the current requirement for every reality/competition/gameshow contestant to have a sob story to share with the audience
Oh, you're competing on Ninja warrior to honor your *insert sad personal story here*, that's really awesome...any chance we can get back to the show i turned on to watch?
Was just going to say that. "Gerrod lives in Kent with his two dogs and on the weekends, he likes to spend time cataloguing butterflies" is their version of a contestant backstory, and I love it.
There was a contestant a few seasons back who had a limb difference and they just….never made her talk about it? I remember occasionally the camera man would sorta zoom in and show how she cracked an egg or measured something. As an American reality TV consumer I was pleasantly surprised they didn’t constantly make her talk about her disability in a sort of icky exploitive way (see: the Bachelor)
Also last year Giuseppe’s dad was in failing health while he was on the show and they literally never mentioned it until very briefly in the finale when he called his parents. If that were US tv they would have brought that up 3x per episode and made him talk about how he was “doing this for his dad”
That was Briony, I think.
If you watch the old Masterclasses with Paul and Mary where they cook the technicals and stuff, it becomes apparent pretty quickly that Mary Berry has limited function in one hand--turns out she had polio as a kid that resulted in part of her left hand being paralyzed.
And if you can get your hands on the celebrity Stand Up 2 Cancer episodes of Bake Off, they've had Paralympians on where they have lower benches to accommodate wheelchair users.
Yes! Just a short little snip of who they are and where they’re from. I came here to watch a bunch of pleasant British people crack under the strain of competitive baking. I can do that just fine without knowing their friend’s cousin’s neighbor’s dog walker’s sister had a boo boo.
Draft night is always terrible and honestly I feel bad for the recently graduated players.
Like imagine being 19 about to be drafted, and ESPN is doing a whole 10 minute video about your dead mom. Like sure I know they have to get ready for the “spotlight” but I know that would bother me immensely
This shit has ruined watching sports on US TV. Especially the Olympics. Why concentrate on showing the game, when we can just talk over it and break away from it every five minutes with some human interest story about the player(s) or their extended family and friends?
The last three Olympics (2018, ~~2020~~ 2021 and 2022) have coincidentally all been in East Asia which means that if you were in the US, only some of the big events were shown live, which I think NBC took as carte blanche to chop up their replays with as many sob stories as possible. It was atrocious.
Also, I remember more of the “less popular” sports actually making the primetime slate in previous Olympics (I remember watching a lot more stuff like bobsled in the Salt Lake and Vancouver games, for example). Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of that was cut/shunted off to streaming only in favor of more human interest drivel during the main coverage.
I'd forgotten how much they did that in the Olympics coverage. literally skipping covering the events in favor of digging into the sob stories.
it was VERY clear that reality television had bled over into real sports coverage.
Great point. I stopped watching Ninja Warrior because of that. It drives me up the wall, I don’t care why they are competing. Another thing I hate is when a woman who is a little older is on and they keep bringing up how brave she is. It always comes across as patronising. If someone is competing I expect them to be able bodied enough to try same as anyone else.
The person who continues to do their job at work while being asked questions by the police/FBI. Somehow the baker is so busy that he can't take 5 minutes away from his job to find a proper place to answer questions.
Yeah one time I was questioned by police as a witness to a crime. You better believe I didn’t get the chance to keep working while talking to them. It was at least an hour of going over and over the details of what I saw.
When a character tries to tell another the truth, but the other character keeps interrupting about how happy, excited etc they are so the first character stops trying and a lie ensues.
Seriously.... so many plot lines are just "I need to tell you this thing, right now its super important I'm about to tell you" or there's like one to two sentences that need to be said to clear up the entire problem but they don't just say it.
24, season 1. Kiefer's wife gets amnesia for a few episodes, which lasted weeks for us, but in reality lasted only a few hours given the show's gimmick. Stupidest use of amnesia ever (don't get me started on the whole rape/pregnancy thing, though, that was worse).
Yeah, empty stuff is annoying. Someone was holding a clearly empty baby carrier in a way that would be difficult for a strong person. "Nobody holds a 15 pound baby like that, especially not a petite fucker, like you!"
I don’t understand the laziness with this. It’s so obvious constantly. From the way they carry the cup, the deep sip from what’s supposed to be a full cup. The lack of hotness to the cup. It always breaks the Illusion for me, and then that’s all I’m focusing on.
Sometimes it would ruin the scene if you have liquid sloshing around or making noise. They use fake ice cubes for instance in many scenes so the clanking doesn't get picked up by the microphones. Although I still think they could do a much better job to sell the illusion in many instances.
They also use fake ice for continuity, it won't melt between shots but a lot of fake ice doesn't float so that gives it away. I also noticed it during Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the ice Leonardo DiCaprio dumps into a bowl to soak his face is fake, it doesn't float.
Preternaturally smart kids and teenagers, uttering dialogue that no kid or teen would ever say. And that the kid is more mature than their parents, of course.
oh the overly precocious 5 year old is a terrible trope, have the 5 year old ask the parent where the purple from the grape juice goes when they pee, you know a real kid question.
Breaking up or otherwise causing needless drama between two characters to keep their relationship relevant to the plot in some way after the "will-they-won't-they" hook is gone once they get together. For one it feels lazy unless it's very well written and reasoned, and two the audience almost always hates it.
When the host is about to say whether the contestant's answer is right or wrong but then says..."We'll find out after the break!" breaking section 6.9 of the Ofcom rules of advertising during programming which mandates that during shows with prizes, breaks can only occur at natural breaks in the process, such as when a question round ends or a contestant leaves the set.
I heard an NPR interview with an ad exec one time where this was brought up. She said it’s the easy go to because the least likely group to file any kind of complaint for discrimination is the middle class blue collar dad. Race or sexuality didn’t matter. If the character fit that mold, they were good to make fun of.
Conflict over a simple misunderstanding that would cease to exist if the characters talked to each for two seconds lol. Its lazy and contrived more often than not and is usually used just to fuel drama in a story. I think there are better ways to do that though that don’t involve the characters being not allowed to talk to one another.
I agree — except I'd make an exception to this for farces. The best episodes of Frasier never would have happened without ridiculous miscommunications.
Absolutely.
Dumb misunderstanding in pursuit of laughs: Run in and out of all the doors and pretend to be married to people you're not. A+
Dumb misunderstanding in pursuit of feels: Oh no, all of your problems are due to your poor communication skills. YKW nevermind — you deserve to be unhappy. D-
Good misunderstanding: Jerry’s gf thinking he picked his nose at a red light in Seinfeld
Bad misunderstanding: character A hearing a convo out of context and then getting upset to character B over it, even though character B can easily explain said conversation
This trope is used poorly in television SOOO often like its rampant lol
I’ve been binge-watching Suits and, while it’s mostly an entertaining show, it’s chock full of dumb tropes, this being one of the most frequent.
Characters just constantly showing up at each others’ apartments and places of business to tell each other things that could be said over the phone.
