A topic to discuss the jobs that fictional characters work at on television, and how they compare to their real life equivalents.
You often hear that TV characters are stupid, and it's true that they often do very unwise things. But after observing the jobs they do on TV, I'm forced to conclude that TV characters are actually smarter than real people.
Consider House, for example. It features a handful of doctors that can carry out almost any kind of medical test or procedure, from an MRI to a mammogram to an autopsy. They stop short of actual surgery, but they can do work that would require a horde of technicians, nurses, specialists, and public health bureaucrats in our reality. Same deal in CSI, where the criminalists interview suspects, chase down all kinds of records, and deduce the culprit while also being experts in all areas of forensic science. And God help you if you're a TV scientist. You'll have to be an expert on everything in our universe and any other universes you might encounter, while being able to build any machine out of anything while making a ironclad philosophical case for agnosticism. So maybe "God help you" was a poor choice of words.
Even when a professional on TV sticks to one speciality, they're usually far more productive than their real-life equivalent. We think of Ally McBeal as being scatter-brained and disorganised, but she was trying cases at a far greater rate than a real lawyer. I remember a quote something along the lines of "If I tried a case every week, I'd be seeing dancing babies too." In this respect Charles Gunn from Angel was the most realistic TV lawyer - thirty seconds in the courtroom and nine months of paperwork.
So, although we might laugh or roll our eyes at the antics of TV characters - that teacher would never be allowed near children again, that lawyer would get a life sentence, and so on - maybe we should be glad that they're fictional. I'm not sure how well we'd compete.

Maybe you're right. Look at policemen and -women on TV. They always catch the guy who did it, no matter how hard it is, but they don't stop at that. They have time to console the relatives of the victim(s), interrogate just about everyone related to the case, and sometimes even induce a change of heart in "the bad guy".

Also, they put so much time and effort in solving ONE case, no matter how petty. They spend a whole week working on and thinking of nothing but that one case, and they always take a personal stand and are able to feel for the victim. It's often related to soemthing they've personally experienced. And after all that, they still have time to maintain meaningful relationships, raise children, etc.

This is true of police shows, at least. Comedy cops might be donut-hogging idiots, but on police shows, they're always dedicated heroes.

Yeah, I hear ya. There's this really annoying "substitute teachers are life-changing wise men" thing on some shows that really gets to me. Granted, Vic Racine was shown to be an all-out fraud by the end of his episode of My So-Called Life, but have you ever noticed that there never seems to be a real representation of a sub? You know the "sacrifical lamb/torture victim" that a lot of us met in high school?

What I hate is the way school counselors are represented on tv? (Why, yes, I am a high school counselor! Why do you ask?)

On Boston Public, they had one counselor (Heavy D) for the whole school. So he has a caseload of what...2000 students? Gimme a break!

And Buffy becomes a counselor at her sister's school with no college degree and no counseling training whatsoever. Because counseling requires no skill at all. Grr...arrgh!

Actually, in my high school there was one counselor. She was there 2 hours twice a week. I don't think she had any training whatsoever either (at least she had absolutly no skills). Good to know there are more competent ones out there...

And word on the CSI comment... I am constantly amused over how the forensic guys can do everything.

There are certain shows that I cannot watch with certain friends. My best friend is a doctor and used to be a deputy sheriff with some forensic training. That means I can't watch doctor shows, police shows or CSIs with her. She criticizes all of them with TWoP venom and great precision. She's decided she hates "House" just based on the commercials.

Soap operas are the best places for job-related snark. Sometimes we don't hear about a character finishing college or even high school, and yet they're a major corporate mogul by the time they're in their early 20s. Oftentimes it is a family business, but no one ever has to struggle through a low-paying entry level job. Every job is glamorous. Oh, and doctors? Even if they're world-renowned neurosurgeons, they're still the only doctor on duty at the hospital and will perform appendectomies and open heart surgery, deliver babies, etc., plus working in the free clinic in their spare time. It's amazing how these doctors have risen so quickly, being that college and medical school took less than two years to complete.

And still she was frighteningly more competant than my high school counsellor with his PhD. But yes, that storyline made me wince. And Robin Wood had to have been the youngest public school principal I've ever seen.

Another thing that amazes me about work on television is how easy it is to change professions. Nobody keeps on being a doctor or a lawyer because they spent nearly a decade and a gazillion dollars on becoming one. Your first trial turns out badly? No problem! You can go join the police force tomorrow, or open a diner, or become a hairdresser without training for your new career. Oh, and all those student loans you took out becoming a doctor or lawyer? They conveniently disappear, never to be heard of again. Especially if you find fullfillment being something like a truck stop waitress or a fine artist.

