TV Tropes: Love 'em or Loathe 'em

[Trini]

Just in case you can't tell who the designated nerd is, it's the person in the sweater vest.

[jenniferhartwell]

Somebody buys a Christmas Turkey only for it to turn up alive and well in a basket. They take it home debating the best way to off it. Meanwhile the farmer discovers that accidentally his daughter's pet Turkey Gertie has been shipped out of the farm by the wholesaler. Cue much phoning around contacts to find the bird before its giblets are gravy

[Portia]

On 9/2/2019 at 8:36 PM, Melina22 said:

Here's one that's always really bothered me, but I feel like most people wouldn't notice it. I'm not sure why it irritates me so much. When a scene has someone scrubbing something, it never bears any resemblance to a real person scrubbing something. 

Trope 1, usually in period dramas, has some poor woman in a long dress, down on the floor scrubbing the stones or wood with a scrub brush. But without fail they spend the whole scene scrubbing the same few inches of floor. I mean how clean can stone get anyway? Meanwhile, there's water all over the place and presumably the servant's dress is soaked. It always annoys me because it's so dramatic yet so fake. There's no way those giant mansion floors are getting done at that rate. 

Trope 2 which is surprisingly common, involves people scrubbing graffiti off walls, usually outdoors. You see them with a brush and a bucket of water. During the scene, they scrub relentlessly at one spot and literally nothing comes off whatsoever. Nobody ever seems fazed by this. If the wall is seen in a later scene, all the graffiti will be gone. Why does this bug me so much? Just the unreality I guess, of someone spending 10 minutes scrubbing at something that isn't coming off, but not appearing to notice. 

Petty complaints but I've seen both just recently and as usual they bugged the heck out of me. 

I listen to a hilarious cleaning podcast called "Spotless," and they have a regular segment called "Rated C for Clean" in which they watch a cleaning scene from a show or movie, then evaluate it purely on how well the person is actually cleaning.  I'm proud to say that they evaluated one of my submissions, a bullshit dish-washing scene from "This is Us."

[Melina22]

23 minutes ago, Portia said:

I listen to a hilarious cleaning podcast called "Spotless," and they have a regular segment called "Rated C for Clean" in which they watch a cleaning scene from a show or movie, then evaluate it purely on how well the person is actually cleaning.  I'm proud to say that they evaluated one of my submissions, a bullshit dish-washing scene from "This is Us."

I totally need to check that out! I love it! Especially after this week's episode of On Becoming a God in Central Florida had people down on their knees with scrub brushes, doing a scene while scrubbing the same apparently clean spot. 😁😁

[taanja]

On 8/29/2019 at 7:44 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

The person who created this gif needs to learn the difference between coarse and course. Because Sand is the former, not the latter.

Sorry, the Grammar Nazi in me can't let shit like this slide.

Thank you. I was trying to restrain myself...

[jenniferhartwell]

We've probably done these, but:

The character that develops a pronounced tic every time someone like Frank Spencer/Maxwell Smart/Marmalade Atkins enters the room. Bonus points if it's an ulcer and they have to drink milk for it.

The bloke who accidentally arranges two dates on the same night and decides to go through with it, eating two meals, paying for (- gulp - ) four meals, excusing himself to run back and forth between tables, possibly even changing coats etc until he gets in a terrible mix-up ("Weren't you wearing a green jacket a minute ago? And why is there a kipper sticking out of the pocket?") and, ultimately, caught out.

Oh, and the fellow wearing the totally obvious and unsuitable "undetectable" toupee.

[Melina22]

34 minutes ago, jenniferhartwell said:

Oh, and the fellow wearing the totally obvious and unsuitable "undetectable" toupee.

My all time favourite toupee reaction: "Great rug. Can't tell." 

[Bastet]

28 minutes ago, Melina22 said:

My all time favourite toupee reaction: "Great rug. Can't tell."

Mine is:

(It's actually "and here's what I'm doing with it," but I grabbed what I could find.)

Edited September 19, 2019 by Bastet

[Melina22]

That was the best! I always want to do that when I see toupees! 😁😁

[Mabinogia]

1 hour ago, jenniferhartwell said:

The bloke who accidentally arranges two dates on the same night and decides to go through with it, eating two meals, paying for (- gulp - ) four meals, excusing himself to run back and forth between tables, possibly even changing coats etc until he gets in a terrible mix-up ("Weren't you wearing a green jacket a minute ago? And why is there a kipper sticking out of the pocket?") and, ultimately, caught out.

Just say something came up and reschedule one of them. Seriously. It's a lot easier. I never find that scenario funny. 

