You Ever Notice...and What's the Deal...

[Drtooth]

What's the deal with making non-alcoholic beverages alcoholic? Hard lemonade? Hard apple juice? Hard ice tea?

I mean really, what IS the deal?

Snickers again...

Hard cider pre-dates regular cider. In fact, certain parts of the world, you ask for cider, you get the hard kind.

But take it from a 30 year old teetotaler. Alcohol does indeed taste bad until you get a taste for it. Straight up stuff is like stomach acid, only much less sweet. Some people want the buzz of an alcoholic drink without the terrible taste. My sister who's of legal drinking age only drinks hard cider because she can't really get into anything else. She once tried a Cosmo and was deeply disappointed by how horrible it was.

Though I admit, when they had the alcoholic chocolate milk, that was a bit much. Though it couldn't be too different than a mudslide.

 

[minor muppetz]

I've noticed this season on Two and a Half Men that many episodes start with "Previously on Two and a Half Men...", even if the previous episode was not about that. What's the deal there? As far as I know other shows that have continuing storylines don't do that.

And occasionally there'll be hour-long episodes of shows that later air in two parts, with parts 1 and 2 being very different from each other. Considering very few of today's live-action shows have self-contained plots anymore, what's the point? One example is last years season finale of How I Met Your Mother. Both half-hours are different, with the main connection being the birth of Lilly and Marshall's kid. Part 1 continues from the previous episode where Barney takes Marshall to a casino, while part 1 also focuses on Lilly in the hospital. In part 2 she comes home from the hospital and part 2 has two subplots that lead to the first few episodes of this season (Ted gets back with Victoria and Barney gets engaged to Quinn).

And speaking of How I Met Your Mother, usually when Ted, Robin, or Barney gets a significant other who appears in multiple episodes they tend to become the "sixth member" of the main cast, but this season began with Ted in a relationship with Victoria and Robin in a relationship with Nick, and yet those two barely did anything. Victoria was more major in episodes before she and Ted got back together (and in their break-up epsiode), while Nick started to be more major in his last few episodes. So why add some relationships that we don't really know much about.

 

[D'Snowth]

I've noticed this season on Two and a Half Men that many episodes start with "Previously on Two and a Half Men...", even if the previous episode was not about that. What's the deal there? As far as I know other shows that have continuing storylines don't do that.

Maybe they're TRYING to get the network to air the episodes in order, since they have a tendency to not do that?

 

[RandomlyCatchy]

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" a quote i found on the internet...made me think.

 

[minor muppetz]

Maybe they're TRYING to get the network to air the episodes in order, since they have a tendency to not do that?

I didn't think about that possibility. So they do that on shows that have continuity? I don't watch Two and a Half Men every week, but I watch enough to not notice continuity errors due to scheduling. I do watch How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory every week, and haven't noticed any such errors.

Back in the past, when the average live-action show had self-contained episodes, I wonder what the deal was when there were two-part episodes where both episodes had their own distinctive title (as opposed to both having the same title with "Part 1" or "Part 2" added)? In fact there are cases (like the last episode of The Wonder Years) where episodes were originally aired as one-hour but both halves had completely different titles. Of course The Wonder Years tended to have quite a few storylines lasting two episodes in a row without being two-parters (in addition to certain storylines that lasted several episodes in a season) but only three that I'd truly call two-parters (the episodes where Winnie dates Paul but breaks up because she likes Kevin but doesn't want him to know, the one where Winnie breaks up with Kevin after meeting a guy at her new school, and the last episode).

And it's weird that some two-part episodes don't end with "To be continued...". Especially when the titles ARE the same with "Part 1" and "Part 2" slapped to them.

 

[minor muppetz]

In Back to the Future, after Marty manages to scare George into asking Loraine to the dance, George tells him that Darth Vader threatened to melt his brain if he didn't. But in that scene, there is no mention of melting his brain. In the finished film, we only see the start of the encounter, so I assumed the threat occurred off-screen, but then I saw the full deleted scene, and he STILL never specifically says he'd melt his brain. And in the audio commentary they say the scene was shortened because in the next scene George repeated what the audience would have already known.... But he said Darth was going to melt his brain, when no such threat was specifically stated.

 

[minor muppetz]

Here's a few "what's the deal?" things that make sense in real life, but work better in the works of fiction they occurred in.

