Spoiler Alert for those who have not yet seen this week’s Las Vegas.
Now I want to go back to the promos for the episode to see if they actually said that someone gets killed or whether just that they get “blown away”. Certainly, it’s an accurate statement (even if the way someone was depicted as being blown away was not accurate), but we cannot assume she’s dead. Pretty clearly, she’ll be blown into someone and mistaken as the flying Mothwoman.
But hey, if you’re under any delusion that the depiction of a comic con there was accurate, please rethink that. I’ve seen plenty of the very small percentage of folks wearing costumes at cons, and have yet to see one that was delusional about it – most commonly, they’re either entering a costume contest or promoting a comic. And folks don’t have a delusion that the pretty women there are really the superheroes – at most, they line up for the models who are portraying a character to get a close up with a pretty woman (which yes, seems a little silly, but it’s a small thing.)
But the truly fictional part of it was someone running a successful ongoing comic con at a casino. People throw business conventions in Vegas because businessmen will attend as an excuse to hang out in the casinos. Comic cons people attend because they want to attend a comic con, and the city would just be an expense and distraction. Most conventions build themselves on locals or people withing driving distance, and the Los Angeles folks (the key population center within driving distance) already has substantial conventions closer. Someone tried a casino con a couple years back, and it’s probably the most notorious failure in comic convention history — empty aisles, with the convention promoters trying to give away free tickets at the casino just to make it a little less empty. Of course, folks who weren’t in town for a convention aren’t suddenly going to want to see a comic show; they’re there for the tandard Vegas attractions.
But then, anyone who thinks that Las Vegas is a particularly realistic show needs to double-check their knowledge of the real world.
But if they followed logic (assuming that Las Vegas does so in every other aspect of the show), then they couldn’t do Overworked TV Plot #84: Nerds at the Comic Book Convention. I was amused earlier this season when Entourage had an episode at the San Diego Convention and read various comments about how realistic its depiction was even though they did some of the same things as were seen in Las Vegas.
I also had a fun time explaining to folks that the comic book subplot on the OC last season bore little if no resemblance to how an actual comic book is created/published.
“What? Some teens have come up with a superhero graphic novel idea? Why yes, we need them to come to the office! There is such a shortage of unknowns willing to create comics!” — that OC storyline.
Yes, everyone at a comic con is a nerd, and 75% of them show up in costume. Oh, and you have to pass through a metal detector going in, according to The Bernie Mac Show.
Yup, the TV world gets the comics world sooo accurate, like how all of New York was talking about a new superhero title on Mad About You, or how syndicated comics strip artist Caroline could alter a strip the day before it appeared in the papers… and the thing is, with the degree of interest the Hollywood writers have in comics these days, you know that it’s not simple ignorance; they know better, they just assume that the viewer doesn’t. It’s like when they mess with basic computer stuff, when you know that all of these guys use computers for their writing. (Although movies always trump TV in bad computing abuse. My favorite is probably the guy who destroys the evidence on a computer by shooting the monitor in The Negotiator. But I digress.)
I could have accepted the OC plot point about how the unknown kids got an interview with the comic book publisher, (there had been some sort of personal connection which got them in the door, if i remember correctly), but when said proposed comic book consisted of a handful of sketches of the series’ characters, and nothing resembling a real comic book continuity, I had to shake my head/laugh.
And you are totally correct about how computers have been portrayed on both the big and small screen. I will admit that the portrayal of computers has gotten somewhat better in recent times, at least from the visual standpoint. I recall many early depictions when monitors would show the most non-realistic views. The stuff displayed may still be crap, but at least it looks like something you would see on a computer now.
But what can you expect when TV and movies don’t even portray how TV and movies are made with anything but the slightest bit of reality?
I suppose it’s relatively minor compared to other things I’ve seen done, but one thing I’m always mildly amused by is when a character in a show is doing some sort of computer search, often a type of facial recognition thing looking for a bad guy, and the monitor is showing the faces blipping by in blinks of an eye. Why? It’s not like the humans looking at the monitor can follow what’s going on and the computer itself doesn’t need to display the images for any reason. I realize it’s just for the visual imagery that helps convey to the viewer the ACTION of a search going on, so I don’t dwell on it.
We all know that in reality we start a search and then everyone goes and gets a cup of coffee, but that makes for boring TV and films.
It may have been the Onion or Dateline Hollywood a while or so back which told of the next season of 24 being nothing but Kiefer Sutherland’s character doing mundane chores like picking up his laundry, grocery shopping, eating meals and going to the bathroom. Now that would be reality TV!