I've been enjoying a few tropes in 1970s TV shows

hobbes64
Wed, 26 Feb 2025 17:32:23 +0000

I've been watching some TV shows from the 1970s recently. I've noticed a few tropes that I find pretty amusing.

One of tropes is how often someone "slips a mickey" to someone else in the show. By this, I mean that someone is given a drink that has a drug in it that causes the character to pass out. There is always a certain way this is portrayed by the director. The screen gets out of focus and then the camera tilts in strange directions.
In the first 3 episodes of The Rockford Files, this scene happens twice. Once it is done by Rockford himself (well, his client does it for him), and the next time it is done to him by one of the other characters.

A variation of this is getting hit on the back of the head with something, usually a handgun. This always reliably knocks out the person without long term injury.

Another trope is the scene of a character driving up to a location, getting out, and walking into a building. In a modern show, this would maybe be done in a few seconds just as an establishing shot. But in 1970s television, this shot could last a few minutes. It's very obvious that they are trying to fill some time. These scenes are very noticeable in shows like Columbo when they went to a 90 minute format.

A variation of the "person walking" trope is when we only see the legs and shoes of the person who is walking. This is so that the audience doesn't know the identity of the person walking yet. It usually turns out to be a bad guy and there will be a crime done by the end of the scene. Sometimes we continue looking at the feet while the crime is in progress, and sometimes we zoom out to see who is doing it.

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