AND, the doctor making rounds that day wanted to send me and baby on home at 8:00 (I had her at 2:00 at home, so that would be 6 hours after birth and 5 after arriving at the hospital). I started crying, I was still a little shell shocked and hormonal, and the nurses let him know that the doctor who had been there when I came in approved me to spend a night since I wasn't even there to HAVE the baby, but, yeah, as a PP said, there was a time when not getting an overnight at all was totally the norm in the US (the law actually changed in the two years between when I had my kids and I was so sick of being in the hospital and wanted to go home with DS)

 

[spacemountainmom]

I have also noticed that on TV they still use corded phones. I haven't had one as my regular phone in nearly 20 years. I do keep one available in the event of a power outage, but that is the only time I use it.

 

[karensi]

I love the King of Queens set. The exterior shots have no front porch, but they often have the actors standing outside on this fairly large front "non existent" porch!

Exactly! I had actually posted pretty much the same thing about 2 pages prior to this.
I guess we both noticed the same thing. I always wondered why the producers (or whoever) never corrected this. To me it was so obvious.

 

[Jennasis]

FWIW, the overwhelming majority of news live shots are done with the cameras connected to a live truck. I may have been out of the business for a while (15 years to be exact since the last time I set my camera up for a live shot) but many of my friends are still working for the major networks in both NY and LA.

Yes, tech exists for wireless live shots, but it is not the norm, or widely used.

The pic a few posts up is likely a set up for a press conference (most of those are also not broadcast live).

 

[Rhombus]

Exactly! I had actually posted pretty much the same thing about 2 pages prior to this.
I guess we both noticed the same thing. I always wondered why the producers (or whoever) never corrected this. To me it was so obvious.

In my opinion, such disparities (King of Queens exterior shot has no porch; actual set has a porch) are intentional. Not laziness, accidental, or an oversight. Intentional. It has seemed to be a tradition since TV began that the interior sets don't match whatever exterior shot used. Even I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners did this in the 1950s.

 

[tjevans]

LOL, so I can give them a pass on the hospital set not matching the exterior shot. And the fact that every patient Johnny and Roy brought into the ER was treated by either Dr. Brackett or Dr. Early, and Dixie was the only nurse ever on duty.

There's an Emergency! fan page out there. You should look it up; it has lots of great trivia about the show.

It's also funny to watch to see how far medical technology has come in the 40 years since the show aired (Yikes! Has it really been that long?). There was one episode where they needed a record of a reading that displayed on a screen on one of the hospital devices. It literally had a polaroid camera that flipped in front of the screen and took the picture.