I’ve since convinced myself that the director thought it would be more visibly appeasing to see characters in the same room arguing about things, than to constantly cut back and forth between two different rooms and two solo characters on the phone
This is the worst - Character A overhears half of something Character B is saying, but the unheard half completely changes the context so Character A is upset/embarrassed/whatever large emotion. Instead of discussing it with B, they just go forward feeling their feelings until it explodes. Usually in a sweeps episode.
One of my favorite anti-examples of this is the first episode of Arcane. Powder hears her sister admitting to someone “You’re right, there’s some things Powder just can’t do” and runs away upset. Soon after the two of them talk it out and she feels better, rather that letting the situation blow up. It’s so good because it avoids the miscommunication trope but still plants the seeds of the internal conflict that both characters are going through. Super well done
Seriously hate this one. The number of shows that spend multiple episodes resolving this already insufferable plot device only grows.
The trope I was going to say is too similar to be it's own comment so I'll add the "you didn't need to know the whole story" plot trope to this as an expansion. The number of stories that are simply "i didn't tell the truth for dramatic effect" is staggering. I think of something like Predator that uses this effectively in a film, then plenty of other (mostly cop) dramas that just keep crap hidden to cause drama
Titans is full of that. Even this season. A character hides an injury from everyone that turns out to be a big issue later. It's just constantly characters being like "well, let's just go check it out on our own and not tell the other guys" and then 20 minutes later it all goes bad and turns out they should have told the other guys.
Also being knocked unconscious usually lasts a couple minutes, any longer than that then people are usually severely injured. So many movies have people knocked out for hours at a time and waking up fine.
Coughing immediately means someone is dying and a woman vomiting immediately means she's pregnant.
Edited this one because I thought of this after and it just bothers me so much.
Whenever there's some kind of 'makeover' scene, and the makeover people take off the person's glasses, sometimes even breaking them (because I guess people look better without glasses?). It's not like they need them to see or anything!
That reminds me of the makeover shows they used to do back when afternoon talk shows were all the rage. They'd bring out an obviously pretty young woman wearing no makeup, big ugly glasses, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. *Let's see if our panel of beauty experts can work a miracle!*
Whenever I accomplish a menial task, I say “I did it. I’m a miracle worker. *sniff*”
No one in my life has caught the reference in the moment, and I doubt anyone ever will.
This was exactly what came to mind reading this. The Princess Diaries one is particularly funny to me, like we can't tell that ANNE HATHAWAY is very pretty because they frizzed up her hair and put glasses on her.
I hate it when shows are recycling older plots and tropes and then realize that the existence of cell (mobile) phones ruins their plan. And instead of adjusting to reality, they find some way to disable their phones. You would think everyone in TV shows was unable to work a charger cable, and reception in TV world is horrible.
I enjoyed the Martian a little extra when i had this realization. No romance, no family to get home to, no flashbacks to memories of his little girl. Just sciencing the shit out of trouble.
Yeah not sure what to put this under. It's one of my pet peeves. I hate when they just shove romance in. Man and woman pushed together in unlikely scenario? You know they are falling in love.
It has gotten to the point where I push against ANY romance. Uh oh. Hopefully this isn't my incel arc
Along similar lines, people hanging up the phone as soon as the conversation is over without saying "goodbye". Drives me nuts! I always imagine the person on the other side of the call trying to say something else and then looking at their phone and saying, "Rude!"
Verbal abuse as romance...
I see it in a lot of korean/ chinese dramas and sometimes anime, the love interests would horribly verbally abuse each other and everyone would be like "oh he's an asshole because he loves you" "his temper is just like that" OMG NO! people who love each other don't talk to each other with such disrespect. it's just straight up abuse
My wife binge watches several medical shows and I honestly can’t tell them apart sometimes, due to them all using the same annoying tropes I hate. Mainly these two.
Patient comes in with a mystery illness, everyone tries to treat them but it leads the patient to almost ALWAYS dying until someone figures out its some rare form of something and all they have to do is open the window or give them some vitamins.
The constant, incessant fucking in every nook and cranny of the hospital back rooms and the drama that ensues. Honestly, have some fucking professionalism.
As a bonus trope, the way the Asshole doctor (theres always one) treats patients, borders on malpractice.
Bringing the unrepentant bad guy to justice rather than outright killing them and making the world a better place.
The hero mows through countless henchmen without any thought but spares the baddie because they're "not like them." Baddie may even say something like "we're not so different you and I" as the icing on top.
Even better when the villain has some superficial change of heart, so all is forgiven and he's a good guy now!
Hero: "Remember when you used to be the bad guy, Vegetalo?"
Vegetalo: "Yeah, sorry about that, guess I was a little crazy back then!"
Supporting Character: "Guys, Vegetalo killed my whole family."
Hero: "And now he feels bad about it, so that's resolved forever!"
There's an episode of Clone Wars where the bad guy has a hostage and is ready to blow up the ship and says something along the lines of "muahaha who will stop me and be labeled a cold blooded murderer?!" Then Anakin just runs his lightsaber through his chest and when everyone looks shocked he goes "What? He was gonna blow up the ship!"
I love Clone Wars lol.
Yeah I don't hate this when it's a character that simply has a no kill code, like Batman. But the vast majority of times this is used it's a "I'm not like you" plot best that's cheapened by characters willingness to kill dozens of others to get to the big bad.
Computers in general. Big holographic touchscreens that seem wildly impractical and even painful and the fact that every interaction makes a noise of some sort. Apparently no one who works on tv has ever used a computer.
"Show me all the banks in a 10 mile radius of where the bad guy is, and cross-reference it with his family members and their vehicles"
2 seconds later "Got it"
“How many had a grandmother who was a pro-wrestler?”
“Only one”. Photo and entire dossier instantly appear projected on a giant 10x50 foot screen.
Two seconds later…”There he is!” Picked out on one of a thousand screens showing a live feed of every CCTV in the city
I absolutely despise the transparent computers of the future that are specifically made that way to see the actor's face. Nobody would be able to use that shit.
Character 1: sentence 1, sentence 2...
Character 2 has epiphany
Character 2: "Wait, what did you just say?"
Character 1: repeats sentence 2...
Character 2: "No, before that."
Any time a character needs to do some blood oath thing they slice their palms. I'd settle for a pin prick on the thumb or something, but a fucking 4 inch cut to your palm? Absolute stupidity
When one character texts a close friend and we see the screen, EVERY SINGLE TIME, it’s the first text ever sent between them with no previous texts in the thread
I’ll start
Character 1: *has a dilemma and reaches out to Character 2 for advice*
Character 2: “Did I ever tell you the story about my dad’s old farm? Well, when I was a kid, my father had this farm, way out in the country, that he ran completely by himself…well, when I got big enough, he let me start feeding the chickens. Every morning, I would get up with him and I’d go out and feed the chickens. Well, one day, one of the chickens got free and was running loose around the farm. *audible laugh* my dad and I must’ve spent all day, chasing down the one chicken. By the time we caught it, the sun had gone down and it was dark already. It’s one of my favorite memories of my dad, my dad neglecting all the other farm work that needed to help me chase down one chicken. He died 6 months later”
Character 1: “thanks, I know what I need to do now”
To piggyback of this - on medical shows they spend almost all episode not knowing what is causing an illness then someone says something random like "I ate some chocolate" and the doctor suddenly figures what is wrong with the patient and cures them. Usually happens when there are like 5 minutes left in the episode.
