20 Things That Only Happen on Television
The fact that TV is not like real life is both obvious and necessary. Is it silly that TV characters never hammer out the details of exactly when and where they’re going to meet? Yes. Would it be boring as hell if they did? Also yes. The problem occurs when people start to think real life is like TV. The next thing you know, we’ve got people hanging up the phone because they think you’re just magically supposed to know where they live and what time they want to be picked up, and the human race dies out.
Okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but it’s especially true when it comes to police procedurals, according to Redditor AporiaParadox. They pointed to tropes “like how you have the right to one phone call (it's more complicated than that and varies from state to state), if you don’t read the perp their Miranda rights they walk (all that would do is invalidate any confessions they might have made), an undercover cop has to tell you that they’re a cop if asked (although this one seems to have died out) and the CSI can quickly prove anything with DNA evidence” that have “paint(ed) an unrealistic picture of how the system of law and order operates.”
They then asked r/Television for more “unrealistic tropes that have become so entrenched that people actually think they’re real,” and it turns out no one on TV knows how medicine, high school, cars, computers, guns or punching works.