I recently received an email from Dick Petersen of Fort Wayne, Ind., regarding trends in television. Here are a few of his astute observations (with my two cents in parentheses):
•Men with a perennial three-day stubble: Either grow a beard or shave. You can't consistently have the same grubby look over the course of an entire series. (I blame Don Johnson of “Miami Vice” for this. Of course, in my case, it's just laziness.)
•The qualifications to be a senior scientist, doctor or police official are apparently years of experience for males and blond hair for females. (I don't know about hair color, but they definitely have to be pretty and have at least two other exploitable assets.)
•Why do bad guys always get the first shot ... and miss? (The good guys have a sense of fair play. Plus their obligatory white hats have a “Star Trek”-type deflector shield built in.)
•I doubt police squads and laboratory staffs actually contain one each of every demographic group. (I call that “The Mod Squad Syndrome.” Ever since Pete, Linc and Julie were hyped as “One White, One Black, One Blond” back in 1968, it has become television's unwritten rule. We should probably update that statute for the 21st century to “One White, One Black, One Blond, One Gay.” As directives go, though, I can't really complain about that one. Variety is the spice of life, right?)
•Why do cars falling off a cliff always explode before they hit the ground? (Poetic license?)
•A group of 30-year-old teenagers is not very convincing. (Cases in point: Henry Winkler was in his 30s playing Fonzie on “Happy Days,” and Tom Welling was over 30 when his character, Clark Kent, finally graduated from Smallville High. Plus, it would have lost something if Melissa Joan Hart's series was titled, “Sabrina, the 25-Year-Old Witch.”)