I often watch movies and tv with my gang of computer geek friend. I remember one scene, can't remember what show it was, when a evil computer guy destroyed the good guy's files by smashing his monitor. I still cry over the stupidity of that..
Usually I am just laughing over how "hackers" can hack anything in a few minutes... Or when "computer experts" say things that don't make sense at all.

My thing with TV jobs is that some characters are supposed to have a job that doesn't pay well, yet they live better than most.

TudorQueen, I'm your friend. I can't watch legal shows anymore because I criticize too much. Just last night I was screaming at the TV, "You have to mark it stupid." It being the evidence the lawyer wanted to have introduced into evidence. That means I can't watch like 50% of the show out there.

You know what bugs me? How Monica Gellar seemed to spend more time at home than at work. She was a chef at a restaurant in Manhattan. Isn't that supposed to be one of those jobs that just takes over your life at a certain point (or have I just been reading too much Tony Bourdain)?

Me too, I am reading too much Tony Bourdain. As a matter of fact, a new Fox series inspired by Kitchen Confidential is one of the pilots for Fall 2005.

As far as Jobs, how about characters who never told us their jobs?... like Tommy from 'Martin' who never, ever revealed what he did. Did we ever found out?

Actually, it used to be that unless the job had something to do with the show, we often didn't know what a character did for a living. Ozzie Nelson in "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," Steve Douglas in "My Three Sons," Ward Cleaver in "Leave it to Beaver" all went off to the office but we never knew exactly what they did there.

Of course, remembering what "Bewitched" did for the Advertising business, maybe that was just as well...

Steve Douglas of My Three Sons did have an defined job - he was an engineer. Being a slow-witted child, I could never figure out why was dressed in business clothes. Wouldn't they get dirty while he drove the train?

Having used to work at a police department, I have to say that one major exception to this is NYPD Blue. All of the officers I worked with thought it was very realistic - but back in the day, when Sipowitz was still sort of an ass, before he became the Pillar of Wisdom of the precinct.

The other one they all loved, because it was so accurate? Reno 911. Unfortunately, yes. And I have to attest that after going out on calls with them, that show is accurate to a frightening degree.

Once and Again did a great job of realistically handling their various characters' jobs. Lily's problems at the online magazine and her snotty younger boss; Jake's financial woes at the family restaurant; and Rick's boss from hell, Miles Drentell (in a great cross-over move from thirtysomething, are just a few examples.

The bookstore that Lily and Judy co-owned was a good setting for the conflict and drama that often occurs when families work together.

What I also liked is that they often had Lily's children wearing some of the same outfits - reflecting the fact that the family didn't have unlimited funds for clothing due to their shaky job situations.

I don't mind when a comedy is somewaht unrealistic in their depiction of a character's work life. But in a drama, I hate it when the details of a person's life (living space, car, clothes, etc.) don't match their job. As with almost every aspect of the show, Once and Again got it right most of the time.

Yeah, most of the time. When Lily got that radio show gig toward the end of the show's run, I thought that was a bit unrealistic. I think she was originally hired for some kind of assistant/clerical job, but randomly ended up on the air one day when a radio show host stormed out, and then they gave Lily her own show. Riiight.

When I was in school, we had a police come and speak to the class during career week. Someone asked him what he thought was the "most realistic" police show. His answer? Barney Miller

I'm a police dispatcher who's married to a cop and this stuff has always bugged with me. While I was a fan of and watched Third Watch, it was so unbelievable! In reality, if a cop ever saw as much gun play as those guys did (especially Bosco), s/he would've been sitting in a broom closet in the sub-basement of the local City Hall at a desk that had a phone that wasn't plugged in to a jack. That's how blackballed you'd be. The lack of doing any paperwork drives me insane, too. In reality, police work involves lots and lots of paperwork. TV cops never seem to ever do any.



Ha! I think he was yanking your chain. OTOH, at least they did paperwork on that show. And that is realistic.

Another that comes to mind is Chandler Bing, before he quit his unknown occupation (transponster? hee!) to go into advertising. While I'm on the subject of Friends:

Seriously. I know they acknowledged that they were having money issues when Chandler quit and took the unpaid internship, so they had to ask Joey for a loan. But I always thought the real problem was that Monica was always home instead of at work because that gorgeous apartment isn't going to pay for itself. Come to think of it, most of the Friends were in the coffeehouse or at Monica's during what seemed to be work hours. I remember they made a joke about this once, where Joey or Phoebe asked aloud what the others were doing in the coffeehouse when they should be at work. Oh, how I would love to go unpunished for taking long lunches.

