I watch a lot of Law and Order. Pretty much as much as my DVR can suck in. I can't really describe the appeal this show has for me, but that's neither here nor there. Here's the real problem: Lazy writers.
Now, I'm not talking about writers who don't give characters a proper backstory, or rely on overused tropes. I'm talking about writers who, needing to fill a screen with text, don't take the time to make that text have any bearing on reality, because there's no way someone could possibly pause and rewind live television to read it, right?
Let me set the scene for you:
NYPD Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis (played by the amazing Jerry Orbach and Benjamin Bratt respectively) are investigating a murder trial in the mid 90s. I'm not sure the exact year, but Curtis was only on the show from 95 to 99 so it has to be in that range. The whole point of the Curtis character was to introduce a young investigator who's more hip to modern techniques, so Curtis is of course, using the Internet.
Now, I'm not going to talk about the fact that Curtis is somehow using a laptop to access a BBS in a car years before wireless internet became widespread. Let's just talk about what he pulls up on the laptop. He tells his partner Briscoe that on this biker BBS, someone has posted "Ah, another non-boring evening at Strokers, boys and girls, when a wannabe got in front of more torque then he could handle."
The show then cuts in to a quick 2 second shot of the laptop's screen, where the BBS is apparently being viewed in Notepad, and the writer is typing in all caps. I start reading, and realize that the name of the bar is different on the screen. Curtis said "Strokers" and the screen says "Blottos". Thanks to my DVR, I can rewind and pause on the screen.
Which is where I got this (click to see a bigger version):
I think I'll let the rest of the screen speak for itself.
I can honestly say I'd do the same thing.
Hm... pretty sure VCRs existed in the '90s.
lol, hopefully this was intentional. I know Chuck Lorre started doing a mini blog/rant on his vanity cards, starting with Dharma & Greg... I never watched that one, I've only seen his Big Bang Theory, but the are pretty funny 
Even I don't love Law and Order enough to tape it.
But how will we know if the mysterious network employee got decent air conditioning in his office?
Or worse, maybe the evil biker man who can handle his torque like a man was having a schizophrenic episode while posting on his BBS and started rambling like a loon... or maybe he was forced to write the entry by gun point and it needed to be a certain size and he was straining for words to save his life.
I am so fascinated by this.
(incidentally, I do this with some shows. In Gundam Wing episode 2, Heero Yuy's medical data is TWAIN operating instructions. The man is a machine, a scanning machine. It explains SO MUCH).
Hah, I remember that too Craig. I went back and paused it expecting Engrish and instead got a Readme.
I love when things like this happen on TV.
Similarly, I like pointing out the "Hollywood hacker" phenomenon, such as the ZOOM ENHANCE nonsense and the typing for every command instead of clicking the mouse. There's also the stupidly complex operating systems in all green that make no sense. Real software should be user-friendly and streamlined, not all that green mess.
I've even seen actors hit a series of keys on the keyboard to boot up the computer. Because of course the computer will accept keyboard input when it's not even on!