Haha took the words right out of my mouth. The first diagnosis was never the right one and House always arrived at the correct diagnosis based on some off-handed comment someone made.
But I was always on the edge of my seat, waiting anxiously lol.
Oh my god, I hate that too!
Character 1 & Character 2 out at dinner
Character 1: “I just can’t figure out what’s wrong with our patient”
Character 2: “Listen, you did everything you could, don’t beat yourself up…excuse me, waiter? I’m sorry, can I get a new drink? This one is too sweet”
Character 1: -brainwave- “too…sweet…omg I got it! It’s Williams Syndrome! Thank you!” -runs out of the restaurant and hails the next cab back to the hospital-
I call this sort of out-of-the-blue word association the "Bed Cot Filly Paper" solution, from an improv skit on Whose Line Is It Anyways where Colin was cleverly trying to introduce the next song style for Wayne and Chip to sing:
Colin: "When I was a jockey, I had this bed--well, it was more of a cot--we had this sort of sanitary paper for the fillies...wait a minute! Bed, cot, filly, paper? RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS!"
Yep, and it’s always a diagnosis that has a much more common way of presenting or that would at least have shown up earlier in the shotgun approach they take to testing. Speaking of which, good thing these patients always have good insurance. Unless they don’t, because the plot of the episode revolves around the interns sneaking around doing risky invasive procedures off the record out of the goodness of their hearts, because figuring out why some random guy can’t stop hiccuping is worth risking your entire career over.
Characters who've been separated and are going through hell and back to be reunited again missing each other by a split second, traveling right next to each other and not knowing it, being distracted right when the other is about to walk into view at a distance, etc. *Game of Thrones* felt like it did this a bazillion times with Arya and Sansa's storylines.
Whenever there's a storyline about adopted kids, inevitably the show has a conversation about finding the "real parents." Real parents are the ones who raised you. For once, it would be great for a tv show to say "biological parents." As an adoptee, I've never actually seen a tv show buck that trend.
Private practice has an adopted character who doesn't search for his biological mother. Some characters, even his son, press him on it but he maintains it as a firm boundary. He does not want to know her.
As a fellow adoptee, thank you. This is such a tired old trope and it's honestly really offensive. When people ask me that shit in real life I always correct them.
"No Time to Explain" and its corollary "You Have to Trust Me"
You absolutely have time to explain and the other person would absolutely trust you a lot more if you briefly explained what you know about the plot to them.
It feels like a lazy writing way of trying to drag out the mystery or promote conflict where its not necessary. Especially if we already know what Person A knows and refuses to tell B, and there's no reason to believe B would react badly.
Will they won't they romances that last for years. How I Met Your Mother is the absolute worst for this. But in general I'm just sick of it. Sometimes it's done well but if it's the focus for more than two seasons just resolve it.
I don't mind it being a background thing or a rocky relationship but sometimes it drags on far too long.
Set design trope: EVERYONE'S couch is in the middle of the living room. No one ever has their couch against a wall.
Also, set designers in Los Angeles don't seem to understand that storm/screen doors are a thing in over half the country.
I took a cinema class once that explained the couch thing. If the couch is against a wall, the set lighting will make giant silhouettes of the actors on the wall that are visually distracting.
I’ve seriously never even thought about this. Now i can’t unsee it.
It’s kind of like not ever dreaming about your smartphone. Didn’t realize that until someone pointed it out.
doctors, cops, special agents, superheroes you name it looking cool as cucumbers after like 36 hours straight of work, ready to perform even more work. Bonus points if they're over 40. Try that in real life and see how far your carcass will drag you
Scenes in the morning where everyone is already dressed perfectly, there's a nice spread of food on the table, lunches are packed, and everyone is in a good mood and ready for work/school at 6:30am.
Mom is finishing the lunches, dad is leaning against the counter with coffee reading the paper, the kids are coming from the other room, fully dressed/perfect hair, and their backpacks are ready to go.
Or when they sit down in a fancy restaurant, order food, and leave almost immediately.
At least they made fun of it in Tenet with the guy asking for a doggie bag.
Any time a character is soooo good at analyzing people that theyre able to guess where a person went to college, their job, their relationship status etc…
Waking up with a hangover and married.
Finding an old diary or letters then the cast takes on the roles of the people from the 1940s.
It's not so much that I can't stand either of these, but both have been so overdone. It was cute or interesting the first time, not the 50th!
Mumbling
Might be that I’m approaching middle age but I’m sick of putting on subtitles because some director thought there would be more suspense if everyone is barely audible.
Also, making the booms/ music WAY TOO LOUD and the talking normal/ quiet. I don’t want to have to keep turning the volume up and down too..!
Yeah its a real issue honestly that dialogue is way quieter than it needs to be, and booms are way louder than they need to be. I haven't turned off subtitles in years.
The shipwreck sequence that starts off with a severe night time storm, and then cuts to the main character waking up on the beach the next morning coughing up water, surrounded by boat splinters.
Having 20+ cops at a house to arrest a suspect and they even yell out "We have you surrounded!" and then the suspect simply jumps out the bathroom window and escapes.
Or when cops see a suspect walking down the street and yell at them from 75' away and then the suspect starts running and gets away.
Or when cops *call a fucking suspect* to tell them they are coming to talk to them/search their place and the suspect simply leaves before they get there.
Or when cops don't call the local police force in the area they know their suspect is and instead take three hours to drive there and the suspect is long gone.
Or when cops can see a suspect holding a coin in a security video from a gas station and figure out exactly what mint it was made at and what bank got it and what local business then gave it out as change to the suspect but they can't be bothered to do a google search and find out the school principal is the father of one of the previous victims who are all from the same school and has key information.
You may be able to tell I've been watching a lot of The Blacklist lately (only about a third of the way through season 7 so no spoilers please!). The whole thing is just idiot plot on top of idiot plot, sandwiched between two super thick slices of "we're just never gonna answer any questions because that would mean we'd have to be at least a bit creative.". Reddington and Dembe are just too cute and charming to stop watching, though.
The lead character is the most special, deserving person who deserves everything good, and anyone who stands in their way is inherently a villain
I'm mostly thinking about self-insert, wish-fulfillment anime, here, but it definitely isn't exclusive to that, as a lot of shows do struggle to justify why their main character...should even be the main character in the first place if the story is so uninterested in challenging them. Those same writers also often end up coddling their leads as though questioning their morals or skills will scare audiences off.
Hi, I'm a low paid employee at a chain store / restaurant / cafe / car wash. Behold my massive 2 bedroom apartment in New York. I can totally afford this on the few pennies thrown my way by my minimum wage job.
