See My Finger, See My Thumb

Recently, I have noticed a trend on television that annoys me to no end. You might think that it's petty but, every time I see it, it gets right under my skin.

I'm referring, of course, to bad stage punches.

Stage punches have been around for as long as, well, stages. One actor pretends to hit another actor. In the case of stage productions, this is accomplished by the puncher throwing a good, solid punch about three inches upstage of the intended victim's face. Perspective and distance from the stage being what they are, this generally comes off quite well, as long as the "punchee" has his timing right and doesn't drop like a sack of potatoes before the punch is thrown, or forget to recoil after.

Hollywood, and movies, brought the stage punch, and other special effects, into the realm of an art form. Camera angles and stuntmen meant that some really good stage punches could be thrown, and they were always very believable for the audience.

For the longest time, television didn't need stage punches. As much as we would have liked to see it, Mary Tyler Moore never punched out Ted Knight. I don't think she ever hit Dick Van Dyke, either. Did anyone on "Friends" or "Seinfeld" ever have their ticket punched? I don't think so. Batman threw a lot of bad stage punches, but they were thrown in a cheesy show that covered them up with cheesy "sound effect" graphics.

Cop shows had a lot of punches, but they were in action scenes, where they could use the same tricks and stuntmen that Hollywood does.

The punches that I have noticed recently were by visible leading characters, and shot in relative close-ups, so there was no room for trickery. And they were bad. One of them must have missed by a foot.

None of which would matter to to me, except that these people are getting paid a lot of money. I wouldn't expect that some underpaid stage actor would take one in the chops eight days a week for the sake of realism, but these people are being paid hundreds of thousands per episode. And, in the following episode, they endure two hours in make-up to get a black eye put on. Something that they wouldn't have had to endure if they had just been given the black eye in the first place.

For the amount of money that they get paid, for the amount of money that I pay for satellite, is it really too much to ask that the puncher throws a real, believable punch, and the punchee takes it? Do actors and producers think so little of their audience that they can't be bothered to put up with a little discomfort to create a superior, believable product? Absent that, couldn't they just leave the punch out?

For a hundred grand, you can punch me, and I'll promise not to punch back.