Trope-ic Thunder: 6 Montages Of Movie & TV Cliches

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There are only so many stories to tell. You've got "boy meets girl", you've got "stranger comes to town", you've got "man goes on a journey", you've got "teenager takes mad scientist's DeLorean back in time and narrowly avoids making out with his own mom." Everything else is just dramatic spice.

So judge ye not your filmed entertainment by the originality of its central conceit, but by the flavor of that spice. And the hacky, illogical plot gimmicks collected in these montages by various upstanding netizens are stale enough to turn any viewer's stomach. Once you've been inoculated by the numbing repetition of these tired banalities, you'll never watch TV the same way again. Roll film! (There's some NSFW language in some of these clips, so keep your fainting couch handy.)

Let's Enhance by YouTube user dunk3d
Surveillance cam footage too low-res to identify the killer? Just hit that trusty enhance button until you've got your man. The geriatric viewers of those CBS crime dramas won't know how stupid that is, and then you can quickly move on to more lurid footage of dismembered strippers or whatever this episode's main attraction is. What a healthy society we live in...

No Signal by YouTube user richfofo
Mobile phones are great for getting help in a jam - and, hence, bad news for schlock horror screenwriters without the imagination to think up situations of real peril. But hey, sometimes cell phones don't work, right?

Mirror Scare by YouTube user richfofo
That's right... keep brushing your teeth or primping your hair or popping your zits... never realizing that the killer is right behind you...

Gun and Badge by YouTube user keshiklabs
In real life, the firing, demotion, or suspension of a rogue cop is a lengthy bureaucratic process involving tons of paperwork, appeals, union grievances, review boards, and probably a media circus or two. In the movies, it's as easy as a supervisor demanding the cop's gun and badge.

Car Chase Cliches by YouTube user AmanamanIII
Near as we can tell, we Americans seem to love our cars - so we'll leave it to the psychologists to figure out why we also love seeing them so spectacularly destroyed. The same ways. Over. And over. And over.

Endless Caruso One-Liners by YouTube user stewmurray47
OK, this doesn't exactly fit our theme, and you've probably seen it before (on this blog, even). But David Caruso's ultra-cornball smirklines on CSI: Miami are so awesomely dumb and relentlessly formulaic, this montage remains timeless. Or maybe... its time just ran out. YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

As TV Tropes illustrates, there are hundreds of other narrative crutches just begging for this treatment. I'd love to see a montage of all the sitcom school dances where the hero has to juggle two dates without either one of them catching on. Or every movie computer that bleeps every time the characters type a letter. What storytelling cliches would you like to drag into the spotlight for public ridicule?



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