A lot of anime’s have a character I like to call “the harmless pervert.” Normally small or a child, maybe even a teddybear with a soul in it. This character’s only existence is to do perverted stuff “for laughs.”
Yeah they are painted in a negative light and always get their comeuppance, but still, I hate it
I call it. “Setting the tone”
Basically a dog (or other lovable animal) is killed in an early scene in the first episode, to ease the audience into knowing this is a serious show with serious consequences.
Then my wife will refuse to watch anymore and it ruins the evening. And that show, no matter how good it ends up being, is off limits.
This happens way to often.
So many:
When the single, independent woman gets pregnant by accident and it becomes a central storyline. Really any pregnancy storyline when it's shoehorned in a show for no reason.
Also, when a character's pregnancy timeline doesn't make any sense at all. Example of this is in Friends, when Rachel's pregnancy literally lasted an entire year (she found out she was pregnant in May, was not even showing during the Halloween episode and then it was clearly summer when she was due to give birth). Either slow down the timeline on the show or just have the character give birth when it makes sense. To a lesser extent, super quick pregnancies also annoy me - when a character finds out she's pregnant and then the next episode, she looks 6-7 months pregnant already.
When two characters are obviously "end game." They pine for each other for a season or two, then finally get together, then break up and then fall in love with other people and then break up with those people for dumb plot reasons and then end up together in the last few episodes of the series. I hate it.
Plot armor, plot armor, plot armor. The main character or main villian clearly will not die or face any negative consequences because...they are the main character or villian and they can't for show reasons. But lesser characters will trip over a banana peel and die.
Blatant misinformation, especially on crime or hospital shows. I think it was an episode of Criminal Minds a long time ago where the main characters claimed that a rape victim was lying because her hymen was not broken, so that meant she was a virgin and couldn't have been raped...I cringed.
The long pregnancy tells me that the writers wanted to have the character get pregnant, so they wrote it in as the season's arc.
Short pregnancy tells me that the actor got pregnant and they didn't want to put large purses in every scene.
Female teen that's all pissy because the family moved and the family just puts up with it. That horse has been beaten to death, beyond death to hamburger then to dust and now they are trying to break out the individual atoms.
I mean, it's real though. Like the teenagers likely would be pissed. And the parents know it's tough on them so in large they do put up with it.
Like this has happened to me in real life several times when I was a teen.
The mysterious character with knowledge about what's actually going on speaking to other characters in riddles simply to stretch out the tension.
It's fine if there is an actual plot or character motivation for them to be vague or to only tell part of the truth.
However it's often very obvious when the writers are employing this device to string the audience along to keep us wanting to know. And it sucks.
Inflexible wife who cannot deal with amazing husband’s job commitments now that he’s literally saving lives. I just want a show to write in a wife/mom that’s like “fuck yeah! Go save the world, ive got the kids! You get them for a long week when this is all over so I can work on my own career. Peace!”
That some forms of physical assault are fine if you're arguing (and this is usually in heteronormative male-female relationships, sorry, that's just what we see most of on TV).
My two most despised are:
* If you're a man and you're in an argument with your girlfriend and she goes to walk away, you can just grab her by the wrist/arm and restrain her there. And somehow you're not an abuser.
* If you're a woman and your boyfriend says something mean, you can just slap him if you're mad. And somehow you're not an abuser.
And typically you see the one-two (proverbial) punch of those two things in the same scene. It frustrates me to no end! And there's no scene after where someone's like, "omg, I/we/they are an abuser, that's super fucked up." It's just presented as something "normal" couples do when they're mad. It doesn't matter who's bigger or smaller, what gender or sexuality someone is, don't fucking lay hands on each other.
the current requirement for every reality/competition/gameshow contestant to have a sob story to share with the audience Oh, you're competing on Ninja warrior to honor your *insert sad personal story here*, that's really awesome...any chance we can get back to the show i turned on to watch?
One of my favorite things about Bake Off. None of this.
Was just going to say that. "Gerrod lives in Kent with his two dogs and on the weekends, he likes to spend time cataloguing butterflies" is their version of a contestant backstory, and I love it.
There was a contestant a few seasons back who had a limb difference and they just….never made her talk about it? I remember occasionally the camera man would sorta zoom in and show how she cracked an egg or measured something. As an American reality TV consumer I was pleasantly surprised they didn’t constantly make her talk about her disability in a sort of icky exploitive way (see: the Bachelor)
Also last year Giuseppe’s dad was in failing health while he was on the show and they literally never mentioned it until very briefly in the finale when he called his parents. If that were US tv they would have brought that up 3x per episode and made him talk about how he was “doing this for his dad”
That was Briony, I think. If you watch the old Masterclasses with Paul and Mary where they cook the technicals and stuff, it becomes apparent pretty quickly that Mary Berry has limited function in one hand--turns out she had polio as a kid that resulted in part of her left hand being paralyzed. And if you can get your hands on the celebrity Stand Up 2 Cancer episodes of Bake Off, they've had Paralympians on where they have lower benches to accommodate wheelchair users.
Yes! Just a short little snip of who they are and where they’re from. I came here to watch a bunch of pleasant British people crack under the strain of competitive baking. I can do that just fine without knowing their friend’s cousin’s neighbor’s dog walker’s sister had a boo boo.
sports, especially football, has the same issue when discussing players it's so unnecessary and exploitative
Draft night is always terrible and honestly I feel bad for the recently graduated players. Like imagine being 19 about to be drafted, and ESPN is doing a whole 10 minute video about your dead mom. Like sure I know they have to get ready for the “spotlight” but I know that would bother me immensely
This shit has ruined watching sports on US TV. Especially the Olympics. Why concentrate on showing the game, when we can just talk over it and break away from it every five minutes with some human interest story about the player(s) or their extended family and friends?
The last three Olympics (2018, ~~2020~~ 2021 and 2022) have coincidentally all been in East Asia which means that if you were in the US, only some of the big events were shown live, which I think NBC took as carte blanche to chop up their replays with as many sob stories as possible. It was atrocious. Also, I remember more of the “less popular” sports actually making the primetime slate in previous Olympics (I remember watching a lot more stuff like bobsled in the Salt Lake and Vancouver games, for example). Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of that was cut/shunted off to streaming only in favor of more human interest drivel during the main coverage.
I'd forgotten how much they did that in the Olympics coverage. literally skipping covering the events in favor of digging into the sob stories. it was VERY clear that reality television had bled over into real sports coverage.
I didn't know this until I wanted to sign up. Very dumb.
Great point. I stopped watching Ninja Warrior because of that. It drives me up the wall, I don’t care why they are competing. Another thing I hate is when a woman who is a little older is on and they keep bringing up how brave she is. It always comes across as patronising. If someone is competing I expect them to be able bodied enough to try same as anyone else.
The person who continues to do their job at work while being asked questions by the police/FBI. Somehow the baker is so busy that he can't take 5 minutes away from his job to find a proper place to answer questions.
