Thursday, July 22, 2010

Addendum to Perfect Strangers

Last night's TCM showing of Perfect Strangers sounded interestingly bad. It wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting, but there was still a lot that I found to be a mess.

Do judges in the US ever not wear their robes when they're presiding from the bench? I don't think I saw the judge in a robe once.
I can't help but think the lawyers would have asked a lot more questions of the jurors in the voir dire process.
The trial involved a man accused of pushing his wife off a cliff at their cottage in the hills above Los Angeles. During the trial, the jury was taken out to the scene of the crime, and that whole sequence seemed wrong to me. First, the defendant was giving testimony about what he said happened, and I can't believe this would happen in a trial, let alone in such a matter-of-fact fashion. Further, the prosecution had not yet rested its case. And, although it has nothing to do with the case, I'd think somebody would have put up a fence with such a dangerous cliff near a vacation getaway. Frankly, I was hoping the lady bailiff would fall off the cliff during the reenactment!
Do juries normally deliberate until 4:00 in the morning? Surely they would have been held over for the night with deliberations starting again in the morning.
Thelma Ritter was much too old to be pregnant. Granted, Lucille Ball was 56 when she made Yours, Mine, and Ours, in which her character gets pregnant one more time, but she too was also much too old.
You'd think at least one of the jurors would have lost his temper during all the dinner scenes, and told the rest to shut the hell up and stop talking about the case.
Ginger Rogers is only separated from her husband, not divorced (at least, that's the testimony she gave in the voir dire process). Yet, during the whole romance between her and Morgan, there's no mention made of her having to get a divorce.

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