This is just the beginning of a wonderful array of nonsensical actions. First, Turk successfully unplugs the Xbox 360 from the television in the space of two seconds. He then brings it in this state to the hospital and proceeds to wave it around, asking for a second player to help him finish Enemy Territory's single-player mode. The closest this scene gets to "real" gaming is a barely contextual reference to Halo's Warthogs, but they're still clearly playing Quake. Then again, even after spending hours completing it, Turk still hasn't realized that it might be called something other than "that game!" Of course, it's a comedy series, but the humor here was clearly unintentional.
I don't understand how the writers/directors/actors got the whole thing so wrong. Surely at some point the sheer awfulness of every game "reference" in this episode crossed a gamer's path before it hit the airwaves. But that's the thing: It probably did, only to be shrugged off as an inconsequential plot point. A show like Scrubs, though a comedy, places a lot of emphasis on making sure the medical aspects are accurate, even though only 5 percent of people might notice. Yet here we have a grossly inaccurate depiction of something that millions of viewers are going to spot. The sad thing is if we weren't all changing channels because of these God-awful attempts, we'd notice the story they're trying to tell: It's OK to unwind and play games for a bit. Compared to CSI's "all gamers are Grand Theft Auto-trained killing machines" view on gaming, Scrubs has a message we can all get behind.
A more recent example is an episode of The Big Bang Theory that largely centers around the group's efforts to hold a "Halo night." From the beginning, it's a massive improvement on the Scrubs attempt. But they also demonstrate a solid grasp of basic gaming lingo. There are jokes about spawn camping, cloaking and Needlers aplenty. The show also prevents itself from making nothing but in-jokes by simply introducing one non-gamer character so that everyone can relate to it. This is essentially how it gets by; it might be about a group of realistic geek characters, but everyone can understand its humor because of the one "normal" character there giving everyone funny looks. The episode does a bang up job of portraying not just gaming, but gamers - for the most part. It still suffers from problems that distract from it: Again there's button mashing, this time with upper-body paralyses added for effect.
There's a very simple rational behind my lack of tolerance: If you make a film about baseball, you can't have characters playing with tennis rackets. Why should we hold the portrayal of videogames to a lower standard? The entertainment industry needs to realize that audiences care about how their games are depicted whether it's baseball, Halo or even Texas Hold 'em.