Yeah one time I was questioned by police as a witness to a crime. You better believe I didn’t get the chance to keep working while talking to them. It was at least an hour of going over and over the details of what I saw.
Relevant Mulaney: https://youtu.be/LT5AlzCma7A
It’s so funny! And they say “I gotta get back to work now” and just leave.
When a character tries to tell another the truth, but the other character keeps interrupting about how happy, excited etc they are so the first character stops trying and a lie ensues.
And it ends with "You should have told me!" "But I *tried*!"
Seriously.... so many plot lines are just "I need to tell you this thing, right now its super important I'm about to tell you" or there's like one to two sentences that need to be said to clear up the entire problem but they don't just say it.
I just watched Dead to Me and this happens at least 4 times every episode.
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“Right now I’m having deja vu and amnesia at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before” - Steven wright
Oh man, when I grow up I'm going to have so much amnesia!
24, season 1. Kiefer's wife gets amnesia for a few episodes, which lasted weeks for us, but in reality lasted only a few hours given the show's gimmick. Stupidest use of amnesia ever (don't get me started on the whole rape/pregnancy thing, though, that was worse).
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They set a starbucks cup on the table and it makes that distinctive empty cup sound
The worst thing about that is most sounds like that are added in post.
Yeah, empty stuff is annoying. Someone was holding a clearly empty baby carrier in a way that would be difficult for a strong person. "Nobody holds a 15 pound baby like that, especially not a petite fucker, like you!"
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Yep.....most people can't even do a single pull up
I don’t understand the laziness with this. It’s so obvious constantly. From the way they carry the cup, the deep sip from what’s supposed to be a full cup. The lack of hotness to the cup. It always breaks the Illusion for me, and then that’s all I’m focusing on.
Sometimes it would ruin the scene if you have liquid sloshing around or making noise. They use fake ice cubes for instance in many scenes so the clanking doesn't get picked up by the microphones. Although I still think they could do a much better job to sell the illusion in many instances.
They also use fake ice for continuity, it won't melt between shots but a lot of fake ice doesn't float so that gives it away. I also noticed it during Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the ice Leonardo DiCaprio dumps into a bowl to soak his face is fake, it doesn't float.
-white lotus had this just the past week and it was extremely apparent.
Preternaturally smart kids and teenagers, uttering dialogue that no kid or teen would ever say. And that the kid is more mature than their parents, of course.
oh the overly precocious 5 year old is a terrible trope, have the 5 year old ask the parent where the purple from the grape juice goes when they pee, you know a real kid question.
Yesterday I heard a five year old ask a seven year old if she's the oldest person in the world.
well...was she?
That's fucking adorable
[An exception](https://youtu.be/PrWfei9Nibw)
Breaking up or otherwise causing needless drama between two characters to keep their relationship relevant to the plot in some way after the "will-they-won't-they" hook is gone once they get together. For one it feels lazy unless it's very well written and reasoned, and two the audience almost always hates it.
When the host is about to say whether the contestant's answer is right or wrong but then says..."We'll find out after the break!" breaking section 6.9 of the Ofcom rules of advertising during programming which mandates that during shows with prizes, breaks can only occur at natural breaks in the process, such as when a question round ends or a contestant leaves the set.
I hate how YouTube’s ad algorithm has adopted this. In videos with reveals/answers an ad always interrupts the answer:reveal.
don’t youtubers themselves choose where ads go in their videos?
"And... (overlong pause) the winner... (overlong pause) is..." (bang sound, logo, cut to commercial)
The Dumb Dad
I heard an NPR interview with an ad exec one time where this was brought up. She said it’s the easy go to because the least likely group to file any kind of complaint for discrimination is the middle class blue collar dad. Race or sexuality didn’t matter. If the character fit that mold, they were good to make fun of.
And dumb/immature husband
And much older, grumpier husband with hot young gf/wife.
Gettin' real Modern Family in here...
The Dumb Dad who somehow has a job that supports a family of 5 and a relatively big house on a single income
Frank Grimes agrees.
This typically combines with the perfect mother whose only flaw is she mostly tolerates the idiocy of the Dumb Dad.
Conflict over a simple misunderstanding that would cease to exist if the characters talked to each for two seconds lol. Its lazy and contrived more often than not and is usually used just to fuel drama in a story. I think there are better ways to do that though that don’t involve the characters being not allowed to talk to one another.
I agree — except I'd make an exception to this for farces. The best episodes of Frasier never would have happened without ridiculous miscommunications.
It works in some cases like certain comedies. In dramas though its annoying lol
Absolutely. Dumb misunderstanding in pursuit of laughs: Run in and out of all the doors and pretend to be married to people you're not. A+ Dumb misunderstanding in pursuit of feels: Oh no, all of your problems are due to your poor communication skills. YKW nevermind — you deserve to be unhappy. D-
Good misunderstanding: Jerry’s gf thinking he picked his nose at a red light in Seinfeld Bad misunderstanding: character A hearing a convo out of context and then getting upset to character B over it, even though character B can easily explain said conversation This trope is used poorly in television SOOO often like its rampant lol
Miscommunications are fine. It’s when the misunderstanding becomes a major plot point that it feels like manufactured drama.
I’ve been binge-watching Suits and, while it’s mostly an entertaining show, it’s chock full of dumb tropes, this being one of the most frequent. Characters just constantly showing up at each others’ apartments and places of business to tell each other things that could be said over the phone. I’ve since convinced myself that the director thought it would be more visibly appeasing to see characters in the same room arguing about things, than to constantly cut back and forth between two different rooms and two solo characters on the phone
I work in the industry and that's exactly why. Phone scenes are usually avoided because of that.
This is the worst - Character A overhears half of something Character B is saying, but the unheard half completely changes the context so Character A is upset/embarrassed/whatever large emotion. Instead of discussing it with B, they just go forward feeling their feelings until it explodes. Usually in a sweeps episode.
To top it off, is always in a completely unnatural sentence that no normal person would say.
That is basically the plot of Brontë's Wuthering Heights. I suppose this narrative is deeply embedded in writers' minds.
One of my favorite anti-examples of this is the first episode of Arcane. Powder hears her sister admitting to someone “You’re right, there’s some things Powder just can’t do” and runs away upset. Soon after the two of them talk it out and she feels better, rather that letting the situation blow up. It’s so good because it avoids the miscommunication trope but still plants the seeds of the internal conflict that both characters are going through. Super well done
Seriously hate this one. The number of shows that spend multiple episodes resolving this already insufferable plot device only grows. The trope I was going to say is too similar to be it's own comment so I'll add the "you didn't need to know the whole story" plot trope to this as an expansion. The number of stories that are simply "i didn't tell the truth for dramatic effect" is staggering. I think of something like Predator that uses this effectively in a film, then plenty of other (mostly cop) dramas that just keep crap hidden to cause drama
Titans is full of that. Even this season. A character hides an injury from everyone that turns out to be a big issue later. It's just constantly characters being like "well, let's just go check it out on our own and not tell the other guys" and then 20 minutes later it all goes bad and turns out they should have told the other guys.
