TV Poll: Your Hometown on TV
In my review of Saving Grace, I challenged Tuned In reader and Oklahoma City resident Keith to rate how well the show portrays his hometown. He came through:
Did they get Oklahoma City right? Not for me. Other than a very limited number of exterior shots such as the memorial site, the show is filmed in Los Angeles. I guess the fact that I've lived in OKC for 50 years worked against me for this show. For someone from New York, I'm sure it was a fairly accurate portrayal of what they think of Oklahoma. For me, the scenery looked nothing like what I see every day.
The look and feel was gritty. To be sure, there are "gritty" areas of OKC. I drive past the police station on a regular basis. It is a neat, clean, modern facility. I know a number of policemen including a homocide detective. The police and their surroundings in the show don't look like anything I know. But that is true with any show and the dramatic liscense needed to make a show interesting isn't it?
Some of the characters were a little too stereotypical. The ponytailed Native American detective and the rich cattleman were a little too much. But you have to remember that dramatic liscense thing again. How do you know you are in Oklahoma unless you have an Indian or a guy in a cowboy hat? Oh yeah, and cattle.Another interesting thing to me was her brother being a Catholic priest. This is an odd choice for Oklahoma. There are 18 small Catholic churches and 2 Catholic high schools in OKC and over 500 Baptist Churches. Factor in all the other Protestant Evangelical Christian churchs in the city and Catholics look like an endangered species. If you are going to go with stereotypical, Grace's brother should have been a Baptist.
I have once had the experience of seeing a place where I lived fictionalized on TV. (Not counting New York City; we all know TV apartment sizes in NYC magically mushroomed between Welcome Back Kotter and Friends.) I grew up in southeast Michigan, where Freaks and Geeks was set, and I was amazed at how much they got right. Not just the physical details (like the supermarket chain Farmer Jack), but the culture--such as the fact that, as behind the times as the area was, the musical references in a show set in 1980 would mostly be from the '70s. (There were a lot of Led Zeppelin T-shirts at my high school in the mid-'80s.) And they captured the flattened-out landscape as well as they reasonably could, considering they shot in L.A.
But most people aren't lucky enough to have Paul Feig and Judd Apatow render their hometowns (actually, I believe the F&G town was based on Mt. Clemens). So I'm wondering: If the place where you live was ever the setting of a TV show, did TV get it right?
Any Utahans care to weigh in on Big Love? Suburban Texans willing to fact-check King of the Hill? Kansans: I've never been to your fair state, but Jericho looks a lot more like the San Fernando Valley to me--what say? And P_luk, how's the verisimilitude on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? (Is it always sunny there?)
Meanwhile, you Springfieldians out there can continue to fight over which one of your towns The Simpsons is set in.
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1
I thought I would mention that the Farmer Jack chain recently close about a month ago. So it's funny that you would bring that example up.
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2
I grew up in Northwest Ohio (probably not far from your hometown) about halfway between Toledo, OH and Fort Wayne, IN. The only mention of the region I remember on TV is the reference to those two cities on MASH. Not having been around in the 50s, I don't know how close Klinger's description of Toledo is to real life, but I always enjoy his reminiscing, and occasionally something he says rings true. And I have been to a few Mud Hens games - they have to be one of the most famous farm teams in the country because of his allegiance, and Jamie Farr is certainly loved by them because of it.
And I know movies are completely different in the way they're filmed, but I recently saw Lonesome Jim (with Casey Affleck), and it managed to portray small town life in Northeast Indiana with incredible accuracy. I particularly appreciated the reference to the ice rink in the Glenbrook mall (which, sadly, is no longer there).
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3
I am from Louisiana and very rarely do I see a TV show or movie that gets it right. My biggest beef is the accents. They always use this southern drawl, that's what people in Georgia sound like not Louisiana. I sometimes wonder if they have ever visited Louisiana. And don't get me started about the stereotypes, Water Boy, need I say more? (though we do love our football here) I am anxious to see what K-ville is like.
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4
Shelby, I'm curious if all Cajuns eat with a "fark" like my Cajun sister-in-law does?
To be fair, my brother who moved to St. Louis said that he heard people talking about "park" steak and wondered if it was a cut of meat he was unfamiliar with. He asked them what a "park" steak was and they said, "park, park...you know, like a pig".
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5
The folks in Baltimore have it bad. The Wire (and Homicide before it) actually films in town, and the town still comes away looking bad.
And fake southern accents are the worst! I could go my whole life without hearing another half-hearted imitation of Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind.
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6
The show Picket Fences was set in Rome, Wis., a fictional town - and it showed when they did an episode about busing in black students from Green Bay. Wouldn't have needed a big bus from there, I can assure you.
Oh, and don't get me started on Happy Days/Laverne and Shirley and the damage they've done to Milwaukee....
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7
It seems like Boston is the go-to city for a lot of lawyer shows (maybe because David Mamet's The Verdict is the best Boston movie?). Ally McBeal's law office is right across the street from mine, and around the corner from the Suffolk County Courthouse that appears frequently on The Practice/Boston Legal (in all these shows, they use the exteriors only and everything else is filmed in LA. None made any effort to get Boston "right"). Down the street is the Cheers bar -- that series got a few things right: the small-town attitudes, mean waitresses, crazed Red Sox fans and grown men getting drunk in the middle of the day.
I can sympathize with the posters who heard their accents mangled, it's really tough for non-Boston actors to handle our accent. Showtime's Brotherhood, which is set in Providence, does a pretty good job, but there's always at least one person who sounds so wrong it's distracting (Annabeth Gish in this case, in The Departed it was Vera Famiga). Brotherhood does get extra points for its pilot featuring the common phrase "friggin' retahded". But if an actor can't do the accent, they should just speak normally. Not everyone in Boston has the Boston accent, just like not everyone in Oklahoma City has a drawl.
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8
Shows set in Philadelphia fall into two categories...
1) Shows that are set here for no reason other than to present second-unit exterior shots between scenes shot in the studio
2) Shows that are set here in order to have an excuse for some ethnic character to say "Yo".
Not even The Real World Philadelphia had anything to do with Philadephia.
I much prefer movies set in Philadephia, because its always fun to see how there is a complete disregard for geography -- especially during chase sequences.
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9
Yo? I thought it was y'all.
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10
Squidbillies on Adult Swim is set in North Georgia with occasional forays to Atlanta. Meth labs, boiled p'nuts, really rundown buildings. Pretty much right on.
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11
"Yo? I thought it was y'all."
no. in Philly (as in Brooklyn and Queens) "y'all" is translated as "yous"
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12
Has anyone noticed all the mountains around Odessa, TX on Heroes? I'm just asking because when I drive through that area, it seems awfully flat to me.
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 4 hours ago
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