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Malcolm in the middle was always excellent for showing exaggerated examples of realistic family meals. For breakfast the kids are all eating some kind of sugary cereal and maybe some orange juice and dad is running as fast as he can to grab coffee and go burning himself in the process. Or on the occasion they make a nice weekend breakfast, the older boys grab most of the food and there’s almost nothing left for Dewey. If that show could manage to come up with a multitude of family meal scenarios over the course of the show, why can’t people writing movie scripts write one single semi-realistic scene? This trope bugs me just as much as hanging up without concluding the call.
I remember seeing somewhere that they would actually eat on All In The Family to make it more realistic, and if you watch scenes of them doing it, it definitely worked.
It’s outdated shorthand for “look! she’s a good mom!”
I wondered if there was a TV Tropes page for this, and was surprised to not find one. Maybe I just missed it.
This is the most fitting:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodSandwichWith these being adjacent:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LateForSchool
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ToastOfTardinessOne explanation is that food spoils very quickly in studio lighting (especially after multiple takes), so the food shown are fake inedible props.
The trope’s purpose is to show an intact family preparing a hearty breakfast, then giving an excuse for why the actors aren’t actually eating it.
Additionally, characters can’t drive the story forward through conversation while chewing. Eating isn’t relevant to the plot.I’ve been listening to a lot of TV and movie podcasts. Fake food is often more expensive than real food. Unless there is a good reason, food is more often than not real.
But it’s rarely eaten.
Actors have to do several takes and if they eat in the shot, they have to eat in every shot. A lot of young actors who don’t know often learn this very early in their career to never eat the food because they will forever be sick of it.
Actors have to do several takes and if they eat in the shot, they have to eat in every shot. A lot of young actors who don’t know often learn this very early in their career to never eat the food because they will forever be sick of it.
I think it was Zach Braff that mostly chose to have soup on the Scrubs set for this reason! And if I remember correctly Donald Faison never learned that lesson 😅
Seems like maybe another trope is a character refusing to eat when they are upset or grieving. This happens in real life, too, of course. But it’s kind of a frequent go-to for writers.
Yeah, they’re elements of that scene, but not the whole thing, which seems strange because it’s such a common one. I know I’ve seen it many, many times over the years.
I miss megatokyo
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You will likely not notice this unless you happen to be very hungry when it happens; then it will drive you up the wall.
😅
And how it happens in Wikies, i stumbled across balut. People do/eat weird things to be considered en vogue.
The just leaving it without taking so much as a bite like it’s no big deal is as hard for me to believe as the spread itself. On the face of it, it shouldn’t be, after all it’s entirely plausible and narratively sensible that the character doesn’t have time and technically it only reinforces the ludicrousness of the giant meal on a weekday morning but, if I was late in the morning but also someone had cooked me pancakes and bacon and eggs with orange juice and coffee and all these cafe breakfast dishes altogether on the table like that then work is just going to have to wait. I’m not spurning pancakes for anything.
The fact that it’s daytime outside always bothered me too. My parents were always rushing us out the door before the sun was up. Maybe in the spring but even then it wasn’t full daylight outside like in these scenes.
I once had a manager tell me “If you’re late, but you haven’t had breakfast, be later”
If you work a taxing job (mentally or physically) you gotta have a calorie store
I can see she is holding 7 flapjacks with a pad of butter. I am going to assume the yellow is a eggs. Glass of milk and OJ on the table. The dad has more flapjacks with bacon and eggs. What is the orange stuff in the kids plate and what are the multi-colored things in the bowl?
The amount of food wasted on sets is disgusting.
As far as the food industry goes, Hollywood studio wastage is far, far, down on the list. The hotels and restaurants in Hollywood probably produce more food wastage than the studios. And the groceries more than both of those combined.
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Breakfast isn’t a real meal, it was made up by companies selling breakfast foods. Death to breakfast.
Because she was really hungry.