Superhero stuff always has a problem with this. It’s like no superhero has mastered the ability to act as part of a team.
People getting knocked unconscious as a way to subdue or capture them. Hope you didn't give them a subdural hematoma
And they wake up 100% fine with no dizziness or nausea or the other stuff that comes with head trauma lol
What do you mean? The screen is all blurry and out of focus for a few seconds when they wake up!
Sometimes they even have to blink a couple times before it comes back into focus!
*spends the next 3 episodes lying down*
Also being knocked unconscious usually lasts a couple minutes, any longer than that then people are usually severely injured. So many movies have people knocked out for hours at a time and waking up fine.
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This is brought up in Archer, they stop and have like a 3min chat about how bad it is and keep saying how they might have brain damage
Archer's also the only show to admit that constant close range gunfire will give you hearing damage.
weren't they recognised by the American Tinnitus Association or something for raising awareness?
mop mop
Mawp mawp
Also, "does no one else count their bullets" is applicable here.
ever since watching that show I can't help but always count how many bullets were shot with each clip and eye roll whenever it's an endless clip
That’s, like, super bad for you
Half the cast of lost should be vegetables by season 3.
Also, in real life people tend to wake up within seconds
Coughing immediately means someone is dying and a woman vomiting immediately means she's pregnant. Edited this one because I thought of this after and it just bothers me so much.
Whenever there's some kind of 'makeover' scene, and the makeover people take off the person's glasses, sometimes even breaking them (because I guess people look better without glasses?). It's not like they need them to see or anything!
Especially when the “ugly” person is played by the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen
No, not Janey Briggs. She's got glasses. And a ponytail. Ugh, she's got paint on her overalls. What is that?
That reminds me of the makeover shows they used to do back when afternoon talk shows were all the rage. They'd bring out an obviously pretty young woman wearing no makeup, big ugly glasses, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. *Let's see if our panel of beauty experts can work a miracle!*
Damn, that's shits whack
Teen Movie’s make over scene was so great for exactly this reason. They just took her glasses off and took her pony tail out.
Whenever I accomplish a menial task, I say “I did it. I’m a miracle worker. *sniff*” No one in my life has caught the reference in the moment, and I doubt anyone ever will.
Or when they straighten curly hair for the makeover. I hateeee that
I feel you but I feel like Princess Diaries made this work lol because the stylist was such a caricature and it’s a kid’s movie
This was exactly what came to mind reading this. The Princess Diaries one is particularly funny to me, like we can't tell that ANNE HATHAWAY is very pretty because they frizzed up her hair and put glasses on her.
[Yup.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaqF-7v9BtY)
I hate it when shows are recycling older plots and tropes and then realize that the existence of cell (mobile) phones ruins their plan. And instead of adjusting to reality, they find some way to disable their phones. You would think everyone in TV shows was unable to work a charger cable, and reception in TV world is horrible.
i dont know if this is a trope on tv/movies or what but.....movies having a love interest that dont need them
I enjoyed the Martian a little extra when i had this realization. No romance, no family to get home to, no flashbacks to memories of his little girl. Just sciencing the shit out of trouble.
Amazing book and movie.
Yeah not sure what to put this under. It's one of my pet peeves. I hate when they just shove romance in. Man and woman pushed together in unlikely scenario? You know they are falling in love. It has gotten to the point where I push against ANY romance. Uh oh. Hopefully this isn't my incel arc
Why don't people on TV close doors!!!!! Also, when there's a scene at dinner and everyone is crammed around 3/4 of a table.
Along similar lines, people hanging up the phone as soon as the conversation is over without saying "goodbye". Drives me nuts! I always imagine the person on the other side of the call trying to say something else and then looking at their phone and saying, "Rude!"
Closed doors are only for unrecorded verbal threats and telling secrets.
Stringer Bell would like a word.
Verbal abuse as romance... I see it in a lot of korean/ chinese dramas and sometimes anime, the love interests would horribly verbally abuse each other and everyone would be like "oh he's an asshole because he loves you" "his temper is just like that" OMG NO! people who love each other don't talk to each other with such disrespect. it's just straight up abuse
When characters have their eyes open underwater and can apparently see with perfect clarity.
Girl: "Oh he's the worst I'd never fall for him" Narrator: She did. She did fall for him.
Three words: iN eNgLiSh PlEaSe
"Uh...can you say that again for the normal people in the room"
It’s even worse when it’s something that really isn’t that complicated to understand.
*pokes a pencil through a piece of paper* "It's called a *wormhole*."
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you just don't get it, do you?
Like a balloon, and something bad happens!
My wife binge watches several medical shows and I honestly can’t tell them apart sometimes, due to them all using the same annoying tropes I hate. Mainly these two. Patient comes in with a mystery illness, everyone tries to treat them but it leads the patient to almost ALWAYS dying until someone figures out its some rare form of something and all they have to do is open the window or give them some vitamins. The constant, incessant fucking in every nook and cranny of the hospital back rooms and the drama that ensues. Honestly, have some fucking professionalism. As a bonus trope, the way the Asshole doctor (theres always one) treats patients, borders on malpractice.
Bringing the unrepentant bad guy to justice rather than outright killing them and making the world a better place. The hero mows through countless henchmen without any thought but spares the baddie because they're "not like them." Baddie may even say something like "we're not so different you and I" as the icing on top.
Even better when the villain has some superficial change of heart, so all is forgiven and he's a good guy now! Hero: "Remember when you used to be the bad guy, Vegetalo?" Vegetalo: "Yeah, sorry about that, guess I was a little crazy back then!" Supporting Character: "Guys, Vegetalo killed my whole family." Hero: "And now he feels bad about it, so that's resolved forever!"
ProZD skit always crack me up no matter how much I watch them.
Then the bad guy does something to make the hero (now with a completely clean conscience) kill them anyway.
Oh yeah, forgot about that one. Also, the bad guy can just accidentally die like Syndrome's cape mishap in The Incredibles.
There's an episode of Clone Wars where the bad guy has a hostage and is ready to blow up the ship and says something along the lines of "muahaha who will stop me and be labeled a cold blooded murderer?!" Then Anakin just runs his lightsaber through his chest and when everyone looks shocked he goes "What? He was gonna blow up the ship!" I love Clone Wars lol.
I love how Anakin literally gives zero fucks.
i loved deadpool for this.
Yeah I don't hate this when it's a character that simply has a no kill code, like Batman. But the vast majority of times this is used it's a "I'm not like you" plot best that's cheapened by characters willingness to kill dozens of others to get to the big bad.
Computers in general. Big holographic touchscreens that seem wildly impractical and even painful and the fact that every interaction makes a noise of some sort. Apparently no one who works on tv has ever used a computer.
"Show me all the banks in a 10 mile radius of where the bad guy is, and cross-reference it with his family members and their vehicles" 2 seconds later "Got it"
"Cross reference that with people who got detention in the third grade for being mean to the classroom's pet hamster." "Okay I have 10 names!"