*In "Big Fat Liar", there's a trailer for a ficticious movie of the same title... But it hadn't even started production yet. Even though the trailer in question wasn't meant to be an actual clip from the movie (or was it?), why would a studio put out a trailer for a movie before the movie has even started filming (I was going to ask the same about putting out trailers to movies that haven't even finished filming, but I recently learned that the Angry Video Game Nerd Movie hasn't finished filming yet but a trailer was posted months ago)? If the film gets canceled (and in the movie it nearly does) then it's a waste to show a trailer.
*In the "Simpsons" episode "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show", Homer refuses to read Poochie's lines if they involve him getting killed, and prepares his own lines, which he gets to do because the voice of Itchy and Scratchy stands up for him, and the shows staff appear to like the dialogue. But then when that episode airs, the voice is badly dubbed and the scene badly animated so that Poochie does die after all. But normally in animation (at least in countries where the production is based in) the voices get recorded first and then they get animated. They could have animated it better, but also I feel they could have easily kept the line Homer wrote, and THEN had Itchy and Scratchy kill Poochie. In fact the Itchy and Scratchy show is based on Itchy killing scratchy, while the first Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie episode had nobody get killed.... They could have kept Poochie on and either had him killed regularly or had him kill Scratchy.

As I said, those things work better for the plots.

Here's an observation which was once pointed out by Peter Griffin: On How I Met Your Mother, how come they have Bob Saget as the voice of future Ted, when Ted is already an adult? Have the creators ever given any official explanation?

And also on How I Met Your Mother, how come it seems like they'll show the kids in some episodes, then go many, many episodes without showing them, but then show them again? I know that since season 2 the same footage of the kids were used every time (and I've read that they shot something with them for the last episode). At first when I noticed they stopped showing the kids in every episode I thought they dropped the kids, a good idea so they wouldn't have to worry about them aging (and wouldn't have to pay the actors who would just appear for a minute at most per episode).

In an episode of King of the Hill, I think the episode is titled "Lucky's Wedding Suit", Dale gives Lucky a job and after he gets injured on the job Lucky sues Dale. Hank points out that Dales insurance (can't remember what kind of insurance) would cover everything, and then checks to make sure he has that kind of insurance, to which Dale complains that he does because Hank made him, and then thanks him. This implies that he wasn't lying about the insurance... But then a scene later Dale realizes he does not have that insurance. Maybe I missed something, but what happened there for him to not be covered?

And in the episode "The Accidental Terrorist", everybody except Hank seems to know to pay less than sticker price for a car, but Hank had been "scammed" four times into paying sticker price for cars, after the car salesman had told him that paying sticker price is a deal. But do people really expect to pay less than sticker price for anything? How can a person realistically buy a car and expect to pay less? At least the salesman didn't trick him into paying more than sticker price. Of course I've never paid for a new car (all of my cars belonged to my parents first) so maybe there's truth in television I don't know.

 

[Muppet fan 123]

Haha! I was thinking the same exact things as you for Big Fat Liar and How I Met Your Mother!
BFL's plot was a really poorly done one anyway. I guess it would be the only way to get the Frankie Muniz character to realize that they stole his idea. Otherwise, it would've been something less interesting, like seeing the news online. This way worked better.

As for How I Met Your Mother, the reason why they dropped the kids was exactly the reason you posted above. I guess they didn't want them to age on the show, since in the show, Ted isn't telling them the story for eight years straight.
And I still can't figure out why twenty-years from now Ted has a different voice. The funny thing is, they had a time-travel episode a few weeks ago, and it showed Ted in the future with the same look and the same voice.
In the end, it was just his imagination, but just something I noticed anyway.

 

[minor muppetz]

BFL's plot was a really poorly done one anyway. I guess it would be the only way to get the Frankie Muniz character to realize that they stole his idea. Otherwise, it would've been something less interesting, like seeing the news online. This way worked better.

He probably could have gotten online and heard news of the film, or maybe read about it in an entertainment magazine or news article (though I don't know if his character was the kind who'd follow entertainment news), notice story similarities, see that it was to be directed by the movie director he happened to get a ride from when heading to turn in his paper, and the plot could kick off from there.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

They release trailers for video games months, if not years before the game is completed or even being worked on, so I don't really why this is so strange...