Maybe this isn’t a USA specific thing but for me it’s always how large peoples houses and apartments are on TV. Those places are huge. My family could never afford anything like that, and it often makes no sense if the character has a relatable job.
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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If it's addressed at all, its usually handwaved away as either:
- Friends Rent Control (Warning: TVTropes)
- Actually not as large as it seems on TV.
How I Met Your Mother did the latter pretty well. The whole show was a story the narrator was telling his kids, so it was all based off of how he remembered his life at the time. What we see on TV is just him remembering the NYC apartment bigger than it was.
Yeah the poor students living in manhattan etc.
Whats insane is we used to. My janitor dad and homemaker mom afforded a five bedroom, three bathroom house with full basement, workshop, seperate dining room, living room, breakfast nook, kitchen. it was dillapitated sure but not to an unlivable level. Massive porch.
See, that just seems comical to me. Completely unreasonable to the degree that I can’t even imagine that being true unless there was some other factor you’re failing to mention.
I am not. my dads folks died when he was young and was supporting the family before he went to high school. He never completed junior high. He was a brick layer at one point and that paid pretty well so that might be the one caveat but still we have fallen big time middle class wise. he was definately working class.
Judge Dread. Oh wait, you said UN-realistic didn't you!?:-) Then Idiocracy, where they actually put a smart person in charge.
Real answer: Hallmark shows, which are basically porn for conservative women. City dweller comes back home for a visit for the holidays, learns the meaning of Christmas or sth and then changes their life around to be identical to everyone else in the small town.
There's a lifetime movie called Snowed Inn Christmas where the whole premise is two big city journalists get stuck in Santa Claus, Indiana during the holidays. In the movie the town is a picture perfect Christmas village, but the real Santa Claus is basically fields in the middle of nowhere, plus the Holiday World theme park (which is a legitimate banger if anyone gets the chance to visit). It was filmed in Winnipeg. There are funny details like how their flight gets diverted to the "airport" in Santa Claus even though there isn't an airport that is not a grass strip for like 50 miles at least.
So, you're saying some kind of lunatic actually named a town "Santa Claus"? And nobody slapped him?
Where people in small towns are accepting of everybody even if you dress differently. If you’re new in town, they’re very welcoming to you. Most small towns that is not the case.
In the 90s show "Twin Peaks" the intro showed a sign saying "population 52,201", but in the show itself everyone in town knew each other and the town itself was the size of a small village, with one diner, a few cops, and no infrastructure apart from the logging industry. It would have been more realistic to have the sign say the population was in the hundreds or maybe 1000 at most.
Source: I grew up in a small town with a population of about 1100 people and it was several times larger than Twin Peaks in area, and even with that small number of people it was rare to bump into more than a couple of acquaintances in a week's time.
Twin peaks had the sign changed at the last minute. It was originally supposed to be about 5,200, hence the mismatch between the sign and the tone
The only thing "Pensacola" in this pic is the water and the helicopters.
There's a 10 or 12 story hotel, and that's the tallest structure down there.
That the US always fights for what is right
History is written by the victors.
Dropped a word in the title?
One unrealistic movie troupe is that the single mom always lives in the HUGH house in a super nice area. Working a low paying job that could never afford said house.
Indeed, thanks
"movie"
How long it takes to get anywhere.
They manage to cross major cities in mins when the reality is 1-2 hours during regular traffic. Or they just fly somewhere else and are there a few hours later. You can't even get through airport security in the time it took them to drive there, fly and then drive to the next location.
That poor people live here. According to Zillow, the average price for a home is $760,877. For fuck sake, Travis Barker of Blink-182 used to live here.
There was an episode of X-Files that dealt with the Jersey Devil. At one point it shows they are at "the outskirts of Atlantic city" and show it as the Pine Barrens.
That's not the outskirts of Atlantic city. The outskirts? You mean the ocean? You mean the Black Horse Pike?? You mean fucking Ventnor???? Pine Barrens are further inland!
Leave It to Beaver
Team America: World Police depicts the main characters as both nationalistic and kinky. Nationalists are vanilla.
You say that, but right now at this moment there’s undoubtedly at least one Republican state rep getting his dick sucked through a hole in an airport bathroom stall.
They aren't vanilla, they're repressed. And it's part of why they are such freaks publicly.