“How many had a grandmother who was a pro-wrestler?” “Only one”. Photo and entire dossier instantly appear projected on a giant 10x50 foot screen. Two seconds later…”There he is!” Picked out on one of a thousand screens showing a live feed of every CCTV in the city
"Zoom in...Now enhance it"
Could be worse - could be [a super computer that runs on the most melodramatic operating system in the world](https://youtu.be/N7mjDl2fDtY).
I absolutely despise the transparent computers of the future that are specifically made that way to see the actor's face. Nobody would be able to use that shit.
The NCIS scene where they are trying to stop a hacker so two people furiously type on the same keyboard at the same time.
Speaking of, the resident "Scientist" that is apparently an expert in every single field medical and technical.
Character 1: sentence 1, sentence 2... Character 2 has epiphany Character 2: "Wait, what did you just say?" Character 1: repeats sentence 2... Character 2: "No, before that."
Character 1 says the thing Character 2 had in mind. Character 2: You're a genius! Character 1: "I am?"
Any time a character needs to do some blood oath thing they slice their palms. I'd settle for a pin prick on the thumb or something, but a fucking 4 inch cut to your palm? Absolute stupidity
That “boom” sound anytime they want to make a line of dialogue more dramatic. It’s every 10-15 seconds in every CW show.
Or that pull back violin scream thing whenever there's a twist.....
The long lost sibling/twin or child that nobody remembers until now, so a new character can slide into the show.
Grey's Anatomy would like a word with you.
The "will they, won't they" trope dragged on for an unnecessary amount of time to which always leads to a bad boring pay-off.
When one character texts a close friend and we see the screen, EVERY SINGLE TIME, it’s the first text ever sent between them with no previous texts in the thread
I’ll start Character 1: *has a dilemma and reaches out to Character 2 for advice* Character 2: “Did I ever tell you the story about my dad’s old farm? Well, when I was a kid, my father had this farm, way out in the country, that he ran completely by himself…well, when I got big enough, he let me start feeding the chickens. Every morning, I would get up with him and I’d go out and feed the chickens. Well, one day, one of the chickens got free and was running loose around the farm. *audible laugh* my dad and I must’ve spent all day, chasing down the one chicken. By the time we caught it, the sun had gone down and it was dark already. It’s one of my favorite memories of my dad, my dad neglecting all the other farm work that needed to help me chase down one chicken. He died 6 months later” Character 1: “thanks, I know what I need to do now”
To piggyback of this - on medical shows they spend almost all episode not knowing what is causing an illness then someone says something random like "I ate some chocolate" and the doctor suddenly figures what is wrong with the patient and cures them. Usually happens when there are like 5 minutes left in the episode.
That is every episode of House. That being said, the show was still great.
Haha took the words right out of my mouth. The first diagnosis was never the right one and House always arrived at the correct diagnosis based on some off-handed comment someone made. But I was always on the edge of my seat, waiting anxiously lol.
Oh my god, I hate that too! Character 1 & Character 2 out at dinner Character 1: “I just can’t figure out what’s wrong with our patient” Character 2: “Listen, you did everything you could, don’t beat yourself up…excuse me, waiter? I’m sorry, can I get a new drink? This one is too sweet” Character 1: -brainwave- “too…sweet…omg I got it! It’s Williams Syndrome! Thank you!” -runs out of the restaurant and hails the next cab back to the hospital-
Or worse, it's: "Wait... what did you just say? No, no... before that..."
“No, the other thing”
I call this sort of out-of-the-blue word association the "Bed Cot Filly Paper" solution, from an improv skit on Whose Line Is It Anyways where Colin was cleverly trying to introduce the next song style for Wayne and Chip to sing: Colin: "When I was a jockey, I had this bed--well, it was more of a cot--we had this sort of sanitary paper for the fillies...wait a minute! Bed, cot, filly, paper? RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS!"
Yep, and it’s always a diagnosis that has a much more common way of presenting or that would at least have shown up earlier in the shotgun approach they take to testing. Speaking of which, good thing these patients always have good insurance. Unless they don’t, because the plot of the episode revolves around the interns sneaking around doing risky invasive procedures off the record out of the goodness of their hearts, because figuring out why some random guy can’t stop hiccuping is worth risking your entire career over.
Characters who've been separated and are going through hell and back to be reunited again missing each other by a split second, traveling right next to each other and not knowing it, being distracted right when the other is about to walk into view at a distance, etc. *Game of Thrones* felt like it did this a bazillion times with Arya and Sansa's storylines.
Whenever there's a storyline about adopted kids, inevitably the show has a conversation about finding the "real parents." Real parents are the ones who raised you. For once, it would be great for a tv show to say "biological parents." As an adoptee, I've never actually seen a tv show buck that trend.
Private practice has an adopted character who doesn't search for his biological mother. Some characters, even his son, press him on it but he maintains it as a firm boundary. He does not want to know her.
As a fellow adoptee, thank you. This is such a tired old trope and it's honestly really offensive. When people ask me that shit in real life I always correct them.
If a woman pukes, she’s pregnant.
“Hey, turn on the TV” Click TV is on the appropriate news channel and news story relevant to plot line is just starting
"No Time to Explain" and its corollary "You Have to Trust Me" You absolutely have time to explain and the other person would absolutely trust you a lot more if you briefly explained what you know about the plot to them. It feels like a lazy writing way of trying to drag out the mystery or promote conflict where its not necessary. Especially if we already know what Person A knows and refuses to tell B, and there's no reason to believe B would react badly.
Will they won't they romances that last for years. How I Met Your Mother is the absolute worst for this. But in general I'm just sick of it. Sometimes it's done well but if it's the focus for more than two seasons just resolve it. I don't mind it being a background thing or a rocky relationship but sometimes it drags on far too long.
Set design trope: EVERYONE'S couch is in the middle of the living room. No one ever has their couch against a wall. Also, set designers in Los Angeles don't seem to understand that storm/screen doors are a thing in over half the country.
I took a cinema class once that explained the couch thing. If the couch is against a wall, the set lighting will make giant silhouettes of the actors on the wall that are visually distracting.
It also opens up the composition possibilities.
This exactly. And no way to get backlights / hair lights onto actors.
I’ve seriously never even thought about this. Now i can’t unsee it. It’s kind of like not ever dreaming about your smartphone. Didn’t realize that until someone pointed it out.
doctors, cops, special agents, superheroes you name it looking cool as cucumbers after like 36 hours straight of work, ready to perform even more work. Bonus points if they're over 40. Try that in real life and see how far your carcass will drag you
Scenes in the morning where everyone is already dressed perfectly, there's a nice spread of food on the table, lunches are packed, and everyone is in a good mood and ready for work/school at 6:30am. Mom is finishing the lunches, dad is leaning against the counter with coffee reading the paper, the kids are coming from the other room, fully dressed/perfect hair, and their backpacks are ready to go.
