the vynsane asylum

When a set of "random" numbers is revealed, and then everybody on screen bumbles around for a few minutes before somebody yells "They're map coordinates!"
Even though everybody in the audience figured that out ten minutes ago--because we've all been watching TV since we were three and this is the 10,000th time that trope has been thrown in our face like moist seabass.

It makes your protagonist FBI crack crime fighting team look like a bunch of jackasses that they were stumped by gps coordinates even for two seconds.

It may have come up before, but I'm too lazy to look.

All the time, particularly in police procedurals, everyone will be fucking clueless about everything, and one character will bring up some bit of arcane knowledge that will crack the case, and explains it like it's an old episode of G.I. Joe. Only the science will be completely and totally wrong!

Why bother giving it the "educational factoid clumsily shoved into the story" feel that no one really likes and always stands out like a sore thumb, if you you're not going to bother getting the fucking info right?

Wearing a wire in the 21st century. I mean the microphone taped to the stomach with a giant ass battery pack strapped somewhere. So the bad guy can rip open the shirt to reveal...a wire! We live in an age with Bluetooth and wifi and pinhole cameras. And most cop shows I watch have all this hi-tech bullshit in their HQs like those stupid table sized touch screens that they just push windows around on and have all their exposition spoon fed to the audience. And yet they 'wire' up informants with stuff from Kojak.
Also, any thug who after he pulls open the guy's shirt literally says out loud "You're wearin' a wire?!"




When the obsessed cop whose been chasing his serial killer nemesis for "a really long time" walks into a crime scene and just stands in the middle of the room taking it all in. Then some schmuck CS (or maybe the lead investigator) asks "Is this your guy?" and the cop says "Yes." and then they say "How can you tell?" and the guy says one of the following...

"It's him."
"I can tell."
"I just know."

or some bullshit variation of "OMG I'm insidz yur hedz, killah!!1!"

"I didn't even know L.A. HAD a subway system!!"


Fuck you. Los Angeles has a subway. Now you know.

"I assume this isn't a social call"

That phrase is ONLY ever uttered in films and TV.

Not a phrase, but there’s been a rash of clickbait articles in the wake of the WGA/SAG strikes where they’ll pick an upcoming production and announce it is DOOMED!!!! because the studios are rearranging their upcoming release schedules.

Shut the fuck up, Chicken Little.