[Annber03]

6 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

Just say something came up and reschedule one of them. Seriously. It's a lot easier. I never find that scenario funny. 

To quote "Brady Bunch": "Something suddenly came up!" 

[Bort]

3 hours ago, jenniferhartwell said:

Oh, and the fellow wearing the totally obvious and unsuitable "undetectable" toupee.

One of my favorite gags on Wings was a customer with a bad toupee and Fay could barely keep her shit together long enough to check him in for his flight. 

I found a video of it on YouTube, though the quality is terrible. 

[DoctorAtomic]

5 hours ago, jenniferhartwell said:

The bloke who accidentally arranges two dates on the same night and decides to go through with it,

I think this was the plot of every other Three's Company. 

[Melina22]

2 hours ago, kariyaki said:

One of my favorite gags on Wings was a customer with a bad toupee and Fay could barely keep her shit together long enough to check him in for his flight. 

Ahahah. That was wonderful. I know a couple of men with toupees that bad and when I'm around them I don't know where to look. I keep wondering if they own mirrors, and if they do, how they can look in them and think, "Yup. Looks real!" 

[jenniferhartwell]

I've got this great original idea for an American family sitcom. The main character will be the dad of a reasonably affluent household, and we meet the character at the point his children are starting to grow up. And here's the twist. He will be ineffectual in stamping his authority on the household and will have to resort to sarcastic wisecrackery through the duration of the show. Gentlemen, I think we can agree this has never been done before.

Edited September 20, 2019 by jenniferhartwell

[jenniferhartwell]

An honest end to 10,000 cop shows.

Interview room.

Cop - I know you dun it, we've lots of circumstantial evidence, but nothing solid enough to even get to court, but we're only 40 seconds from the end titles.

Suspect - I confess, dun it.

[Popples]

11 hours ago, Melina22 said:

I totally need to check that out! I love it! Especially after this week's episode of On Becoming a God in Central Florida had people down on their knees with scrub brushes, doing a scene while scrubbing the same apparently clean spot. 😁😁

They were all scrubbing with huge chunks of smashed fruit and vegetables everywhere. Even hours later when everyone else showed up to clean, they had trash bags, but still there was still food all over the ground.

[Melina22]

52 minutes ago, Popples said:

They were all scrubbing with huge chunks of smashed fruit and vegetables everywhere. Even hours later when everyone else showed up to clean, they had trash bags, but still there was still food all over the ground.

Yes, it was gross. But the husband and wife who were told to clean just scrubbed away at one piece of mat that appeared clean. I don't know why this one thing annoys me so much but it does. Maybe I dislike anything that pulls me out of the show. (Not like it's remotely realistic, what with the pelican murder, etc. but somehow that didn't annoy me.) 

[jenniferhartwell]

Retroactive names

For example, Samantha Smith, the 1980s child peace activist, is often referred to today with the addition of her middle name of "Reed" in order to avoid confusion with Samantha Smith the modern actress famous from "Supernatural".

Likewise, Walter Mondale is called Fritz in contemporary recordings from the 1984 election but most people today just refer to him as Walter Mondale.

[Blergh]

54 minutes ago, jenniferhartwell said:

Retroactive names

For example, Samantha Smith, the 1980s child peace activist, is often referred to today with the addition of her middle name of "Reed" in order to avoid confusion with Samantha Smith the modern actress famous from "Supernatural".

Likewise, Walter Mondale is called Fritz in contemporary recordings from the 1984 election but most people today just refer to him as Walter Mondale.

Wouldn't 'the late Samantha Smith' get folks to understand to distinguish between the peace activist  who died in  1985 and the contemporary actress?

[Melina22]

6 hours ago, jenniferhartwell said:

For example, Samantha Smith, the 1980s child peace activist, is often referred to today with the addition of her middle name of "Reed" in order to avoid confusion with Samantha Smith the modern actress famous from "Supernatural".

I haven't thought about her for a long time. The first one I mean. They should make a movie about her, but no. It would be too sad. I don't think I'd watch it. I still remember the interview I saw with her mother, after the plane crash, and it still haunts me. I felt so bad for her. 

[jenniferhartwell]

In the relatively scarce evidence we have from what little we have of "Lime Street", Samantha was very good at acting, despite no formal training, and I can easily see her becoming a TV crush for many boys in the mid to late eighties had the plane crash not happened and ABC had moved "Lime Street" away from its death slot opposite "The Golden Girls".

[DoctorAtomic]

How do you get Fritz from Walter?

[biakbiak]

1 hour ago, DoctorAtomic said:

How do you get Fritz from Walter?

