Thursday, January 6, 2011

They Did Everything But . . .

Santa was good to me.  I got the entire series of Ally McBeal for Christmas.  Um...last year.  We just got around to watching it and are enjoying it immensely.  I missed the first two seasons when it was first televised, so it was great to catch up with everything.  (We're on season three right now.)

Let's face it, Ally was a PITA and she abused the trust of her friends on countless occasions.  She made terrible choices but never resorted to running her car in the garage with the door closed.  It's a fun show and now, as when I originally watched it, the Biscuit is my favorite character.

I love it when John goes into the unisex and hears Barry White singing.  (It was great that the show revived his career toward the end of his life.  One of these days I'm going to buy a BW Greatest Hits CD.)

A lot of action happened in the unisex.  Characters pouring their hearts out.  Whole dance routines (those are the best), Billy and Georgia having sex in one of the stalls.  John doing gymnastics and his famous (and not always very accurate) dismounts.  Ally getting stuck in a toilet bowl.  Stephan the frog swirling down the bowl and coming back up again.  (And Nell and Georgia playing badminton with him when he did.)

Ah, yes -- lots of action and fun.

But the one things I have noticed that didn't happen in the unisex after the characters used the facilities (and you knew they did because of the sound of the flushing toilets) was WASH THEIR HANDS.

Ick!  Would you want to work at Cage & Fish (or be one of their clients) if you knew the partners and associates went to the bathroom and didn't wash their hands?

Imagine all the law books, case files, door handles, and other surfaces in that law office and the amount of contamination on every surface. (Don't forget those elevator buttons, either.)  You'd like to think that everyone had a big bottle of hand sanitizer on their desks, but there was no sign of it.

Did the producers realize this at the time?  Did the characters leave the bathroom because it was more important to just get them in and out of the scene so the story could progress?

Maybe.

But I\it sure made me shudder every time they left the room without washing those hands.

What odd things have you noticed on your favorite shows?