List of Things That I Never Understood About Some Television Shows

LET'S TRAVEL BACK TO 1961

When television was first introduced to my household in 1961, needless to say, I was “on top of the world.” It was a joy to awaken each day to see that “magical box” sitting across the room and I would start thinking about what I could watch later that day when I returned home from school. What a great time for me to be alive.

No matter the show, I loved it. Police shows, outer space shows, westerns and Saturday morning cartoons were my “loves” and during my television-watching time, I did not want to be disturbed. Although it was a black and white Zenith set, I didn’t care. The more television I could watch, the better. I loved television to the point of even trying to do my impression of Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese commentating the Saturday afternoon professional baseball game and talking about Falstaff beer. “Alright, padnuh!” I had Dean’s patented-phrase down pat.

JUST LOOK

at how "Chester" is looking at the cold beer and the pretty saloon girl. And this was in the middle of the day when he was on-duty working for "Matt Dillon," the United States Marshall covering Dodge City and surrounding lawless areas.

Just think of how a police or sheriff's deputy would be treated today in 2014 if he or she were caught (in photo) doing like "Chester" is doing.

I DESPISE FEELING LIKE A FOOL

It wasn’t until 1968 that I realized that the majority of things on television were not real. I felt really foolish at that point, but never confessed it to many people because I hated to be made fun of and pointed at by a crowd of buddies. And believe me, I had some down-right cruel buddies. I don’t anymore. Most have moved off or died. And I am still dealing with the fact that I was duped by the top-rated television producers of the early 60’s. I would bet you real cash that in this time in my life, these “television whiz kids,” sat behind giant monitors in New York City and Hollywood and cried tears of laughter each time “I” lay down (on my stomach) in our living room floor to get my daily (or nightly) dose of their “fantasy toy”: Television.

Don’t misunderstand me. I still “like” television, but it is not a fiery-love as it was when I first met my black and white Zenith, but there are “some” programs that I do like. I just don’t fall for anything these genius television directors and producers put on the air.

Right now, to calm me down, I would like to share with you, my beloved-followers, a pretty-controversial

List of Things I Never Understood About Some Television Shows

Television's birth

• Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium that is used for transmitting and receiving moving images and sound. Television can transmit images that are monochrome (black-and-white), in color or in three dimensions. Television may also refer specifically to a television set, television program or television transmission.
• First commercially available in very crude form on an experimental basis in the late 1920s, then popularized in greatly improved form shortly after World War II, the television set has become commonplace in homes, businesses and institutions, particularly as a vehicle for entertainment, advertising and news. During the 1950s, television became the primary medium for molding public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting and sales of color television sets surged in the US and began in most other developed countries.
• The availability of storage media such as video cassettes (mid-1970s), laserdiscs (1978), DVDs (1997), and high-definition Blu-ray Discs (2006) enabled viewers to use the television set to watch recorded material such as movies and broadcast material. Internet television has seen the rise of television programming available via the Internet through services such as iPlayer, Hulu, and Netflix.
• In 2009, 78% of the world's households owned at least one television set; an increase of 5% from 2003. The replacement of bulky, high-voltage cathode ray tube (CRT) screen displays with compact, energy-efficient, flat-panel alternatives such as LCDs (both fluorescent-backlit and LED-backlit), plasma displays, and OLED displays was a major hardware revolution that began penetrating the consumer computer monitor market in the late 1990s and soon spread to TV sets. In 2013, 87% of televisions sold had color LCD screens.
• The most common usage of television is for broadcast television which is modeled on the radio broadcasting systems developed in the 1920s. Broadcast television uses high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the television signal to individual television receivers. The broadcast television system is typically disseminated via radio transmissions on designated channels in the 54–890 MHz frequency band. Signals are often transmitted with stereo or surround sound in many countries. Until the 2000s, broadcast television programs were generally transmitted as an analog television signal but over the course of the following decade, several countries went almost exclusively digital.[citation needed] In addition to over-the-air transmission, television signals are also distributed by cable and satellite systems.
• A standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including circuits for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is properly called a video monitor rather than a television. A television system may use different technical standards such as digital television (DTV) and high-definition television (HDTV). Television systems are also used for surveillance, industrial process control and in places where direct observation is difficult or dangerous.[citation needed] A 2004 study by the Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington found a link between infant exposure to television and ADHD.

Source: Wikipedia

MATT DILLON AND "DIRTY" HARRY'S GUNS -- were .45 caliber and .44 Magnums and very powerful against any man or beast. So tell me. Why did Matt and Harry not flinch at all when they were firing-away at crooks? n Matt Dillon's case I understand that they did not have earplugs in the early west, but not in Harry "Dirty" Callahan's day and time. I happen to know that there WERE earplugs and plenty of them around for the buying.

