Have you ever come up against a point in a show when you're cringing because you're thinking, Oh man they're gonna spell it out for us cause they think we're stoopid, and then you realize they're just gonna be the bigger person and let the viewers get it on their own? This is for those little moments when you are grateful to TV writers for once.

Yes, I know I've practically given "The Office" viewers a new thread but I did this because my nod is for a moment in "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Frank is having side effects from taking pills for his, erm, "foot," to use their own euphamism. There's a moment where Ray is reading from the bottle and I'm thinking, oh great he's gonna read it out loud for us just because the writers think we're stupid morons. But no, all he reads out loud is the name of the drug: "Lancelot." At that moment, I loved the ELR writers.

Joan of Arcadia was particularly good at not including dialogue when the visuals alone could do the job. One scene that comes most to mind is that after Grace admits to Luke (through IM) that her mother is an alcoholic, they see each other at school and simply hug without a word.

The West Wing is at both ends of the spectrum here. Back in the good old days of the show (before Aaron Sorkin left), TPTB actually gave the viewers credit for having a brain. But then came the latter seasons and they had to spell. out. everything. for. us. Gah!

I don't need title card after title card, you morons!

The Closer totally owns this thread. First episode, Our Heroine discovers that her entire squad has just resigned. So she walks back into the room, plunks down a trash can in the middle of the floor, and starts going throught the pile of resignations. She reads the name off of each one in turn, tells that person his or her assignment for the current case, and then shoots the letter into the trash can. It was beautiful - she didn't tell them that she was in charge here, whether they liked it or not, and their resignations were not accepted, thank you very much, she showed it. Every episode is full of stuff like that. You actually have to pay attention to the screen to catch everything that's going on.

Love that show.

This isn't quite the same thing as the other examples people have posted, but one of my favorite moments from The Simpsons is when Marge is having some fantasy like imagining she's in a romantic novel, and the guy she's with has long, flowing blond hair and an earring. Marge looks adoringly at him and asks "Does that earring mean you're a pirate?" And he replies, in an exaggerated campy voice, "Kind of."

Hee! I read the title of this thread and The Todd immediately came to mind.

Me too!

Being a loyal Queer as Folk (US) viewer, I have absolutely nothing to add to this thread. Nothing. I'm still numb from the anvils.

Haha, QAF was very guilty of being so very obvious with everything. I'm still not sure if the writers thought the characters were dumb or the viewers. Either way I loved Brian and he'd be all up in-your-endo. Especially since he was the one the writers gave the worst lines to.

I'll never forget when the comic book debuted and the little skit they put on, all just so they could later have Brian diddling himself in the back. Sigh ... oh show.

I've come to the opinion that one of the subtlest actors on tv, who can convey volumes with a simple line, or even a facial expression, is Michael Emerson [Ben on "Lost"]. And put him in a scene with Terry O'Quinn or Naveen Andrews [which, happily, they often do] and it's hardly necessary to write dialogue at all.

Duh! I never caught that.

Smallville is probably one of the most un-subtle shows on TV, but you have to give praise to Allison Mack for her ability to add to a scene without words (which is ironic since she was hired to be the exposition fairy). Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum are pretty good at it themselves, though you have to pay attention since the dialogue they're given doesn't lend itself well to subtlety.

On Dirty Sexy Money, Donald Sutherland's character suspected that his best friend had been in love with his (DS') wife, and decided to test that theory by guessing that the combination to his best friend's briefcase would be the numbers in his wife's birthday. When that worked and the case popped open, DS said more in one pained flinch than most actors can say with a thousand words. That was an Emmy-worthy flinch right there.

Mine is more a protest about saying too much when you don't need to -

What is it with CSI, 'Shark' and half a dozen other crime shows with their totally inappropriate and very blatant 'jokes' about dead people? Its not just that we didn't need the death or the development of the plot or what's got to happen to get the bad guy spelt out (we do have brains) but its that its so crass and disrespectful. I would forgive them if I thought it was black humour developed in the course of the job, like the way real Doctors talk to each other in an Emergency Department say to cope with the stress, but this is just signposting for an easy laugh and it stinks. Could they just not say it?

On the other-hand there's Star Trek (a popular subject for me, but hey) that both manages to obscure itself to death with the Technobabble Fairies' weekly exploits (Voyager is particularly bad for it) but that they seem to think that spouting garbage is somehow a way to cut-down on other things, like plot. There's subtlety and there's killing the English language slowly. On the other-hand some actors (Roxann Dawson and Jeri Ryan were pretty good at it and they both had some incredible stinkers) manage to put something into it that sounds vaguely new each time and that's really something. And Robert Beltran should be prevented from ever going near a set again, he is one of the least subtle actors I have ever seen.

I think it started with "Law & Order", specifically with Jerry Orbach, whose world-weary character would sometimes get off a cynical or resigned one-liner at the end of the 'tag'. But Orbach was sui generis and I have to admit that the whole device has become so built into the genre, especially the CSI franchise, that it's lost the ability to shock, amuse or act as a tension release.