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Red Right Hand: READING SOME TV
*He is not a secret agent. Not at all.

 

READING SOME TV

I get that look when people find out that I watch TV with the closed captioning on. That look that is not too dissimilar from the look that people get when they mention something like being born a hermaphrodite, having voted for Nader (which by the way, makes the last six years your fault*) or not knowing who or what a Paris Hilton is.

It took a little getting used to when I first started doing it (quite some while ago), but I quickly learned to just treat it as part of the landscape of TV (though nothing keeps it from being annoying while watching live newscasts, it skips around and covers on-screen info).

I started doing this for two reasons. One reason is sometimes I miss something being said, through either the fault of the sound mix or the fault of questionable hearing. The other, better reason is that sometimes the captioner isn't working from the actual episode but from a script. One that has been changed.

It happened on Veronica Mars last night ("There Has To Be A Morning After Pill") when VM approaches the girl-watching Dick Casablancas in the course of her investigations.

As aired:



Not as aired:



It happens a lot. Sometimes, the difference isn't worth noting. Sometimes, it is. It seems to happen with more comedic material. I notice it on The Simpsons quite frequently.

Just FYI. Also, you do this and subtitles will be less bothersome when you watch foreign films or Sun/Jin epsiodes of Lost.

Interesting little CC joke. On the X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages," Mulder encounters a scientist that studies cockroaches named Bambi. The following season, Mulder is tossed in a Russian prison cell ("Terma") and finds a cockroach. The closed captioning read: "Bambi?"

*not really
©2025 Michael Patrick Sullivan
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