Poison ivy. Photo courtesy Bugwood.org
In the NCIS episode ‘Viral’ aired Oct. 27, 2015, McGee tells Bishop to be careful because the area they are investigating (outside Washington, D.C.) is covered with poison oak. The California-based writers probably don’t realize that poison oak is much more common in the western part of the United States and poison ivy is more likely the culprit in the eastern half of the country.
Yes, there’s an Atlantic poison oak, but it is still less common than good old poison ivy. My suggestion to writers is to check with a knowledgeable garden writer or horticulturist when talking about plants.
The column below was written March 7, 2007 on a similar observation about plants and television shows.
The other night I was watching an episode of House, a program about a cantankerous and frequently rude hospital physician who gets by with his bad behavior because he has some of the best diagnostic skills around.
The fictional teaching hospital is in a fictional town in the real state of New Jersey. House, who has a profound limp ironically from a blood obstruction that went undiagnosed for several days, walks with a cane.
In this episode, House was grousing because his handicapped parking space was moved a bit farther away from the hospital door to accommodate another physician with a disability that required she use a wheelchair to get around.
Adding to his difficulties was the winter season. The ground was covered with snow. Except the trees and shrubs. They still looked their summer best, full of green leaves. Ah, fake snow.
Even worse seasonal offenders have been two episodes of Men in Trees, which takes place in the fictional town of Elmo, Alaska. This series is about Marin, a life-love coach and best-selling author who chucks her life in New York City for the wiles of the wild. The love interest, Jack, is a biologist-naturalist, who rescues the transplant from raccoons and other wildlife.
In one episode last fall, Jack tossed dried leaves into a fire contained in 55-gallon drum. A naturalist would never burn leaves like that. Worse still, a few weeks ago, Marin bought a house and Jack gave her a tree as a housewarming gift. The season was winter, snow knee deep on the frozen ground, wind whistling through the large conifers, and Marin digs a hole and plants the tree. How unreal is that?
I know all of this is fictional and we’re supposed to forget reality and become immersed in the show and what the characters are doing. But when there are such obvious flaws, it jars you right back to the living room couch.
No matter what town a story takes place, on the outskirts it looks like the golden, dusty hills of California. Crossing Jordan, a show about a Boston forensic pathologist, looks like California every time the docs leave the lab.
Only Law & Order’s episodes look like winter when it’s supposed to be winter in New York City. You can even see the actors’ breath when they talk. That’s because the episodes are filmed there.
You’d think with all the emphasis on reality shows and the advancements of graphics technology, the producers would make more of an effort to make the scenes look real. Everything and everyone else is made up, why not the landscape?
Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better.