His middle name is Frederick and Fritz is a common nickname for that.

[jenniferhartwell]

one trope I hate - young female child on sitcom has omnipresent doll that she claims talks back to her. Buffy Davis, Dodie Douglas, Mary Sue Torkelson etc. 

[katie9918]

That everyone who isn’t a mom or dad doesn’t want to be a mom or dad. 

I want to be a mom. I want to find a guy who wants to be a dad and to be my parent partner as well as my life partner.

I admire those who don’t want to have kids, but I am insulted by those (a vast liberal majority) who are constantly trying to tell me that I don’t need to have a kid. No shit, mother-fucker! I don’t need a family, but I want a family!

Is the pain of not finding a person to raise a family with any less because we’re now expected to want less because... well... men and women over the age of forty all now have some irredeemable flaw we just haven’t quite sussed out yet?

I want kids and haven’t had the opportunity or the luck to have them, and have been responsible and lucky enough to not have had to make a bad decision.

That doesn’t make me less of a woman any more than my cousin not wanting kids makes her less of a woman.

Edited September 21, 2019 by katie9918

[jenniferhartwell]

Speaking of the Torkelsons again, I notice that they've put Rachel Duncan (Mary Sue Torkelson) in a dress rather than pants for a lot of the publicity shots. Is there an actual reason they have for that?

[izabella]

9 hours ago, katie9918 said:

That everyone who isn’t a mom or dad doesn’t want to be a mom or dad. 

I hate the opposite trope - that a single woman over 40 on tv MUST be pining for a baby and a a man.

[jenniferhartwell]

10 minutes ago, izabella said:

I hate the opposite trope - that a single woman over 40 on tv MUST be pining for a baby and a a man.

Better that than an old maid.

[Chaos Theory]

I always hated “that bitch wife of the lead character” trope that happens on shows like Criminal Minds,  Breaking Bad and Dexter.  

I mean what did Haley,  Skylar, and Rita actually want their husbands to actually do that was so horrible?    Haley wanted Hotch to keep his promises and spend time with her and their son.  Skylar wanted Walt to stop being a criminal and actually came  up with productive ways that could happen.   Rita just wanted her husband to come home at night.

Those bitches.

Edited September 21, 2019 by Chaos Theory

[Irlandesa]

1 hour ago, izabella said:

I hate the opposite trope - that a single woman over 40 on tv MUST be pining for a baby and a a man.

Me too. Or if they're past their baby making years, they feel that something passed them by. Or even characters who don't want kids have a moment of reconsideration. 

In fact, I can't really think of many happy childfree women who never had a moment's doubt about it on TV.

26 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

I always hated “that bitch wife of the lead character” trope that happens on shows....

Those bitches.

The interesting thing to me about this is that its usually not the writers writing characters who are bitches.  As you said, they had reasonable requests.   It's often some of the audience who puts the label on them. 

[DoctorAtomic]

Yeah, that was sure the case with Skyler. It was the viewers.

[Lugal]

On 8/29/2019 at 5:44 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

The person who created this gif needs to learn the difference between coarse and course. Because Sand is the former, not the latter.

Sorry, the Grammar Nazi in me can't let shit like this slide.

Still not as bad as Marshall Law (as opposed to Martial Law).  Like in the movies and occasionally TV shows (and books unfortunately) when something happens and they cut to newscasters with a scroll or big banner that proclaims "Marshall Law Is Declared!"

My sister and I used to (and still do) joke about our old friend Marshall Law.  We never learned his first name?

[Anduin]

1 hour ago, Lugal said:

Still not as bad as Marshall Law (as opposed to Martial Law).  Like in the movies and occasionally TV shows (and books unfortunately) when something happens and they cut to newscasters with a scroll or big banner that proclaims "Marshall Law Is Declared!"

My sister and I used to (and still do) joke about our old friend Marshall Law.  We never learned his first name?

Marshall is his first name, you insensitive git!

[Glendenning]

I wonder what Paul Lynde thinks in the Great Hereafter about him being the go-to guy when you need a voice for a campy gay stereotype in animation?

[taanja]

On 9/19/2019 at 9:19 PM, DoctorAtomic said:

I think this was the plot of every other Three's Company. 

and at least one Friend's ep-- amirite? LOL

[Glendenning]

TROPE ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE I HATE:

They still in TV shows and movies show elderly people listening to big band and swing music ala the Greatest Generation's youth.

Someone who is in their seventies now, came of age to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

[magicdog]

12 minutes ago, Glendenning said:

Someone who is in their seventies now, came of age to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Just wait until it's time for people in their 70s to wistfully reminisce to rap and hip hop!! 

