Kim Jackson

Saying there are things on TV that drive me crazy is like saying the sky is blue: it’s a given. The list would be pretty long, starting with infomercials. But there are some things they do in shows that I find inexplicable and unnecessary.

I talked with my co-worker Steve Lundeberg, and what chaps him are 1, actors who play two different characters on the same show, and 2, screwing up the show’s time line. Both instances, he said come from MASH. The first involved Harry Morgan, who played Maj. Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele in 1974, then returned as Col. Sherman T. Potter the following season. The other involved the 1951 pennant race between the Giants and Dodgers (”The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!) The race, he said, was out of synch with other events in that time period.

My irritants are less scholarly.

One is sparks flying off of vehicles when being shot at by the bad guys. I mean, showers of sparks, like they were shooting flint bullets. I know sparks are possible when hitting metal, but hardly in the volume some shows depict. I guess they want to show where the bullets are hitting near the good guys for dramatic effect, and for that reason I get it. But then there are no holes where at least a couple of bullets wold have penetrated. Kudos to “Burn Notice” which showed in a preview recently three shots leaving the tell-tale hole with paint blasted away in the hood of a car.

Worst offender: Numb3rs on CBS — This show has more sparks than a fireworks display.

Another is backwards fire. This effect shows up in both shows and commercials, where a warm, crackling fire is shown and the flames are flickering in reverse. Why? This one escapes me. Isn’t fire forward better than fire backward? I looked this effect up on Google, but got little information, other than to use it for safety reasons in large special effects. But a little fire in the fireplace? I don’t get it.

Worst offender: None specifically comes to mind, but you see it here and there.

Another effect is what I call the Poorly-Executed Empty-Vessel Trick, or, “Can’t you put something in that cup to make it look like you’re really drinking?” When someone is handed a cup, say, with coffee in it, it’s obvious they aren’t drinking anything, for two reasons.

1. Containers with liquid in them have a certain heft that’s hard to fake with an empty cup. Same goes for barrels, buckets, what-have-you. I guess if you had to do take after take of drinking the same thing you’d get sick of whatever it was. And heavy buckets might hurt someone, so I get it. But a simple fix for the coffee cup thing would be to make the cups heavy, like they had something in them.

2. The first sip is too deep. They take a swig of coffee like the cup is cold and half full, when we know baristas heat that stuff up to 900 degrees and fill it to the rim. In reality, actors would be screaming in pain, spewing molten java all over the place.

Worst offender: NCIS — I like this show, but the way the actors hoist their cups around you’d think earth had 1/3 the gravity.

Another stupid effect is the Slurpy Straw Trick, where someone is given a full cup of pop, which they whip around like it was empty, of course, and then drinks from the straw, to which a noise is added to let you know, “Hey, she’s drinking.” But the sound is the sound you get when you hit the bottom of the drink. Suggestion: Leave out the noise. We get it. They’re drinking. No sound effect needed, at least not the one currently in use.

Worst offender: Again, NCIS: The lab tech Abby gets a huge pop at least once an episode. I guess the spurpy noise makes sense, since it’s obvious the cups are  — you guessed it — empty anyway.

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