Things I learned from television

Delcat wrote:

Lab work--DNA testing, toxicology reports, fingerprint scans--take six hours, eight at the outside.

And they're always 100% accurate - fingerprints are an absolutely flawless identifier, DNA results always come back to someone in the system (or a suspect) and never come back with a false positive, and toxicology results can never be affected by outside influences.

Likewise, murder trials go from arrest to verdict in a month; six weeks, tops.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Delcat wrote:

Lab work--DNA testing, toxicology reports, fingerprint scans--take six hours, eight at the outside.

And they're always 100% accurate - fingerprints are an absolutely flawless identifier, DNA results always come back to someone in the system (or a suspect) and never come back with a false positive, and toxicology results can never be affected by outside influences.

And the rare mistakes that are uncovered are ALWAYS the result of corruption. It's never honest mistakes, flawed techniques, or plain ol' incompetence.

If you're a woman in a Lifetime movie and you discover your husband is cheating on you, you'd best immediately take precautions and arm yourself, because no matter how willing you'd be to give him a divorce, he's going to try and kill you anyway. Doubly so if you have small children.

Also, no one will believe you, so it does no good to go to the cops. Particularly since your husband's likely Chief of Police for the town you live in, no matter how big it is. Apparently, cities with as many as 900,000 residents have only one police department and one Chief of Police

Rabid Badger wrote:

If you're a woman in a Lifetime movie and you have a husband or boyfriend or mailman or anyone within three miles of your house that has a penis, you'd best immediately take precautions and arm yourself, because no matter what, he's going to try and rape and kill you. Doubly so if you have small children.

Fixed that for you.

rae wrote:

This would be why my biology professor used to joke that CSI stood for Certified Semen Inspector.

I'm so late to this party, but my friend had this to say about it:

"It's a good thing that twelve-year-old boy jizzed all over the cashier when he stole this candy bar or we never would've been able to identify him! And that concludes another episode of Cum Stain Investigation."

Spotts1701 wrote:

Delcat wrote:

Lab work--DNA testing, toxicology reports, fingerprint scans--take six hours, eight at the outside.

And they're always 100% accurate - fingerprints are an absolutely flawless identifier, DNA results always come back to someone in the system (or a suspect) and never come back with a false positive, and toxicology results can never be affected by outside influences.

All this lab work must also be conducted in the dark.

Delcat wrote:

Rabid Badger wrote:

If you're a woman in a Lifetime movie and you have a husband or boyfriend or mailman or anyone within three miles of your house that has a penis, you'd best immediately take precautions and arm yourself, because no matter what, he's going to try and rape and kill you. Doubly so if you have small children.

Fixed that for you.

Thank you. How could I forget the rape? He can't kill you till he rapes you first, even if you are married to him.

A person can go without sleep the night before and they only need a cup of coffee to function normally.

Womyn are powerless and even if they are in positions of power they are soon brought to their knees as their real goal wasn't to become successful! A real womyn apparently only lives to be married and have children!

There are three kinds of female lawyers: Soulless sharks, moral crusaders, and eye candy. Unless she's the star of the show: then she's "lovably quirky".

9/10 opposite sex flatmates will eventually become a couple but usually not until after one of them is engaged to someone else.

Whenever a child moves out of your house it is important to replace them in the lineup, if you don't have a niece or nephew who can move in, advertise for a lodger.

Fairlight wrote:

Whenever a child moves out of your house it is important to replace them in the lineup, if you don't have a niece or nephew who can move in, advertise for a lodger.

Related: Whenever a parent figure dies, there is always a relative of the same gender and approximate age who is able to immediately fill the gap. If a grandparent fills the role, they will be a "hip" grandparent who acts more like the children.

^Addtionally, death is not even necessary. Sometimes one family member will just disappear, never to be mentioned again.

ZoZo wrote:

^Addtionally, death is not even necessary. Sometimes one family member will just disappear, never to be mentioned again.

...only to appear in porn films not long after.