I'm not a doctor, nor a med student, but I have a few friends in that line of work, and we have Scrubs parties at my house on the weekend. I never knew how accurate the show was, but my friends love that J.D. has no money, no time off, a hideous boss, and a cramped apartment. Turk has marital woes, occasionally kills people, and has diabetes. And Elliott... well, she's Elliott.

I can't really comment on whether the portrayal of my future carrer is accurate, but given that the only engineers I ever see on tv are C.S.I.-bedding baddies, one can always hope.

So if you were to ever see Dick Wolf, would you scream at him, "Quit making those damned L&O shows and let me watch TV again, you bastard!"?



Word. They did that on Roseanne as well during the early, good years. I also loved that their home was messy and had a hodge-podge of furniture styles. There was crap on the stairs, dishes in the sink, and the girls' bathroom had every known can of hairspray, mousse, and gel on the counter. Unless someone is an absolute neat freak, how many homes with three children where both parents work full-time is always picked up, neatly vacuumed, and the dishes done all the time? I never, ever bought the neat house bit on Growing Pains or any other family-based sitcom.

Dan's and Roseanne's jobs were somewhat realistic too (again, in the earlier years of the show). Dan was a drywaller and when he got a good contract, life was great. When he didn't, it wasn't. Roseanne quit her plastics company job because of a crappy boss, and she didn't immediately find a dream job - in fact, I don't think she ever did. She also had to work in a fast-food chicken place with a snot-nosed kid for a boss. Dan's motorcycle shop went under, even after a lot of hard work on their part to keep it going. Once Roseanne started the coffee shop things went downhill, but for the early years of the show, it was pretty accurate.

What bugged me on that show was the lack of jobs. Buffy lets Dawn, Willow, and Tara live in the house, eat the food, use shower, washer, and dryer, and they can't even get off their butts and take out the trash, let alone get jobs and contribute. No, she had to wear a cow on her head to support the ingrates.

Carrie Bradshaw wrote only a weekly column for years, yet the only thing she ever made in her Manhattan kitchen was coffee. She was always complaining that she was broke, so much so that she had to charge tomatoes, yet she ate in restaurants, shopped constantly, and spent $40 000 on shoes. Did she skip out on the bill with her friends? Did men pay her, a la Holly Golightly, to 'powder her nose' on dates? Did she shoplift? And how can I be her?

Yah, I've always wondered about that too. In fact, in one ep, they poke fun of it when they're all @ Central Perk complaining about how their bosses don't like them, and Joey says "Maybe it's b/c you're all here @ 11 am on a Wednesday!"

Something I noticed while watching the show last night was, how unlikely it is that Ross is this distinguished scholar in his field- he's only in his mid 30s & he's a professor & NYU & gave a the keynote speech @ a conference!

The apartment thing was explained away in a very early episode -- it was Monica and Ross's grandmother's rent-controlled apartment and Monica was subletting it (illegally, mind you). But yeah ... after a while, I wondered if any of them ever worked.

I kind of liked how Chandler had a McJob early on and it was one of those enigmatic office jobs ... if he'd worked in marketing it would have been even more fun.

Jumping to another show -- the first few seasons of Seinfeld were pretty good with regard to George and Elaine's jobs. I think George was in real estate and Elaine was a reader/assistant editor at a publishing company. After the fourth season, though, the show completely jumped the shark and it became kinda ridiculous.

I think Chandler was a DP manager. I'm pretty sure they said DP instead of IT. He always had a ream of green-bar paper on his desk. I thought he was kinda young to be a manager with a large, closed-door office.

I liked that George was largely unemployed for most of the run on Seinfeld, and that he wanted to be an Architect, but probably had no clue what an architect actually does.

Best real-world match jobs would be on WonderFalls. I think that was actually the point of the show... that Jaye had this degree and a loser job and actually reported to a high-school kid (mouth-breather). And her best friend was a waitress, her love-interest a bar-tender, both of whom were always at the restaurant... But her sister Sharon, a lawyer, would never take the time to come to the aid of her sister in the middle of the day. I thought that was the most unrealistic job on that show.

I've read that many police departments praised "Barney Miller" for its realism. I think that the praise was based on the fact that they mostly dealt with relatively small crimes like shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, public nuisance, minor assault and battery, and even occasionally people who weren't criminals/victims but just needed someone to acknowledge them... no genius serial killers for Barney and the guys, in fact they rarely, if ever, dealt with murder at all.

Actually I've heard several times Barney Miller was felt by police to be the most realistic police show. It had paper work. Time sitting around doing nothing. Few shoot outs or car chases.

