“It would never happen like that.” That’s the phrase my sister, a lawyer who worked in the Bronx DA’s office, would utter throughout any crime procedural we would be watching. Naturally, she would know that they were taking poetic license with the plot, but it was all good fun for the rest of us.
I get it. In my early days of publishing — when print was still a thing — I would say the phrase often. For example, the scene in 13 Going on 30 where Jenna has an idea for the magazine that is stolen by a competitor, printed, and displayed on a bus the very next day.
“It would never happen like that.”
Nowadays, I find myself noticing the home technology used in television shows and saying…wait, where is the tech?! The systems that we are used to dealing with are hard to find in scripted TV — even in places where its omission is glaring.
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Take the Apple TV show Your Friends & Neighbors, which I am currently enjoying in its second season. The setting is a wealthy Westchester community and its well-to-do inhabitants, and features Jon Hamm as a financial exec who loses his gig and resorts to stealing from his titular friends and neighbors to stay afloat. He is careful to take things they would never miss, and each item he lifts gets its own slide that details its heritage and monetary value.
And while the characters are all fictional, something about their lifestyle and desires may seem familiar to a custom installer. That makes it all the weirder that their lifestyles are largely free from the conveniences modern tech brings.
Let’s start with the big one: security. For Hamm’s character to gain access to the homes, we are told that they all have security systems, but the neighborhood is so safe nobody turns them on. No cameras of any kind either — not even doorbell.
All right, I get it. We need to swallow some illogical thinking to move the plot along. Fine. But Hamm’s character, Coop, is an avid watcher of old movies. He talks about them; he is seen watching them most evenings; he invites his sister and children to watch with him. When he suddenly has free time in his day in season two, he visits a theater showing old movies.
So, why does he not have a home theater in his spacious Westchester home? Or a media room? (Note: Much of his movie-watching time in the series is at a second home he rents after his divorce, but there are plenty of scenes shot in his former home, and no theater.)
In one episode, Coop and his son are hanging what looks to be around a 45-inch TV for his dad above a fireplace (!), and he tells him, “Dad, I’ve got a guy for this.”
Do you, Coop? I don’t think so.
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Every home in the show is filled with giant windows and not a motorized shade in sight. And I get that flinging drapes open and filling a room with sudden, ridiculously bright light makes a compelling scene, but for the sake of reality they will have to figure out how to do the same thing with someone belting out “Okay Josh, good morning!”
Not to say the show is not good — I am enjoying it. But I would like to see a better representation of tech not just in that world, but wherever rich-people drama unfolds.
