TV Show stereotypes

[Herr Matzat]

Hey,

i just spend some time watching old Veronica Mars Episodes while cleaning my room... a question poped up that i had in my head before but never realy investigated on.

There are a ton of things in TV Shows that happen over and over again in different shows and i have come to ask myself how much they are sort of a running gag and how much they are true... it´s this obvius stuff like "the prom" dance that i always belived to be a big deal... but whats it with...

The Egg falling... a lot of shows seem to have this, or simular science projects, in one Episode... were you have to build a strukture around an egg that prevents it from breaking during the fall.

The taking care of a fake baby... on VM it´s some kind of electric baby that keeps track of how well you tread it, on Buffy it was an Egg that you had to protect... and i am shure this was on other TV Shows aswell.

So to the americans... are these things realy happening wen you are in school?

[GoGo Yubari]

I never had to do the egg baby/potato sack baby experiment myself but I know sixth graders in my middle school had to (luckily I transferred in when I was a seventh grader).

[EddieRuckus]

Prom's always one of the most hyped up dances in high school, with Homecoming dance being a very close second and sometimes even more important than prom. At least from what I've seen.

I've had to do the egg experiment a few times throughout middle school. I have had a lot of friends from other towns who had to take care of a fake baby that was either electronic and kept records of everything, or was as simple as a soundbox that made the baby cry when it got to be towards night time.

[thatblindgeye]

Both the egg thing and the taking care of a baby thing were done in my schools, although I didnt actually do the baby thing. The baby thing was just an electronic thing.

I dont know of many shows that had either thing in them, though.

Edited July 21, 2009 by Vitamin E

[jrhodes]

I had to do the one where you protect the egg from a fall using paper, tape and some little pipe things on the first day in college. I think it was meant to help us all get to know each other. So it happens in England too.

[foolinc]

The reason for the prom being such a huge deal is that it is more or less the last thing you do as a class (sans graduation). This means that for most High School based TV shows that this is one of the last big event in the show for most of the characters, if not all of them. So it's the beginning of the end of the series as it stands and is usually a good place to start ending plot threads, especially the big romance (still it's a dance).

[Bigal]

Proms on TV always look so lame. Do they tend to be in the school gym? >_>

[GA!]

Proms on TV always look so lame. Do they tend to be in the school gym? >_>

Seeing as Saved By The Bell had a prom/dance at the end of each episode, I presume Bayside High held them in the school gym for cost reasons.

[ROC]

Mine was in the well decorated cafeteria next to the gym. So basically, yeah, it's either the gym or the cafeteria. (Though, there was all that design stuff outside that made stuff more decor-y.)

[Kaney]

Mine was at the Holiday Inn.

[GoGo Yubari]

My high school never really made prom a senior thing so I actually went to five of them (every year I was at my school except freshman year and then the year after and there was a damn good reason for that). Three of them were in the school itself on the second floor, one was in a bland little community center, and the last one was in the fucking Pacific Science Center.

The first two were pretty fun school dances, the third was a tremendous waste of money that I left after one hour, the fourth was a bit of a disappointment, and the fifth wasn't a good dance but as an evening of free food (the only time our proms ever had that) and dueling Batman references with the astronomy room employee and playing tic-tac-toe against a giant robot it was exceptional.

EDIT: But it should be noted I went to a little alternative high-school so we didn't even have a gym. All of my dances in middle school were in the gym.

Edited July 23, 2009 by GoGowicked

[Fait Accompli]

My high school had something of a human development class (no, it wasn't a health class; this one dealt strictly with progression in life and whatnot; I wasn't in it so I don't really know what took place) and they did this thing where the students would carry around battery operated dolls that would have a sudden outburst of crying and tempertantrums whenever it saw fit. From what I know, the dolls were put on a timer to make them act like real infants. And let me tell you...when you're in the middle of class and you're focused and you hear loud wailing, ya pretty much don't know what to do at that point.

[Skummy]

.....giant robot?

My school didn't have a prom until the year after I left. Never even thought about it, never considered that it should, it always just seemed like an American thing, but every school seems to do it here now, all fancy clothes in posh venues. Seems a bit of a waste of time. I wouldn't have gone anyway. The second high school I went to had the electric baby things, though, most of the mixed/all-girl schools here seem to do that as an optional thing. Why on earth anyone would ever choose to do that, I don't know.

Edited July 23, 2009 by Racist Bannon

[GoGo Yubari]

"Giant" might be an overstatement but there is indeed a (really kind of old now) robot that plays tic-tac-toe.

The dealbreaker for prom for me was generally that the music fucking blew and the DJs were really bad at taking requests/playing music students brought in and also playing music that the student body would actually like. They thought our school was the kind of high school that would genuinely enjoy "Photograph" by Nickelback; the lessened dancing and derisive miming of the song lyrics in response should have been a hint to the contrary.

Edited July 23, 2009 by GoGowicked

[Skummy]

The best kind of robots are the ones so big and unwieldy that their miserable existence barely even justifies the simplistic task for which they were designed.

[Emperor Fuckshit]

We had a prom at the end of Sixth Form. Can't remember where it was held. I didn't go. I didn't go to my graduation ball, either. That's "traditionally" held at York Racecourse, but it was moved to campus for this year and some tedious prannocks kicked up a middle-class fuss. I didn't go to my graduation, either, come to think of it.

Fuck la spectacle.

Edited July 23, 2009 by Emperor Fuckshit

[Skummy]

tedious prannocks

Five-penny twammer!

[Emperor Fuckshit]

JOEY!

[Skummy]

Village Branson!

[Emperor Fuckshit]

cock-sucking witch.