Asymmetrical Information

The most ridiculous element on Law & Order: over the years, more than 80% of the criminals in the various shows have been white (and usually middle-class or higher), when in reality whites account for something like 5% of NYC criminal defendants.

Is Dick Wolf overcome by political correctness, or does he suffer from some weird hatred of his own people?

The crimes on L&O are also more interesting than real life, because how many times can you prosecute crack dealers over and over and over and over and over...like in, you know, real life.

But mobsters making fun of the Sopranos--there has to be a blog somewhere, right?

Do you think actual gangsters sit around at dinner parties and regale each other with all the ridiculous technical errors on The Sopranos?

They go on and on about the factual errors in gangster movies, so I suppose they do moan about the errors to be found in The Sopranos.

I can't say for sure, since I left my law enforcement job before the first ep aired on HBO. Haven't chatted with a gangster since.

James

Yes, yes they do. :)

The obvious one, of course, was Bobby Bacala's comparative innocence. A captain who's never killed ANYONE? Please.

You should hear when architects get together about the Brady Bunch... Mostly complaining because there's no way an average architect could afford a full time housekeeper.

Yes, yes we do.

Especially the ice pick thing. That really grinds our gourds.

"Remember when is the lowest form of conversation"

The concept of that TV show had me off the link as soon as it was stated...

L&O is rife with anti- messages of various forms, Peter. The first year or two it seemed worth tuning in about once a month...then it degressed from there. Not my cuppa.

From law enforcement days, I'd say anything of a visual media brings in those who are regularly portrayed there. They feel qualified, nay, obligated to comment on what they feel is not in tune with their thoughts on the matter. This includes people from the professionally homeless to the gangster to the cop and to the journalist. They all feel the need to wade in with their contribution.

Good question.

I also wonder if boat captains ever get together and wonder about the Skipper's hiring of Gilligan as first mate.

I imagine professional actors made fun of Matt LeBlanc's character on "Friends" too.

Is Dick Wolf overcome by political correctness, or does he suffer from some weird hatred of his own people?

I’d say yes to the rampant PC on Law & Order* but something else struck me about the show. It seems like nearly every time they do a L&O marathon (which is nearly every holiday) they have either an episode where the defendant is being charged with committing a hate crime against a Jewish victim or a Jewish murder suspect has fled to Israel and McCoy has to convince the Israeli government that if they extradite him he won’t face the death penalty which of course he does because by my count Jack McCoy has personally prosecuted two-thirds of the death penalty cases in New York

* Except during the Benjamin Bratt years and SVU, not so much.

Gangsters have long watched their portrayals--they not only critique them, they learn from them. Back in the 1930s, they watched Cagney and Robinson and George Raft and started dressing and talking that way.

More recently, The Godfather gave them a template. In fact, the characters on The Sopranos regularly quote The Godfather because David Chase knows real gangsters do.

FBI wiretapes have actually caught crooks talking about how they're portrayed on the big and small screen--occasionally they're impressed with how well it's done.

By the way, the Hanft review of Mad Men is an outlier. In general, the show has gotten good to great notices.

I live in North Jersey, and I recall one of the local dailies -- the Newark Star Ledger, Jersey (City) Journal or Bergen Record (of Hackensack) -- did a feature that included interviews with a few "associates" about the show's veracity. As I remember they were pretty much unanimous in their opinions that it was an accurate portrayal. They were all fans.

FWIW, chemists still complain about their portrayal on film and on the small screen. The best big screen chemist has to be the supplier of erucic acid in "Lorenzo's Oil".

I read in a New York Times profile that some big gangster had said, early in the show's run, that he liked it but it bothered him that Tony was wearing shorts at a barbeque: "A Don doesn't wear shorts", he said. Chase & co. heard that story and later gave the line to Carmine Lupertazzi.

In the special features on the DVD of the movie _Office Space_, the guy who played Michael Bolton commented that he's been told by organized-crime types that the printer-beating looked very clean and professional, similar to an actual mob beating - specifically, the guys doling out the beating take turns and don't touch each other.

Not only do actual killers talk about how they are portrayed, some of them actually become killers because of the portrayal. Rewards and guidance - instruction and fame. The Port Arthur massacre was a clear example, and so were most of the school shootings. Its called the contagion or copycat effect, and media have guidelines on reporting to prevent it in suicides. They don't obey them for massacres and terrorism though.

Hence the publication of Cho's apologia. F*** the pathetic killers, and the pathetic types who encourage and enable them.

I've yet to see a movie where any use of a computer comes close to reality.

"I've yet to see a movie where any use of a computer comes close to reality."

I can't recall a single instance of anyone using "Windows" in any movie.

I've yet to see a movie where any use of a computer comes close to reality.

Real Genius had soem interesting stuff with ROM chips.

Screenwriters usually have a terrible time portraying people smarter than they are.

My wife and I are bith traffic engineers, we joke that you can't do a modern action movie without us. Gotta mess with the signal systems (Italian Job), or blow up bridges (Matrix), or be used as a cover (Cruise in MI3). Live Free or Die Hard only the latest, with both signal systems chicanery and destruction of a nice interchange.

Scott, in particular I liked the road mess created by the twisty-cop-mobile-cum-antihelo-missile.

From what I've heard, it helps to be a movie consultant if you have a little trafficking in your background.

I'm not sure where they found them but the Showtime series Weeds has had actual drug dealers and hydroponic experts as consultants.

Njorl: I seem to recall the Windows logo and its use showing up in "The Preacher's Wife".

I've yet to see a movie where any use of a computer comes close to reality.

The scene in Office Space when Peter is trying to slip out unseen by Lundburg on a Friday afternoon and the computer seems to take forever to shut down comes close to reality.

"I've yet to see a movie where any use of a computer comes close to reality."

Yeah, the best was when they used a terrestrial laptop in INDEPENDENCE DAY to interface to the alien computer. What luck!

You should hear my scientist wife and me (I trained in chemistry) laugh at much of the stuff on shows like CSI.

We especially like the magic "closeup" software that lets you take a horrid grainy surveillance shot and "clean it up" and zoom in 100 times with better detail. Information from nowhere!

Also love the professor on Gilligan's Island who knows everything about everything.

And the surgeons and doctors on HOUSE and ER who all are competent to do every single surgical or medical procedure ever invented (and some not yet invented), and how almost every patient needs to get defibrillated or have a "central line" or both.

Math errors are rampant everywhere, especially the ever-popular million/billion/trillion confusion. The news and magazine shows get into this act, too. They also fail to ask Al Gore about absolute scale versus Fahrenheit/Centigrade ("This temperature has almost doubled!!" Uhhhhh, no, it hasn't, Senator Kelvin.). They also get other aspects of thermodynamics such as entropy all bitched up. And they don't use the words "random" or "stochastic" right.

I love investment shows that breathlessly cite the "200-day moving average." Just once I'd like to hear someone ask, "Why exactly are you concerned with 200 days and not 210? Or 134.56 days? Or any other specific number?" Or, "If you're so smart, why aren't you sitting on a beach somewhere instead of getting up at 5:30 on a winter morning In Chicago or New York and getting dressed and madeup and trudging into a TV studio to enlighten us all for free?" I guess someone's head might explode. But THAT I would watch.

Finally, if you are ever on JEOPARDY and one of the categories is "SCIENCE" or "CHEMISTRY," the answer to one of the questions is guaranteed to be "carbon dioxide." Whenever mentioned on other shows, it's invariably called "deadly carbon dioxide."

I guess the bottom line is that people who appear on TV or who produce it are mostly morons.

or watch it

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