COLT .45'S AND .44 MAGNUMS -- when a police officer would shoot a thug for trying to get away from robbing a bank, would leave a huge hole in the thug's frame. But did you ever notice on Gunsmoke, Dirty Harry, and any cop or western that you sometimes cannot see where the police officer's bullet has hit the criminal. I am all for discreet use of bullets and blood, but these television producers simply deceived me and the thousands of early television fans

ON THE ABC-NETWORK'S BATMAN -- did you ever see and hear the beautiful Batmobile (designed by George Barris) squeal its tires on a dirt road? I have. Not just the Batmobile, but most cop cars including the apple-red Ford Torino driven by the team of Starsky and Hutch.

OZZIE NELSON AND "DR. ALEX STONE (on Donna Reed Show)-- always did outside chores while wearing a sweater. The chores included lawnmowing. I happen to be well-acquainted with cutting grass and I can tell you that mowing grass, any grass while I was dressed in a sweater is mighty hot. But these guys did it and without sweating one drop.

EARLY GUNSMOKE EPISODES -- that had Dennis "Chester" Goode as James "Matt Dillon" Arness' co-star, always had "Chester" chewing Matt's ear off (bad pun. Sorry.) while they were on the trail of a lawbreaker about his stomach being empty. (Chester, not the lawbreaker). It was amazing to me to hear "Chester" bellyache (bad pun. Sorry) so much for he and Matt had just chowed-down at the Dodge House before "hitting the trail" to bring a lawbreaker to justice.

IN GUNSMOKE AND ALL EARLY WESTERNS -- when bandits would rob the town's bank and mount their horses to get away, the marshall and deputies would waste bullets by the hundred trying to hit them with a pistol. I got an idea. Just shoot their horses out from under them, or was an early upstart of PETA around back then?

NOTICE THE VILLIANS' -- teeth on these rugged westerns and you will see that their teeth are "pearly white." Why? And how? There was no toothpaste or toothbrushes in the early west. And if a villain did brush his teeth with a piece of tree limb, that would not make his teeth perfectly-straight and as white as snow.

WATCH A FEW EPISODES OF EARLY GUNSMOKE -- shows and most-times, daytime to be exact, you will see Kitty Russell, pretty owner of The Long Branch Saloon, Chester (or Festus Hagin, later on, doing some free-loading), kindly Doc. Addams and Matt having glasses of beer and shots of whiskey. And Matt on duty. Whaaaattt? As much as they drank, looks like they would be enjoying quite a buzz. But they all talked plain, walked straight and rode their horses with precision-acccuracy.

ON GUNSMOKE, THE RIFLEMAN, RAWHIDE -- and other popular westerns, did you ever notice the stars of these shows NEVER had a new change of clothing? They all wore the same clothes week after week--including Miss Kitty and Sam, the bartender. Go and figure that one out.

PRO-TELEVISION WRESTLING -- take a close look at the two wrestlers in the ring. At various times of the match, the bad guy will get the good guy in a corner and beat him to nearly a pulp. He cannot stand-up, but suddenly, he barely taps the bad guy in the stomach and this sissy punch most sends the bad wrestler out of the ring. A mystery? It was for me in the beginning. Now, I know better.

IN TELEVISION SHOWS -- where a machine gun is used, look at the good guy or bad guy when someone whips-out his machine guns and lets a stream of bullets go straight toward him as he runs from his first hiding place to another hiding place and all without getting one scratch. My, my. This guy being shot at must be faster than Superman and twice as tough.

I LOVED PERRY MASON AND MARCUS WELBY, M.D. -- but on these shows, I never saw one client or patient hand their bookkeepers one dollar for payment. One would assume they worked for nothing.

OTHER THINGS YOU NEVER SAW ON TELEVISION WESTERNS -- the men or women stealing-away to be alone so they could obey "nature's call," and even the horses were immune to bowel movements because allowing them to be filmed might have been offensive in the censor's view.

IN ONE GUNSMOKE -- Matt had a robber pinned behind some rocks. After some amount of shooting with pistols, Matt says to Chester, "I hope I get him soon for I am almost out of bullets." Then he fires away at the robber and says to Chester, "That's it. I am OUT of bullets." But after a commercial-break, Matt is loaded and firing away again at the robber. We know that Chester never wore a gun, and their horses, even if they had bullets in their saddlebags, were too far away, so where did Matt get his bullets?

Note: No cattle or horses were harmed in the writing of this story.