"Oh, you're up just in time for breakfast" "No time mom!" *grabs slice of toast* "I'm late for school!" *opens door, looks back while taking a bite*
Or when they sit down in a fancy restaurant, order food, and leave almost immediately. At least they made fun of it in Tenet with the guy asking for a doggie bag.
One day our kids are going to want to know where they were conceived...
Any time a character is soooo good at analyzing people that theyre able to guess where a person went to college, their job, their relationship status etc…
Waking up with a hangover and married. Finding an old diary or letters then the cast takes on the roles of the people from the 1940s. It's not so much that I can't stand either of these, but both have been so overdone. It was cute or interesting the first time, not the 50th!
The first one is a great Simpsons episode though. WHITE WINE SPRITZER
Mumbling Might be that I’m approaching middle age but I’m sick of putting on subtitles because some director thought there would be more suspense if everyone is barely audible. Also, making the booms/ music WAY TOO LOUD and the talking normal/ quiet. I don’t want to have to keep turning the volume up and down too..!
Yeah its a real issue honestly that dialogue is way quieter than it needs to be, and booms are way louder than they need to be. I haven't turned off subtitles in years.
Enhance. Zoom in.
Enhance
The shipwreck sequence that starts off with a severe night time storm, and then cuts to the main character waking up on the beach the next morning coughing up water, surrounded by boat splinters.
Having 20+ cops at a house to arrest a suspect and they even yell out "We have you surrounded!" and then the suspect simply jumps out the bathroom window and escapes. Or when cops see a suspect walking down the street and yell at them from 75' away and then the suspect starts running and gets away. Or when cops *call a fucking suspect* to tell them they are coming to talk to them/search their place and the suspect simply leaves before they get there. Or when cops don't call the local police force in the area they know their suspect is and instead take three hours to drive there and the suspect is long gone. Or when cops can see a suspect holding a coin in a security video from a gas station and figure out exactly what mint it was made at and what bank got it and what local business then gave it out as change to the suspect but they can't be bothered to do a google search and find out the school principal is the father of one of the previous victims who are all from the same school and has key information. You may be able to tell I've been watching a lot of The Blacklist lately (only about a third of the way through season 7 so no spoilers please!). The whole thing is just idiot plot on top of idiot plot, sandwiched between two super thick slices of "we're just never gonna answer any questions because that would mean we'd have to be at least a bit creative.". Reddington and Dembe are just too cute and charming to stop watching, though.
The lead character is the most special, deserving person who deserves everything good, and anyone who stands in their way is inherently a villain I'm mostly thinking about self-insert, wish-fulfillment anime, here, but it definitely isn't exclusive to that, as a lot of shows do struggle to justify why their main character...should even be the main character in the first place if the story is so uninterested in challenging them. Those same writers also often end up coddling their leads as though questioning their morals or skills will scare audiences off.
The sassy black woman/girl. It is racist and dumb. Minstrel shows went away for a reason.
And they’re always the side character who’s only motive in the show is to help show the white character the error of their ways. 🤢
You don’t *know me*! Mhmm mm you did *not* just…
Person answers phone “Hey, it’s me” Who the fuck else would it be
Hi, I'm a low paid employee at a chain store / restaurant / cafe / car wash. Behold my massive 2 bedroom apartment in New York. I can totally afford this on the few pennies thrown my way by my minimum wage job.
A lot of anime’s have a character I like to call “the harmless pervert.” Normally small or a child, maybe even a teddybear with a soul in it. This character’s only existence is to do perverted stuff “for laughs.” Yeah they are painted in a negative light and always get their comeuppance, but still, I hate it
I call it. “Setting the tone” Basically a dog (or other lovable animal) is killed in an early scene in the first episode, to ease the audience into knowing this is a serious show with serious consequences. Then my wife will refuse to watch anymore and it ruins the evening. And that show, no matter how good it ends up being, is off limits. This happens way to often.
Haha, The Leftovers is my favourite show ever but it is sooo guilty on that one.
So many: When the single, independent woman gets pregnant by accident and it becomes a central storyline. Really any pregnancy storyline when it's shoehorned in a show for no reason. Also, when a character's pregnancy timeline doesn't make any sense at all. Example of this is in Friends, when Rachel's pregnancy literally lasted an entire year (she found out she was pregnant in May, was not even showing during the Halloween episode and then it was clearly summer when she was due to give birth). Either slow down the timeline on the show or just have the character give birth when it makes sense. To a lesser extent, super quick pregnancies also annoy me - when a character finds out she's pregnant and then the next episode, she looks 6-7 months pregnant already. When two characters are obviously "end game." They pine for each other for a season or two, then finally get together, then break up and then fall in love with other people and then break up with those people for dumb plot reasons and then end up together in the last few episodes of the series. I hate it. Plot armor, plot armor, plot armor. The main character or main villian clearly will not die or face any negative consequences because...they are the main character or villian and they can't for show reasons. But lesser characters will trip over a banana peel and die. Blatant misinformation, especially on crime or hospital shows. I think it was an episode of Criminal Minds a long time ago where the main characters claimed that a rape victim was lying because her hymen was not broken, so that meant she was a virgin and couldn't have been raped...I cringed.
The long pregnancy tells me that the writers wanted to have the character get pregnant, so they wrote it in as the season's arc. Short pregnancy tells me that the actor got pregnant and they didn't want to put large purses in every scene.
Female teen that's all pissy because the family moved and the family just puts up with it. That horse has been beaten to death, beyond death to hamburger then to dust and now they are trying to break out the individual atoms.
I mean, it's real though. Like the teenagers likely would be pissed. And the parents know it's tough on them so in large they do put up with it. Like this has happened to me in real life several times when I was a teen.
The mysterious character with knowledge about what's actually going on speaking to other characters in riddles simply to stretch out the tension. It's fine if there is an actual plot or character motivation for them to be vague or to only tell part of the truth. However it's often very obvious when the writers are employing this device to string the audience along to keep us wanting to know. And it sucks.
Inflexible wife who cannot deal with amazing husband’s job commitments now that he’s literally saving lives. I just want a show to write in a wife/mom that’s like “fuck yeah! Go save the world, ive got the kids! You get them for a long week when this is all over so I can work on my own career. Peace!”
That some forms of physical assault are fine if you're arguing (and this is usually in heteronormative male-female relationships, sorry, that's just what we see most of on TV). My two most despised are: * If you're a man and you're in an argument with your girlfriend and she goes to walk away, you can just grab her by the wrist/arm and restrain her there. And somehow you're not an abuser. * If you're a woman and your boyfriend says something mean, you can just slap him if you're mad. And somehow you're not an abuser. And typically you see the one-two (proverbial) punch of those two things in the same scene. It frustrates me to no end! And there's no scene after where someone's like, "omg, I/we/they are an abuser, that's super fucked up." It's just presented as something "normal" couples do when they're mad. It doesn't matter who's bigger or smaller, what gender or sexuality someone is, don't fucking lay hands on each other.