There's a TikTok trend going around right now that starts with someone saying, "What's something that movies get wrong that drives you but other people don't care about at all?" And then people stitch in with their answers, and it usually is about niche things that have to do with their field of work, etc. (Or dinosaur toes.) I have some answers to this but I'm not great at the video medium, so instead, I'm going to write you a list!
And of course, because I'm me, I'm including TV shows, and also some of these are definitely things that bother more than just me.
Empty Coffee Cups
I'm starting with an obvious one. It's something that everyone has noticed, and I understand some of the limitations. You often can't fill cups with water because the sloshing gets picked up by the mics, for example. But either a) someone needs to invent weighted takeout coffee cups, make a bajillion of them, and load up the Hollywood prop houses, or b) someone on set (anyone!) needs to remind the actors that they can't tip their whole cup into their mouth or gesture freely with their hand while holding a supposedly freshly purchased hot coffee. I know acting is hard and there are a lot of things you have to be thinking about at once, but if I, a non-actor, can remember that the D&D character that I'm roleplaying has invisible glasses, surely professionals can remember to pretend their cup is full.
Phone Calls
This is actually one I saw as a response to this on TikTok a lot but it does drive me bonkers when people don't say goodbye when they hang up the phone. I get that it's probably a time thing but it's weird! You don't even have to show both sides of the conversation saying bye, if you have one person say it and stay with them as they hang up, we can assume the other person said it back! It doesn't always have to be literally "bye" - you can switch it up. "Talk soon." "See you then." "Love you." "Gotta go!" Any indication that you're ending the conversation, instead of what I often see, which is simply hanging up the phone as soon as you get the pertinent information without seeming to indicate to the other person on the line the conversation is over. Rude.
Spelling Champs
I watch a lot of crime procedurals (usually with a twist, like after Fringe and Veronica Mars I have started iZombie), so a lot of times a witness will tell the detective or agent or whoever is investigating the name of someone they saw or suspect. And sometimes they'll be like "You should look into Valerie Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff" and the other person will just jot it down or type it into their system without even asking "is that one f or two?" Again, this is probably also timing, but some names require a follow-up question! Everyone just magically knows if it's Megan vs Meaghan or Catherine vs Katherine somehow. It genuinely doesn't affect anything but I notice it a lot. Maybe because of how often people have arched an eyebrow at me and asked me how to spell "Valerie" even though I think it's a fairly phonetic name. (And yet, if NOT asked, people almost always get it wrong.)
Ordering Beer
This one drives me nuts because it can be fixed so simply with only like three extra words. You cannot go to a bar and just order "two beers." That's not how anything works. I get that you often can't say specific beer names, but you can say "Two beers, cheapest you've got." "Two beers, anything on tap." "Two beers, surprise me." "Two beers, anything local." Anything to indicate you're not a 14 year old trying to sound grown up and ordering "one alcohol please." Hell, you could even make up a beer name! "Two Stonybrook Ales please." "I'll have the Hell's Kitchen IPA." That one might require a pass through legal so I understand skipping it but if you have a lot of scenes in a bar, it might be worth it.
In Fact, Anything That Can Be Fixed with One Line
Again, I know we're short on time, and I know on TV shows things move fast, but it bothers the hell out of me when something doesn't make sense but it could have been explained away with one extra line. A recent example, a show I was watching had someone go to a fancy boutique and hand the cashier her credit card and say, "Start a tab." I have never been to a fancy boutique, so I was okay with believing that was a real thing that could happen. But then the cashier looked at her credit card and said, "Oh, happy birthday." Excuse me? As far as I know, credit cards have never had your birthday on them? I've had a credit card since the early 2000s and I don't remember that ever being a thing. And the episode I was watching aired in 2015. I understood why they needed the cashier to say it was her birthday (because no one else in her life seemed to have remembered) but just have the cashier ask for ID with the credit card, which is not an uncommon ask! Then I wouldn’t have been distracted by that one moment (for the wrong reasons) for the rest of the scene.
