Wonderin

[ericcoleman]

coat_of_brown touched on this earlier today. This is kinda my variant.

What is your favorite "they didn't do their research did they" moment in movies or TV?

Mine, I think it has to be the episode of the X-Files (which I am too lazy to go look up at the moment, but I think it's in season 1) that happens, partly, around Lake Okoboji in NW Iowa.

I personally was not aware that there were lovely mountains in NW Iowa.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

There was a similar moment in the episode set in Minneapolis. They arrive at the airport and then spend a long time driving on a lonely country road. My friend Fer conjectured that they got lost, took the exit for Fort Snelling State Park, and the drove around through the park for a while before heading to their hotel? I mean, the airport has city on one side, and suburbs on the other; there are no quiet rural roads nearby.

[naomikritzer]

For sheer hilarity, though, was the clip from Batman they showed in my high school Physics class, in which Batman gets pushed off a building, sends a rope shooting up off his utility belt (or something) and the rope stops him dead.

1. He was going fast enough and stopped suddenly enough that the force would've just ripped his arm off. Batman isn't Superman; the laws of physics apply to him.

2. We actually timed the fall and calculated, and he'd have fallen like a mile and a half. He was falling for a LONG time.

That's probably not a "didn't do their research" issue so much as a "didn't give a shit!" issue, though.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Oh, too many to come up with at this hour of the morning. (I may make another entry when awake; you never know.) So let me pass on a moment which doesn't really fit your category, but impressed me at the time.

Before The Addams Family, John Astin was in a show called I'm Dickens, He's Fenster.

The carpenters were trying to sleep in a room with fewer beds than people. Dickens (Astin) is on a short sofa (or door laid across two hobby horses, or somesuch). It is too short for his whole body length. He keeps sliding forward and back. This keeps everyone awake. Finally, Fenster (Marty Ingels) sputters, "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to decide whether I want to lie this way, and have the blood rush to my feet, or this way, and have the blood rush to my head."

Engels shakes his fist, "In a minute, the blood will rush to your nose."

I thought this was very silly and not at all physiologically likely to happen. It made a great impression on me, which I now share. Please keep in mind that I was seven in 1962 and not Wise In The Way of the World as I am today.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Last year, when I was teaching plate tectonics, we culminated our unit by watching Dante's Peak with Pierce Brosnan and the lead from Terminator, tearing apart all the science.

The Cascade mountain had runny, fast moving basalt lava, like how Hawaiian volcanoes flow. Andesite mountains do produce ash, it is a *lot* thicker than in the movie, and it is more like mud (hence, a lot of mud flows). Hard to breathe.

Boiling the couple in the hot springs? Water itself does not turn colors to be red hot! And when it does get that hot, it like, produces clouds of steam as it boils...

And the truck would like, totally be on fire if it drove over lava, fer shur, fer shur...

But great fun!

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Ditto for mountains for Flint, Michigan (forgetable TV show) or one week on many TV shows were it snows in it's locale (just for Christmas).

How about on Smallville last night, it looks like only circa 1985 cars were available to be smashed up in Metropolis, 2010?

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

MASH, Colonel Blake was from Bloomington IL, and talks about reading the Bloomington Pantagraph at least once, and is an Illinois State University graduate, but is wearing a University of Illinois jacket.

[guppiecat]

I personally was not aware that there were lovely mountains in NW Iowa.

There are. Just like in the recent Star Trek movie, there is a quarry in Southern IA. (Personally, I think it was a reclaimed landfill that never got filled back in... maybe)

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

In "The Watchmen" - Mars' moons being so BIG and STILL and PLAINLY VISIBLE.

[gamerchick.livejournal.com]

There is an episode of Supernatural set in Hibbing, Minnesota, wherein the main characters fight a family of inbred mutant cannibals who have been living out in the forest for generations and killing and eating the locals. Without exception, every one of the mutant cannibals has a thick, overblown, redneck-esque Southern American accent. I guess they must have been from the extreme south of Hibbing.

[bammba-m.livejournal.com]

Does this even count? I've no idea. When I lived with Len, anything that took my attention away from him was BAD. So when I'd watch something like CSI: Miami, he'd pick apart the geography. Non-stop. "Oh that's not there, you can't get to that place from that other place that way." Crap like that.

I got so angry at him I said, "Yes, and I'm sure the Miami Dade police department can afford for their entire CSI team to drive around in Hummers."

Or perhaps "Running Scared" The chase scene on the train tracks tickles me, because you really can't get to there from here on the path they take. Still, it's a cool chase scene.

Or did I get this one wrong? I forget now. What was the question?

[batyatoon]

I do not remember the details, but I am quite certain there was an episode of The X-Files set in New York City wherein Mulder and Scully got from Point A to Point B faster than is possible for anyone not in a helicopter.

[arnoldtiller.livejournal.com]

I know, I'm a little late to the party on this one. In 'The Day After', which was filmed in Lawrence, KS, they said that the dinky, little student health clinic was the KU Med Center Hospital. Riiiight.....they could barely handle a flu epidemic, let alone nuclear fallout.