[Glendenning]

TROPE:

Jerk Jock tries to forcibly dance with female character who is the date of male character at a school dance. The two start fighting over the teenage female. When Jerk Jock turns towards her, the female date punches him hard in the gut.

(As seen in an episode of "Almost Home")

[piccadilly83]

11 hours ago, Glendenning said:

TROPE ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE I HATE:

They still in TV shows and movies show elderly people listening to big band and swing music ala the Greatest Generation's youth.

Someone who is in their seventies now, came of age to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

I don’t know. Those Lawrence Welk showcases are being played for someone on my local PBS station. 

[DoctorAtomic]

Those are still on? 

[Raja]

I remember reading a music history where the thesis was every 20 year old kid in 1955 was not listening to just early Rock or R&B as they were portrayed in the biopic movies we see now but also listening to the earlier forms of American pop music.

I came up and started buying my own music just after Motown had made their big move as the sound of young America  so it was not really my music but a root of what I was buying. But my parents who were in college during the Korean War, those who would normally be portrayed as fans of Elvis, Chuck Berry and such in fiction  did not have any of them in their record collections. My mom had Broadway tunes and my father jazz through the Cool West Coast Jazz of the late 50s era. So for an example I knew Dionne Warwick's Say a Little Prayer much better than Aretha Franklin's version.

[Glendenning]

Advertisers don't want older demographics. It takes more advertising  impressions to make a sale and elderly persons are more willing to do research and look for the best deal while younger people jump on the latest trend.

[Domenicholas]

A trope I absolutely despise.

A man and woman, usually with unresolved sexual tension but sometimes brother and sister, have been traveling/spending time together for a while. Suddenly, another man comes along on their travels. The woman is utterly smitten with him, but the man sees him doing some shady stuff. Exact conversation:

Man: That guy is doing some shady stuff.

Woman: You're just jealous.

Other guy: Does shady stuff in front of woman

Woman: O:

You'd think that, after all the time the man and woman has spent together, she would trust him more and not dismiss his concerns immediately.

The only exceptions to this would be if the guy has shown himself to have jealously issues (then he would be the annoying one) or the woman has had a longer relationship with the new guy than the old guy (which is still annoying because the audience doesn't know the new guy even if the woman does).

[Melina22]

Here's an odd one. According to TV and movies, every woman keeps lotion on her night stand so she can rub it into her hands right before going to sleep, frequently while holding a conversation with her husband. I saw this trope twice just today! 

I remember in the past wondering if I was the only woman who didn't do this and feeling vaguely guilty, like I should be doing it if everyone else did. I mean I use lotion on my hands occasionally, but never right before I go to sleep. 

Did I miss the memo? 

[Luckylyn]

8 minutes ago, Melina22 said:

Here's an odd one. According to TV and movies, every woman keeps lotion on her night stand so she can rub it into her hands right before going to sleep, frequently while holding a conversation with her husband. I saw this trope twice just today! 

I remember in the past wondering if I was the only woman who didn't do this and feeling vaguely guilty, like I should be doing it if everyone else did. I mean I use lotion on my hands occasionally, but never right before I go to sleep. 

Did I miss the memo? 

I put lotion on my hands every night before bed but my mother and sisters don’t.  

[Dr.OO7]

I love the Manly Tears trope.

Something about seeing gorgeous, sexy men breakdown is incredible to me.

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, Melina22 said:

Here's an odd one. According to TV and movies, every woman keeps lotion on her night stand so she can rub it into her hands right before going to sleep,

I put lotion on my feet upon getting in bed each night (I go barefoot whenever possible, so my heels need all the help they can get to stay soft and smooth), and then rub the excess into my hands (and when I get out of the shower, I put lotion on most of my body other than my feet and, again, rub any excess into my hands when I'm done), and I also notice how prevalent the nighttime hand lotion routine is on screen and kind of wonder about it.  I'm curious why female TV characters' hands need so much special attention - is that the only body part to which they ever apply lotion?  If not, why do they need so much extra, given the hands are lotioned each time they use it anywhere else.

[Melina22]

40 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I'm curious why female TV characters' hands need so much special attention - is that the only body part to which they ever apply lotion?  If not, why do they need so much extra, given the hands are lotioned each time they use it anywhere else.

Maybe that's what's so weird. Why just the hands? Well, I guess it would be time consuming and awkward to do other body parts, and possibly involve nudity. Plus no one wants to watch people putting lotion on their feet, although I'd laugh if they ever showed it. Too much Truth in Television. 😁

[Glendenning]

"It puts the lotion on its skin or It gets the hose again"...