Playing Video Games
So few video games require constant button smashing. And yet, it seems the only games people ever play on TV require exactly that. In most of the video games I play, I spend more time holding my joystick forward and maybe hitting x to jump than I do button smashing. (Though don't get me wrong, when it does come time to fight, button smashing is often my go-to technique.) I'm not a professional by any means, so maybe more games require this than I realize, but I've even seen shows claim they're playing Fortnite and having non-stop button smashing the whole time. When in reality, there is often downtime between fights where you're just running and looting and pressing way less buttons than you are during a fight.
Journalism
My friend Jeanna covered the book publishing end of things in her response to this trend, but something that is always hilarious to me is how TV thinks journalism works. Granted, I've only worked in entertainment journalism and exclusively online, but the way some TV shows treat editors and deadlines and pitches is hilarious. Also the number of television journalists that would be out of a job if it were real life (looking at you, Tiny Jane from The Bold Type) or simply would not have won the Pulitzer for what they wrote (sorry Kara) is laughable. There was one editor on a TV episode I was watching recently that said something about one of his authors always submitting articles 5 weeks after they're due. WEEKS?? Always??? Most news moves too fast for you to even have five weeks to write something, let alone five EXTRA weeks. Unless you're talking investigative journalism, which this person was decidedly not. And I don’t know how anyone has a job after submitting things five weeks late consistently. How do you plan your publication around that?? Just constantly have backup articles ready? Is she the best writer in the whole world and anything she writes automatically gets you a billion clicks? Because that’s the only way a reputation of being OVER A MONTH late would let you keep your job.
Writers in General
A lot of the portrayal of writers on TV and in movies is also hilariously different than how my writer friends or I operate. And I know there’s no one way to be a writer, but whenever someone types the last sentence of their book, chapter, or article and hits that last period, sighs contentedly, then immediately sends it off to their editor, I have to laugh. Not even going to give that a quick once-over? You expect me to believe you didn’t have one single [NAME THIS CHARACTER LATER] anywhere? No [clever intro here] placeholders you have to go back and tend to before you submit? Not even going to click the ‘spell check’ button once just in casies? Sure, Jan.
"Messy" Rooms
Last but not least was the first thing that popped into my head, and the one I almost made a video about so I could show visual evidence, but chickened out. So often on TV, someone will walk into a person's bedroom and be shocked at the state of it, or make some comment about it looking like a disaster, when in reality there's a small pile of clothes on the floor, an open drawer, and a couple of cups on the nightstand. This bothers me most when it's supposed to be an indicator of someone's depression or hyperfixation on something other than personal upkeep. If something can be cleaned up in 10 minutes, it's not that messy. My depression and executive dysfunction often prevents me from cleaning my room with any regularity, and without any external motivation to fix it, it often stays like that for weeks on end, getting slightly worse every day. Currently, my bedroom is quite literally a disaster. I'll clean it eventually, but at this point, I will have to set aside a whole day to get through it. There is a small pathway from my door to my bed, but the rest of my floor is a knee-deep clothes pile. There's a half-unpacked suitcase, buried shoes, a strewn backpack, and a couple of bags and boxes of random items from my living room I tossed in there while cleaning for company a few weeks ago. When I had said company over, I didn't let them look in my room, because if people on TV flinch at an unmade bed, what would someone do if they saw my room? I wasn't in the mood for an intervention, so I just kept the door closed. It's also why I opted to write this list instead of making a video. Maybe that's why people don't make rooms truly messy on TV...nobody wants to see it.
I watch a lot of TV, so I come across little inaccuracies and hiccups often, and 9 out of 10 times I’m willing to let it slide (e.g. hilariously obvious and cringe-worthy product placement) because I understand it’s the name of the game. But some things that happen over and over again tend to grate my nerves (I have a whole folder in my TV tracking app for movies and TV shows that use the Diddy Laugh stock sound :shudder:) and it was fun to get to vent about some of them today.
The coffee cup issue drives me NUTS!
Such a fun (and accurate) article! I'm very proud that we paid a little extra to have actual named beers we could use on Earp (Stumbleweed and Beer Tap Blue, amoung others!) The empty coffee cup thing is often literally so actors don't spill on themselves but don't tell anyone I told you that...;)