This Month's Taboo Violation Etiquette in American Movies (B-Movies and Soap, that is) Nr. 3 in a series

If we are ever studied by an alien civilisation on the basis of the 50 to 500 Megahertz frequency radiation leaving Earth in the form of television programmes then I have reason to fear any First Contact.

Hopefully, they will not land in America.

Apart from the amount of pure violence produced, the stupidity of the characters cast in TV stories is appalling.
There are some unwritten rules governing the behaviour of John/Jane Doe portrayed in American B-type or second rate TV series and movies.
To conform to the typecast, those apparently dimwited characters must:

• Never lock their front door (Lest the intruder uses up to much footage in breaking in)
  

• Always leave the car's ignition key in place (Lest the getaway continuity of the story is broken)
  

• Be very polite when:
  

a) intending to ask someone a question ("May I ask you something?")
b) when riding in a lift (elevator) with a female (Hat off).

• not be polite when:
  

a) receiving advice, favours or small gifts ("Thank you" is heard less often than "fucking")
b) parting or hanging up a telephone receiver ("bye-bye" is heard less often than "bullshit").

Fortunately, those of us who have been there, know Americans to be much less screwed up than Hollywood wants us to believe.

Scripts in American trash movies/TV serials require the story's development to be very predictable.
The material is usually so lean that whenever an object is shown in detail between scenes of the dialogue, it stands out as something significant to the story. I heartily dislike this sledgehammer method of being fed a cue!
For example: The suspect drops an object. Camera pans to the object on the floor so that everyone can see: "He's lost his notebook". Thus we suspect, nay we know, that the police will find it there later. And so it is. That's predictability.

Whenever you see a new person, someone who's not been on the cast before in a series, you can count on it that he/she is going to die soon. Because the idiotic script asks for a "dispensable" character for that purpose. Very predictable.

European series can do much better than that.
Their cops are rational human beings, often played by reputable stage actors. They even take the time to lock their cars or fasten their seatbelts.
Wild car chases, fist-fights and shoot-ups are replaced with subtle plots and unexpected turns, sometimes opening meaningful insights to the criminal mind or even contributing to crime prevention.
Why are German "whodunits" less popular in the States than trash like "LADP" is here? I suppose entertainment across the Atlantic is synonymous with viewing the same old familiar and predictable scheme over and over again. And heaven forbid that the script require any use of the viewer's brain!

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