The Brady Bunch made me want to be an architect when I was a kid. I like to think that show is also where George Costanza got the idea to want to be an architect. I was quite young when I watched BB, so all I knew about architecture (architectry? Which is correct?) was that you drew pictures of buildings, and you always had your "plans" In a cylinder, and you should never give them to your oldest son to deliver, or take them to an amusement park.

Did I ever become an architect? Well, let's just say I can build you a very impressive Spicy Southwest Chicken sub.

No. But for some reason the image of a strip club comes to mind.


The guy that plays Officer Dangle or Officer Plum Smuggler (as I like to call him) said that cops would come up to him all the time to say that had it spot on. Remind never to get shot, run over or stabbed.


Yeah, but not because I'm a lawyer (his show isn't that bad). But because I'm sick of the spawns of successful TV shows where it basically the same stuff. Back in the day you had spin-offs but they were truly spin-offs.

One of my favorites: Sydney Bristow's spy life is so realistic, Jennifer Garner is now a marketing tool for the CIA. I wonder if our new fledgling intelligence agents have to provide their own wigs, miniskirts, and stillettos, or are those government-issued "perks?"

Ray Barone's job was a ridiculous fit. The guy is supposed to be a sportswriter, yet on at least one show Debra said a fairly common word (can't remember what it was), and Ray needed a dictionary. They also had an entire episode where Ray was a guest on a sports talk tv show and couldn't say asterisk, cinammon or ask.

Oscar Madison, now, there was a sportswriter.

My dad was a policeman and he always swore "Barney Miller" was the most realistic! He's passed away now but I suspect he would love "Reno 911!"

Great to see so many others had the same opinion of Barney!



Did George say he always wanted to pretend to be an architect? :-)

Back to Friends...

How about Phoebe and Joey?? Joey, for the most part, worked sporadically and relied on Chandler. Phoebe...massage therapist/guitarist/etc etc...and she could afford her own apartment and a social life in NYC??

Yea right.

I was always bugged by Terri on Three's Company, who was supposed to be a nurse, but, among other things, always wore high heels with her uniform. Not that anything about that show was very close to reality . . .

Well, there's RevCam. There's a job to covet. You preside over and sermonize one church service a week, spend a small amount of time in your office 'counseling' people (aka lecturing them and proffering lame platitudes,) and in return you get a mansion-sized house, enough of an income to support the extravagant lifestyle of your large, non-working family and an endless supply of non-contributing free-loaders, and tons of free time in which to stalk your grown children and fret extensively about their sex lives. None of which you will lose if you have a crisis of faith and stop working for almost a year. Sign me up!

Oh, yeah, and did we mention the house is free? And on a minister's salary, you can apparently buy individual bottles of water and tiny pints of gourmet ice cream. And if you work for JetBlue, you get as many free passes to fly across the country as you can use, even last-minute on Thanksgiving weekend. Oh, and doctors on 7th Heaven are more amazing than the ones on House, because before you even finish medical school, you can write prescriptions for birth control. You don't even have to examine the patient, first, your mad skillz mean you can just write it! The downside, though, is that you have to deliver your sister's baby in a department store elevator and possibly inspect your brother's naughties for an STD.

I thought churches provided a residence for a minister? Granted, everything else sounds screwy, but that's how it worked with my church. And it was pretty specific too--the minister with the family got a family-sized house, but his associate (a single woman) only got an apartment.

I don't know if the church is suppose to provide residence for a minister. But I know that the minister at my mom's church is given a salary (which isn't a lot) and he use that money to paid for his own living, 2 kids, 1 car, and lives in an apartment. Most of the things they have are given by church members. The minimal salary is just enough to live on, nothing beyond that. The kids clothes are hand-me-downs and the car they are driving is a used car given by a church member. I've never seen ministers living in the 'mansion-sized house' like 7th Heaven. They seemed to be too well off to be working for minimal salary...unless their church is really wealthy and have a large enough cash flow to supprt that kind of luxury. All I know is people who work for God don't make a lot.

Or you could be Alice on The L Word: same occupation (columnist for an alternative weekly), similarly lush life. OK, maybe no Manolos, but still...nice digs, nice duds. If Alice or Carrie worked for my paper, she'd be sharing a group house and shopping at Goodwill.

Recently the medical show Gray's Anatomy has reminded me how bored I am with doctor, cop and lawyer shows. Extend these professions a bit to include criminalists, psychologists, and FBI agents, and you've got most TV drama covered. So, I was wondering what other occupations have been the basis of TV shows. We shouldn't go nuts here - Friends is not about paleontology, Everybody Loves Raymond was not about sports writing, and Six Feet Under is no longer about funeral directing, more's the pity. So what's left?