It's the same with hair colour, hair cut and sometimes (Ahum, Farscape: Sikozu) complete appearance. Sometimes they even become an entirely different person! Tattoos also have the tendency to crawl over people's bodies. It might change radically from one episode to the other, and it's SO RARE anyone comments on it.

Incidentally, I just watched Earth: Final Conflict the first season and the first ep of the 2nd season. Wow, only eight hours have passed but this woman not only has become pregnant and is now birthing (which is canon, actually) but her hair has grown five inches! Ok, life goes on between shooting the series, but can't directors pay attention to that kind of stuff?

ZoZo wrote:

^Addtionally, death is not even necessary. Sometimes one family member will just disappear, never to be mentioned again.

An America soap opera did this roughly 20+ years ago, when the family's son went up to the attic to get his skis so he could go skiing with his buddies and was never seen (or mentioned) again; despite the fact that up till then, he'd been a major character on the show.

Years later, after everyone but the shows most devoted fans had forgotten, the producers had a storyline where a woman was being held prisoner in the attic of the same house, and discovered she was sharing it with the skeleton of a young man lying next to a pair of skis.

Rabid Badger wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

^Addtionally, death is not even necessary. Sometimes one family member will just disappear, never to be mentioned again.

An America soap opera did this roughly 20+ years ago, when the family's son went up to the attic to get his skis so he could go skiing with his buddies and was never seen (or mentioned) again; despite the fact that up till then, he'd been a major character on the show.

Years later, after everyone but the shows most devoted fans had forgotten, the producers had a storyline where a woman was being held prisoner in the attic of the same house, and discovered she was sharing it with the skeleton of a young man lying next to a pair of skis.

The soap was All My Children and the character was Bobby Martin. Why the character was dropped has never been definitively answered. Agnes Nixon is said to have claimed the character was one Martin (the show's main clan) too many. Rumor has it that the actor portryaing Bobby got the axe for backstage drama.

I didn't know the details, but it was my Grandmother's favorite soap, and since she could remember when Bobby just disappeared from the show, she always thought it was funny that he turned up dead in the attic.

Poor Bobby; He preceded Chuck Cunningham by four years yet doesn't even get Trope Namer status!

Waffles wrote:

Womyn are powerless and even if they are in positions of power they are soon brought to their knees as their real goal wasn't to become successful! A real womyn apparently only lives to be married and have children!

...and along with that, any woman who is successful and in a position of power is a cold, emotionless bitch. Because that is the only sort of woman who wouldn't want kids, right?

Rabid Badger wrote:

An America soap opera did this roughly 20+ years ago, when the family's son went up to the attic to get his skis so he could go skiing with his buddies and was never seen (or mentioned) again; despite the fact that up till then, he'd been a major character on the show.

I dunno, if I were on All My Children I'd jump out a third-story window and run like hell on my broken ankle to get away too.

ZOMG Rachy wrote:

Waffles wrote:

Womyn are powerless and even if they are in positions of power they are soon brought to their knees as their real goal wasn't to become successful! A real womyn apparently only lives to be married and have children!

...and along with that, any woman who is successful and in a position of power is a cold, emotionless bitch. Because that is the only sort of woman who wouldn't want kids, right?

How many times do we have to go around in circles about this?

If, by some chance, you're from a large city and your car should happen to break down in a small rural town, you'd best get the hell out as fast as you can run, because invariably the entire town is either full of violent cannibalistic rednecks, vampires, Satan Worshipers, or brainless yokels who just like to kill 'city folk.'

Your chances of dying doubles if you're a particularly attractive woman or man. If you're pregnant, you'll most likely end up part of a ritual designed to cause you to give birth to Satan's/Cthulhu's/insert evil demon god of your choice here's child.

The popular teenage girl will always end up rejecting the gorgeous guy she's spent most of the series chasing after, because she realizes she wants her adorably nerdy best friend who's loved her since the first grade. This usually happens after she finally becomes the girlfriend of the hot guy and then finds out that he's a shallow jerk.

If you're attractive you're automatically shallow and/or a complete asshole who only cares about sex or looking good.