Random things that bug you in movies and TV

[JT221]

How many movies have there been where the hero kills 20 paid by the hour guards just to get to the big bad drop his gun and say "Im not like you."

Probably thousands by this point.

[Conn Seanery]

When disguised or masked characters reveal themselves for the camera when there's no in-story reason for them to do so.

[gwhh]

Telling people to stand down or to stand fast.

[LordMikel]

When disguised or masked characters reveal themselves for the camera when there's no in-story reason for them to do so.

Or when they reveal themselves and you think, "Who is that?" Or there was really no reason to hide the identity.

[DrNewGod]

in spy thirller movies the bad guy always has a SWISS bank account, I mean why is that specific, why Switzerland? why not a smaller rinky dink bank to make their evil schemes less obvious?

I thought that was because Swiss bank accounts are hard to trace. I feel like that's changed in recent years, but, that's always the excuse given in such movies.

Nate's right. Swiss banking was incredibly confidential for decades, but the drug wars and terrorist hunts watered that down a bit. I think Panama's now the preferred place to squirrel away the ill-gottens and extra identity documents.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

Nate's right. Swiss banking was incredibly confidential for decades, but the drug wars and terrorist hunts watered that down a bit. I think Panama's now the preferred place to squirrel away the ill-gottens and extra identity documents.

Speaking from personal experience are we...jk..

[babyblob]

I hate when the hero has the unarmed big bad at gun point and all he has to do is shoot him to end the threat but instead he throws away the gun to fight the big bad in hand to hand fight just to kill him any way.

[gwhh]

The last ten minutes of a serial tv show have some "indy rock/unknown band/or just cheap music to use" that is loud and annoying. And it makes you just watch what is going on! Sons of Arnchey and Hell on wheel tv shows come to mind!

[DrNewGod]

The last ten minutes of a serial tv show have some "indy rock/unknown band/or just cheap music to use" that is loud and annoying. And it makes you just watch what is going on! Sons of Arnchey and Hell on wheel tv shows come to mind!

There's a story about Bermann realizing the studio had no idea of what their shows were about when they wanted to do that Featuring A Band thing on ENT. He tried telling them why that wouldn't work w/in the Trek story or with the fandom, but was told "You guys can figure that out." Don't know who actually squelched it.

[Jim Kelly]

At the end of every episode of BONES, there would always be some "popular" song playing (which was never very good) over a montage sequence of the characters doing stuff. It was a solid waste of time and I would always mute it.

This gets me to something else, the music from the guest bands in these shows is never very good (with some rare exceptions). On MELROSE PLACE, when they drop by the Upstairs Jazz Club, the guest band is always playing some smooth jazz. So Kyle the jarhead always had this passion to open a jazz club, which Amanda funded, but apparently his passion wasn't for great jazz music, it was just for easy-listening smooth jazz--the kind you can play in the background and talk over.

Mind you, some old shows really did have great top 40 music--like with WKRP IN CINCINNATI--but because of rights issues Johnny Fever's playlist was dubbed over with off-brand recordings in syndication. This issue may have been resolved more recently, I don't know.

And this leads me to a very specific peeve, which is season 1, episode 13 of GILMORE GIRLS--"Concert Interruptus." This is one of my favourite episodes of any show, but for this fact. Lorelai and Sookie take Rory, Paris, Louise and Madeline to a Bangles concert. So far so good. But when the Bangles play what we've been waiting to hear, "Eternal Flame," the characters talk over the whole song. Like what idiot would go to a Bangles concert and then talk over "Eternal Flame?" I get it, where else to put this dialogue but against such an important track--but it bugs me every time I watch that scene.

[Malvolio]

The last ten minutes of a serial tv show have some "indy rock/unknown band/or just cheap music to use" that is loud and annoying. And it makes you just watch what is going on! Sons of Arnchey and Hell on wheel tv shows come to mind!

Several episodes of Sons of Anarchy had Katey Sagal singing a cover of an old song like the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday or if it was an indie band, it was a band who were friends with Kurt Sutter.

[ChrisIII]

Doctor Who used Britney Spears's "Toxic" in the second episode: "End of the World". Kind of funny when at that point Billie Piper had mainly been known for being a moderately successful pop singer in Britain. It was kind of a decent joke (It's played as a "classical ballad" billions of years in the future) though and kind of worked well in the context of the episode.

The "Kelvin" Star Trek films also used the Beastie Boys Sabotage. Some thought it was a joke on Shatner who once had an argument about the proper pronunciation of it behind the scenes on TOS.

Then again, the original show has occasionally featured popular music in order to 'set the era' but it created some licensing headaches when they were released on home video.

[Jim Kelly]

The "Kelvin" Star Trek films also used the Beastie Boys Sabotage. Some thought it was a joke on Shatner who once had an argument about the proper pronunciation of it behind the scenes on TOS.

Just another example of anti-Canadian prejudice.

[gwhh]

A Woman screaming in the background at the top of her lungs over some random violent act.

Boarding up windows and doors with scrap lumber in a very haphazard manner.

[JBatmanFan05]

I hate when the big bad villain wants to make a show of his power but rather then kill the main character who can stop him he kills random Red shirt that no one gives a crap about and his biggest role was to get main character coffee.

Yeah, Gus Fring more or less did this in Breaking Bad, and I can't fault BB too much for that "bug me" moment, but smart Gus missed a moment to move on from proven troublemaker Walt. One of the show's suspension of disbelief faults is that Gus couldn't replace Walt easier or sooner (if you film and document every action of Walt and have the resources to at least quietly consult with countless chemists like Gale, Walt's process/skills could be replicated more easily enough than what the show showed us and then Gus would have disposed of troublemaking noncomplying uncareful criminally-inexperienced Walt).