There's always the military. Somewhat rare these days, and more commonly the military of some science fiction government rather than the US. I haven't seenOver There, set in occupied Iraq, but it seems to be attracting praise from reviewers and scorn from actual soldiers in equal amounts.

Private investigators are different enough from cops to qualify. They used to be the basis of every other drama, but the only recent ones I can think of are Veronica Mars and the quickly cancelled Eyes.

Criminals are a controversial choice for your main characters, represented by The Sopranos and Firefly. There are also story problems, in that constantly comitting crimes tends to get you arrested.

Any others?

You know, I can't think of any hour long dramas off the top of my head that aren't focused on those professions.

Kirsten Cohen and her late father on The O.C. are real estate moguls. There were a couple of storylines that focused on shady real estate development deals and corruption in the zoning department, but those were strictly second-tier storylines designed to get us from family plot point A to family plot point B. Kirsten and Julie Cooper-Nichol also run a magazine put out by the Newport Group. Hee, but The O.C. probably doesn't count because Sandy Cohen's a lawyer.

It certainly is a far cry from, say, Dallas, with the oil biz being central to the show.

I've been watching alot of the Mary Tyler Moore show on DVD and I love all of the random jobs that the show had-- news writer (Murray), associate producer (Mary), window dresser (Rhoda), dermatologist (Lars). Even though it was considered a "workplace sit-com" it had interesting jobs that everyday people have, as well as featured other jobs that real people have...

Nobody hated thier job, and the jobs weren't the focus of their entire lives. Amazing!

There used to be plenty of shows about teachers -- Welcome Back Kotter, The White Shadow -- but not so much in recent years.

And the 80s saw a bunch of shows centered around saucy domestic help.

I wish that someone would up and create an original private eye series set in the 30s or 40s, complete with black and white filtering. :)
We're long overdue for a series with the classic romantisized image of the private eye.

Best job? Kramer from Seinfeld working in an office. He never got paid, and had no official job. Just showed up, in a suit and with a breifcase, and did nothing. When asked what was inside, he responded, "Crackers".

But there's so much more comedy to be had when there's no money! C'mon, Suddenly Susan couldn't have been making all that much as a weekly SF columnist. She could have had a roommate in that huuuuge loft of hers. She could have had a second job as a bartender. True, looking like Brooke Shields she'd have gotten a lot of drinks for free at bars and been asked to fabulous events by wealthy men, but her entertainment budget would have been pretty limited, so she'd be looking for lower-brow entertainment. Why did she need to have this fantasy life when a realistic life could have been portrayed a lot more comically?

Best episode about jobs: Taxi when everyone has to get other work because Sunshine Cab is shut down for some reason. Best segment of the ep: Louee (sp) works in a stock broker's office. Outsells everyone but they fire him for being gross. Makes long speech ending, "you'll have to live knowing that a guy like me can come in off the street . . . and outdo you." Bwah!

Go you little bald fat man. We need a hero too.

What about Charmed? Piper has a good job at a restaurant, but as she realizes it's not what she wants to do for the rest of her life, she QUITS to look for her dream job. And what do you know? In the beginning of next season, she opens a club. What bugs me the most is that Prue did the same thing - leaving a good museum job to become a photographer. It really annoys me, because I'm making polls on the phone. It's definitely not what I want to do for the rest of my life, but it pays the bills, so I don't have the choice of suddenly leaving it just to look for something else.

Friends: What about Rachel's sudden rise from the girl who makes coffee at a fashion office (and occasionally sorts out hangers) to someone with an actual position who gets offered a job in PARIS? That was only a few years later. It's much more unbelieavable IMO than Ross's career development. At least he wasn't a waiter in the beginning of the show.



Agreed. He had this loser quality, and being unemployed just fit it so well. Also, he was never big on educating himself or trying to find new jobs. His Yankees job didn't really seem believable though. Elaine did a host of different jobs, most of them crappy, but at least two of them had to do with writing (publishing editor and writing for a clothes catalogue), and as her bosses were somewhat eccentric, that would have accounted for some of it.



Hee! I think "architect" is one of those jobs people know little about. That's why it's so easy to make tv shows/movies based on them. And why it was so easy for George to lie about it. Who can tell if he's being serious?

Cagney & Lacey always seemed more realistic to me than most cop shows, because Christine and Mary-Beth would often be seen typing away at reports on their desks. They hardly ever used their guns either. And the state of the ladies' bathroom at the precinct always seemed pretty realistic too.

Word on the above mentions of Carrie Bradshaw's implausible job. I work as a magazine journalist, and can't think of one realistic depiction of the job on TV. Apart from Daisy's career on Spaced perhaps, in my more desperate times!