Accents and Timelines ....

Hola peeps!  It’s me, Jay the Cynical_Bastard guest posting on this lovely Friday.  Well, I assume it’s a lovely Friday. I mean, it might be a really crappy Friday, I don’t know.  But, let’s just pretend that it’s a lovely Friday, shall we?

Today I thought I would blog about two of my biggest pet peeves with television shows.  Now, I know that when we’re watching TV or movies we are supposed to suspend reality a bit and just accept certain things.  For the most part I can do that.  I pretend that fat, goofy guys who work in blue collar jobs can be married to someone as hot as Leah Remini.  I pretend that teenage girls can put on a blond wig and be a pop music superstar and nobody in her school could ever find out.  Hell, I even pretend that a mullet-sporting redneck like Billy Ray Cyrus was totally believable as a doctor on “Doc.”  

But, there are a couple of things that I just can’t seem to get past on TV shows..

So, since Doc is a proud North Carolinian and I’m an embarrassed Arkansan (sorry, I don’t like Arkanasawyer) I thought I would bring up my first complaint here.  Now, I know that Hollywood would NEVER stereotype people. But, have you ever noticed that every dumb character has a southern accent?

Hell, even if the character lives in Chicago or Minnesota or Los Angeles or whatever, if they’re dumb, they have a southern accent.  You would think that with Sarah Palin on the scene now, liberal Hollywood would give all our dumb ass characters a “youbetcha” type accent.  But, oh no.  Dumb people are always country people and they always have a southern accent.  Even if they’ve never lived in the south. 

Okay, so now complaint number 2 is all about timelines.  This is honestly my biggest pet peeve about any show.  It just amazes me how much ground people on TV can cover in such a short amount of time.  I’ll give you an example using one of my favorite shows NCIS:

So, everyone shows up for work in the morning at NCIS headquarters.  We can assume it’s 8 o’clock-ish, when they get there.  Gibbs is already there and tells the team that they have a fugitive they need to go pick up in Virginia somewhere.  So, they head out and drive all way out into the boonies. 

Amazingly enough they don’t hit any traffic at all.  I guess traffic around Washington D.C. isn’t all that bad.  Anyway, they get there and they find their fugitive.  Unfortunately he’s dead.  Sucks for him.  Now they have to call Ducky and Palmer to come out to the crime scene in the mobile meth crime lab van thingy.  Ducky and Palmer get there lickity-split also.  They do all their forensic work, load up the stiff and head back to NCIS offices. 

AND THEY GET BACK TO THE OFFICE BEFORE IT’S EVEN LUNCHTIME!

It’s amazing!  Federal agents on TV can be told about a crime in California, get on a plane and fly out there from Kentucky and get there before the police have even “processed” the crime scene.  Amazing!  And then they interview witnesses and chase the bad guys to the Mexican border, shoot EVERYBODY (except the dumb girl with the southern accent who got duped by one of the bad guys) and head on home before it gets dark.  Even in daylight savings time this is a remarkable accomplishment.  And it really does drive me crazy.

Also, last night as I was talking to my very awesome friend who also happens to be super damn hot, I thought of another one of these pet peeves.  This one is pretty much confined to soap operas though.  Ever notice how someone can have a baby, and all of the sudden that baby become like a six year old over the weekend?  And then like month later that six year old is suddenly like 12?  Weird.

And, ever notice how someone can be in a car accident, lose the use of his legs, but when they have him at the hospital right after the accident, they don’t even have an IV set up on that kid?  Amazing! And he’s totally able to talk and understand what people are saying and whatever.  Of course, after years and years of watching people with really hideous diseases and injuries being completely cured in under an hour on “ER,” I guess that “no IV” thing shouldn’t really be all that big of a deal. 

Okay, I should probably end this here.  Otherwise I’ll turn it into a looooong list of pet peeves about TV and movies and who knows what else.   Thanks for letting me guest post Doc.  And you can breathe a sigh of relief now since I didn’t blog about hookers or strippers. 

Or Miley Cyrus.