Back to Television – Drinking Again?

Back to Television – Drinking Again?

It would seem there is union requirement for television actors to be doing something, apparently anything, with their hands during every scene.  This is especially true when they are having a one on one, two person, type of meeting; read dialogue.  They can’t just sit down and talk.  Or stand there and talk, hands in their pockets, picking their noses, or some real life natural kind of thing.  (Adjusting their underwear?)

A drink of some kind must be present.  At least offered and almost always accepted – a couple fingers of scotch or whiskey of some sort is most common.  Gotta have that drink in their hand or they can’t seem to remember their lines.  Always every freakin’ scene in every freakin’ show where two people are talking.

There is one show I particularly like where the overall theme is a couple of police type brothers live with their wise and always calm father.  These guys will never be seen in their little home without having a beer in their hands and several empties on the table.  If anyone of them enters a room where the others are, the first thing out of his mouth is, “Anybody want a beer?”  In any other situation we might calls these guys “bums” (?), or maybe lushes, beer heads(?).  Slobs(?)

Since nobody can smoke anymore, like nobody ever smokes anymore?  Right … Smoking, according to American television is right down there somewhere below pedophilia or snorting crack or maybe both at the same time.  I remember when everybody on television smoked.  Everybody!  All the time – like factory chimneys.  Even the television Doctors in television hospitals smoked when they were talking to television patients … who were also smoking.  Game shows where all the panelists were smoking and the MC was smoking through the entire program, only to take commercial break to talk about the wonders of a particular brand of cigarette.

Now everybody has to have a drink in their hand or they can’t seem to function.  During office hours  at the Police Headquarters, they’re slammin’ back cup after cup of coffee.  Or meeting up in the coffee room where they are making coffee and dumping about fifteen sugars into a ratty paper cup and a pint of some (one assumes) non-dairy coffee creamer.  The fiddling with the sugar and non-dairy creamer is, of course, just to occupy their hands, once again.  I mean nobody could actually drink a cup of coffee with that much sugar and cream in it, without gagging.  Wait a minute I think I just described a Starbucks cappacino…  Okay forget that part.

Once the end of the day work bell has sounded, it’s drinky-poo time.  You can always tell the good cops from the corrupt bad cops by the drinks they drink in the local hangout, as explained in a previous blog about meeting up for a beer after every 47 minute adventure.  Good cops drink beer and bad cops drink hard liquor.  Because good cops are plain speakin’ good ole American boys who love their mothers and a beer after work is just straight (why aren’t there any good gay cops) and … well, good and what ya ought do if you’re good cop.  Bad cops, in their other holster are … well, alcoholics.

Bad politicians always have a strong hard drink the minute they are behind a closed door.  These guys always seem to have a fully stocked wet bar in their offices, with, I might add, where the hooch is always in decanters.  (Who does this for them?  Never the store shelf bottle, always in a decanter.  Crystal with a knobby stopper.  Somebody’s pouring that stuff in there for them.  God knows they would never do such a menial task themselves.)

You can tell immediately if the next actor in on the scene is a good guy or a bad guy.  The baddy always offers the entering actor a drink.  If the new guy on the scene takes the drink – woah! He is also a bad guy.  If he says “No”, then he’s a good guy.  It’s a little Hollywood secret (yeah, like none of the 100 million viewers haven’t figured it out – ever.)  When a good cop drinks hard liquor, he’s always at home alone.  Why are these guys always so dedicated they never seem to have significant others – anyway.  There he/she is knockin’ back at least two or three doubles, alone, in a dark room (sepia toned room … always sepia toned).  As I remember, drinking alone is one of the warning signs of something … what was that?  Oh yeah!  Drinking alone is one strong indication that yer a drunk!

Okay, not to complain and not offer a solution.  Why not try this:  the good cop is always seen knockin’ back a bottle of a health drink?  Say carrot juice.  Or a protein drink.  Too much?  Too far out there?  Maybe he/she simply stands there with his/her hands in his/her pockets.  There was one famous TV detective who was always sucking on lollypops because he was trying to quite smoking.  And as I understand it that was just something the actor himself came up with.  An ad lib.  The hack writers never would have thought of it.  That was at least twenty years ago and no-ho-body has come up with anything approaching that originality since.

Maybe the TV writers should shadow actual characters they are writing about.  Like follow one after work.  Hey, he/she went home.  Ate dinner with the family, sat in the TV room with wife/husband, watched some show, went to bed.  Got up and went to work again.  Didn’t get drunk, didn’t slap husband/wife around, didn’t traumatize the kids or kick the dog.  Didn’t sneak in a call and accept a bribe or plan a hit on some rival. 

Sigh … well, at least one of them is always building a boat in his basement.  A boat you can just tell he is never going to get out of that basement.  But he’s got a hobby.  Of course, he is divorced – ‘cause he’s so consumed with work.  So he’s alone.  Of course.  And, of course, while he’s working on that boat what is he also doing?  Knockin’ back some kind of whisky!  Even working on a boat he’s gotta be tanked.

I’ve lived for thirty years without drinking alcohol and these guys can’t make it for 47 minutes.  I’m no saint, just sayin’ …

http://youtu.be/G6pWiHUIzVs

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