Things I think are true about America based on Tv and Film

[PennyHasNoSurname]

People sort of pick at their food with just a fork - putting it on, scraping it off, moving it round the plate before putting it back on again and eating half of whats on the fork. Food must be stone cold by the end.

Nobody says goodbye on the phone. Now I know us Brits are painfully polite to a fault but "see you later" or "bye" is basic?

Everyone eats out of packets / dried goods. Of which they have 3000 of in their basement

School finishes at about 11am. University is called School (isnt that confusing?!)

That's it is quite standard for teenagers to have their own en suite and walk in wardrobe.

People never travel normally with little hassle. All cross- country journeys must be done either a) by car - which takes aaaaages and involves lots of adventures/bonding along the way. Or b) by Red-Eye at the last minute.
If you check in a bag it never goes on the same flight as you; it will always be lost.

Everyone has identical eyesight and can pick up a discarded rifle and fire perfectly on target first time, at distance, without having to adjust the sights.

People either have no personal life (doctors/lawyers/cops) and hang out only with work colleagues. Or they have good jobs but never actually go to work.

There are no normal British people. They are either irresistibly attractive (purely because of their fake accent) or baddies. Or both.

If there is an issue with someone's medical insurance/cover a hunky maverick doctor will always just ignore it and get them onto a drug trial/expensive treatment anyway.

Oh and they do send their children off to summer camps because they get a shockingly small amount of annual leave each year whereas schools have tons of holiday. (2 weeks leave is normal)

English people almost always have a received pronunciation accent with the exception of Daphne from Frasier and when her brother visited he was a cockney.

No-one from Yorkshire, Norfolk, Birmingham or Wales etc ever seems to make it to US film or TV land.

They all appear on the Real Housewives franchise - well it seems like it!

Anything over 100 years old is ancient.

Sports games last forever and the World Series is for USA and Canada only!

All kitchens must be hewn from really dark mahogany wood.

All phones have really long cables on the handset so you can walk around the house while on the same phone!

Professionals - particularly lawyers - never go home. However, on the ground floor of their office building there is always a convenient piano bar and restaurant, where the female lead can be taken by sympathetic male colleague to 'let her hair down' when she seems a bit tired.

However, professional women also manage to be home and make elaborate dinners in advance of the rest of the family arriving. Dining tables are enormous with candlesticks and a centrepiece.

Guns magically reload with a neverending stream of bullets, particularly if you're a cop.

16 year olds drive pristine cars. Everyone has wonderful hair.

None of which I experienced in my young days: even though I used to go to school in a yellow bus - which dropped me outside my house. The snow was pretty impressive at Christmas too.

Hi everyone,
With the OP's kind permission we're going to move this great thread into films.

One thing that is important to remember is that TV and movies are very California and New York-centric. Much of what is represented seems a bit odd to those of us in the rest of the country.

The way that teenagers in high school dress in TV shows isn't anything close to the way they dress in our local schools. it's jeans or shorts, t-shirts and hoodies for all most of the time.

The fridge is always stocked with cans of sugary fizzy drink, and kids can help themselves all the time without asking.

GIANT bags of crisps!

No squash! :(

Milk/Orange Juice is in huge bottles (maybe a gallon?) that wouldn't fit in UK fridges.

There are student parking spaces in front of the school - they don't shave to park in the car park.

Dodo upthread, there are people who don't tuck their brown paper shopping sacks nearly under their arms. These other people juggle at least 4 sacks which they can't carry properly (as no Amerucan shopping bag has a handle). There's usually a baguette and at least one stick of celery poking out of the top of the sacks for decorative effect, plus several oranges which will spill out when the sacks are dropped, as they inevitably are, as soon as the person carrying them has to find their house or car keys.

Happily, the errant oranges are usually retrieved by hunky men or impossibly cute girls, thus allowing the sack-juggler to embark on a new romantic adventure. They can then have hot sex during which the woman keeps her bra on, and the men always wear their 'shorts' in bed.

YY to the thing about university/college students always sharing rooms. A big, rich country with plenty of space, but these adults are expected to share a room with some total stranger. Yeah, right.

(And of course, after about 1/4 the book/film, said total stranger will then be delightful and introduce them to the perfect boy/girlfriend, rather than being a weirdo who eats macaroni cheese from the can at 3am while playing death metal)

Meols, yes! There is always decorative celery!

Meols, that is the standard "meet cute", a tired cinematic trope

In America, all women wear their bras during sex, if a nipple is ever exposed THE WORLD WILL END

Men must never be allowed to see nipples, ever.

Violence is fine, torture, rape whatever....but nipples must be covered at all times

Also men's feet cannot be bare, men keep their socks on during sex

(And of course, after about 1/4 the book/film, said total stranger will then be delightful and introduce them to the perfect boy/girlfriend

My freshman roommate invited me home with her for Thanksgiving where I met her decidedly hunky older brother. Alas, the attraction was not mutual.

I spent my Junior (third) year at a university in the UK. Some of the rooms in my hall of residence were shared. Maybe that's not done any more?

when a your child starts a new school in a new city, the parent just dumps the child at the front door and leaves them to register find office by themself

According to Law and Order SVU, there are only single children families in New York.

"Some of the rooms in my hall of residence were shared."
Good question - where I was at college, it was all single rooms (albeit mainly very small and shabby), but maybe it's different elsewhere.

So is it really true that it's the norm to share in the States, Seneca?

yy teabag - they present themselves at an office, and have to find the classroom on their own and have to interrupt the lesson, only to have to stand in front of everyone and tell the class about themselves.

All students immediately leave the classroom the moment the bell rings.

and this is often when the teacher is mid-sentence. Apparently the teachers in the US don't have lesson plans and time things properly?

Yes, there are still a lot of shared rooms at US colleges, but there is greater variety in types of housing than when I was in college.

I shared a room the first year, but the last three years, including the one in the UK, I had a single room.

Certainly for your freshman year (first year out of four) at college (aka university) it's almost unheard of to have a single room. It's not unusual to continue sharing throughout, though as Seneca says there is increasingly more choice.

As a side note, I did get a car on my 16th birthday so that I could drive myself to school. It was a 20 year old VW Beetle that cost a few hundred dollars. I named it Myrtle.

One more thing: despite being from the deep south, known to be a gun-loving region, I have never and would never own a gun. Of course I have friends and family who do, but I'd say it's less than 30% of that group.

My children both got cars at 16, but they were not pristine, by any measure. They were used cars in good condition.

I'm also from the Deep South (grew up in Georgia), and I have never owned a gun myself, although there are two in our house (a rifle and shotgun) that belonged to DH's dad. No ammunition though. But I have to admit, most of my close family members, including my sister, own guns.