I noticed that taking pain-killers is a very common thing in american TV shows. The main protagonist (male hero) gets hurt, goes to the bathroom, hastily pours a handful of pills into his hand and pops them into the mouth. Not one, but a hand full of pills, cleary too many. I've seen it so much, I'm starting to wonder if it's a TV trope.
I'm wondering if pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring this. It's akin to product placement.
A version of the drug habit/self abuse trope that used to be demonstrated with late nights alone with booze bottles in some depressing living room.
A blazing modern signal that the protagonist is hurt but continues anyway, to distinguish him from some impervious Superman or unfeeling Terminator clone.
The writers are mildly concerned about the plot discontinuity and rushing him to the next scene. See also the bullet wound self-care with improvised extraction and bandage from ripped clothing, which leads to miraculous physical rebound. No debilitating blood loss, nerve damage, or torn connective tissue in this plot!
I was thinking about this when watching The Shape of Water, Michael Shannon's character is in his car, arms shaking, pouring the whole pill bottle on his face ...
It's a dramatic trope.
It was the source of many jokes in sitcoms in the 1960s, too, not just the 80s, including notably what we think of today as a "kid's show" (despite being a primetime show when aired) in that it was a recurring thing in The Flintstones.
It’s no accident that they code a loop with no termination condition (except the implicit emptying of the bottle). Really boosts sales!
It just feels cleaner. I assume it's because the additives in the shampoo become overloaded on the first use, and are active on the second.
That is not sponsorship by gun companies. It is TV.
if I may ask - and this is very much on topic - who won the 2020 election, and do covid vaccines contain nanobots?
But pain pills don’t ring a bell. The classic move is strongly taking a swig of hard alcohol and then pouring it over a wound and wincing.
In my opinion, people shown to be taking pills are usually portrayed as weak or digging themselves into a hole.
Perhaps with some exceptions to people shown taking pills which I interpreted as a display of competence and experience more than anything.
In books, you get "chewing asprin without the water." So yes, it's dramatic, but not realistic. It's just a way of conveying through action "Ouch, that really freaking hurts."
...acetaminophen itself is what kills your liver in an overdose, there is no "toxin they put in tylenol"
In other places tylenol must mean what we think of as tylenol 3
Some studies out there linking acetaminophen to reduced empathy.