The Most Unrealistic Things About Portrayals of Work Onscreen 

WATCH MORE - So film/tv get a lot about jobs wrong. But they also have ton of laughable cliché's in other areas. Here are the most overplayed and hilarious ones: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xv_dHTxi_yc.html

I had someone tell me once that a lot of the things you see Doctors do in television shows are actually in real life, the nurse's jobs.

The three unrealistic things: 1. People enjoy their jobs 2. People have time outside their jobs 3. People can pay rent with their jobs

The rude server or customer service person to the main character drives me crazy. You’d get fired in a flash, and most of the time it’s the customer who is the one being horrible.

An underrated good representation of lawyers was ‘Clueless’. Josh and Cher along with the other employees had to sift through documents.

I've always wondered why characters who have high powered, demanding careers, such as lawyers, chefs or professors, somehow have ounces of free time, when in reality, their days would be consumed with work. However, that wouldn't make for interesting TV.

I would love an exploration on how journalists are portrayed onscreen - and how it often ignores how the profession is severely underpaid and overworked.

You forgot Teachers. As a Special Educator (I’m a Teacher of the Visually Impaired) it annoys me to no end when I see a somewhat modern day movie with a child with special needs receiving zero support. No one mentions IEPs or accommodations or the fact that there is usually a whole team of people supporting the child (Teachers of the Visually Impaired, Deaf Hard of Hearing Teachers, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Speech Language Pathologists, SpEd classroom and co-teachers, etc.)

I think therapists and psychologists are often portrayed as the stereotypical cold, stoic sit in a chair while the other person lays on a couch type or the kooky, hippie, overly nurturing with horrible boundaries type

I work in book publishing, and movies and shows always get it hilariously wrong. Like in The Best of Everything, one of the characters is hired as a typist. She makes one insightful comment on a manuscript she's typing and is immediately promoted to senior editor in a huge corner office, getting paid tons of money. Meanwhile, editors usually suffer through years of working their way up the ranks and doing unglamorous tasks like making copies and going through slush piles in a tiny cubicle, getting paid just enough to make their share of the rent. They also make it look like a person writes a book and it gets published the next day. The process usually takes about 8 months.

Musicians. Always portrayed as someone who was lucky to be born with talent and that can play anything without practice, years of study, rehearsals, self actualization, tedious hours of everyday practice (a professional musician has to practice almost everyday, like an athleete, otherwise your speed, stamina and other skills start to fall behind). Also, it’s never portrayed the sheer amount of people that a show/concert employs and the time it takes to put on a show or an album. It’s always portrayed as something that just happened by inspiration, epiphany or some sort of magic.

Cybersecurity engineers or “hackers” in movies: wearing sunglasses in a dark room filled with screens of code and are frantically typing away to churn out lines of code and when something goes wrong, the entire room turns red and massive “error” messages appear on all screens and sirens start blaring

On "Boy Meets World", Feeny not only seemed to teach every single class that Cory and his friends had, but he even followed them from middle school, to high school, and then college. In the spinoff, Cory was the same way, he was the centre of every class scene that Riley and her friends had, yet he was supposedly only the history teacher.

Do teachers, specifically daycare & preschool teachers next, please!! 🙏🏻 There are lots of misconception about us and what we actually do & some are pretty infuriating. I've been a daycare teacher for nearly 5 years. Once, I had an Uber dropping me off at work and I told him I worked at the daycare center & he goes "Oh, you babysit?" I said "I'm a teacher." and felt really insulted that he thought I just babysat. I'm a professional. I have a bachelor's degree. I make my own lesson plans. And even though my kids are only 2, I have quite a lot to teach them every single day. From things that are less academic, like emotional self-regulation or potty training versus more academic skills like learning how to use a paintbrush, knowing your colors and shapes, reciting the alphabet, things like that. Reading books helps their vocabulary, art projects encourage creativity. They learn both fine and gross motor skills by activities like cutting with scissors or playing in the gym. They learn social skills the entire time. These are all essential for their development. Daycare teachers have a lot of work to do to make sure your kids are ready for kindergarten. We take care of your kids and educate them while you are working. You couldn't do your job if we didn't do ours. All teachers should be paid so well because society would collapse without an education system. On that note, PLEASE praise Abbott Elementary! I know you already have a great video about them but they definitely deserve an honorable mention when you're talking about accurate portrayals of teaching!! ❤

It’s also ironic that the film/TV industry itself is almost never portrayed accurately. Sorry La La Land, Mia is not getting cast as a lead in a film after doing a crappy one-woman show for only one night in a 99 seat theatre. Most actors are pounding the pavement for 10-20 years before something finally breaks through for them, if they’re lucky that is.

I hate massage therapists always being portrayed as weird, sexual or funny. It takes a year of school and an extremely hard exam that most people fail at least 2x where I am to be one. But it's portrayed as a low barrier to entry "fake job".

Please cover doctors next. There are soooo many medical shows like Grey's anatomy that glamorize the profession. They rarely show how a good chunk of the day is sitting in front of a screen charting or doing other paperwork.

The main thing is the sense of family at jobs. Not everyone you work with will be your friend or you'll become super close with. Maybe a few people but not everyone

Archeologists: In movies they find things in good condition that aren’t broken. In real life they mostly find small parts of things like shards. Or just nothing.

I’d love to see one on teachers. So often they’re basically extras in the background while the student drama is going on. When they have a bigger role they’re often inappropriately over involved with their students (I’m looking at you Mr. Schu) or it’s the creepy story line where a teacher dates a student. The genuine care and support that teachers put into their students, their passion for their subject area, etc. are rarely shown-unless they’re the impossible to live up to hero teachers, like Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds. There is a reason so many public school teachers love Abbott Elementary; it’s one of the few shows that represents the reality of the job.

As an architect, I'm begging and pleading for a part II that includes architecture as a profession. BEGGING

I'm a lawyer. Never grew up watching lawyer shows, thank god. My expectations would have been disappointing. I went to law school to escape from an existential crisis, and forgot that meant I'd be a lawyer and take a bar exam. It worked out though, I like my job. You definitely don't want to go to trial. I always explain to my clients that going to trial is gambling. You might as well roll some dice or flip a coin to determine your outcome. Judges and juries are unpredictable. Ultimately, a trial means spending several month to several years of litigation and court procedures, thousands of dollars, for someone else (a judge or jury) to make a decision for you on something that is so important you spent several years of your time and thousands of dollars on your money, that you get no say in the decision. You do all that to have someone else make a decision for you. Might work out. Might not. Just settle the case and move on with your lives. You might not get everything you want, but at least you get a say. At least you get to partake in the decision making process. All lawyers know winning at trial is luck based. I've seen some of the best lawyers money can buy lose cases unopposed.

Scientists in movies don't worry about funding nearly enough. Also, academics in movies are almost always scientists - Arrival really gave us all some much-needed representation for the humanities.

Any kind of baking/pastry chef type of job. Common job for love interests in romantic comedies, we get to see a woman in a cute apron in her cake shop (that she runs on her own), putting a ton of details and all her love into one special cake for a happy customer. With her hair uncovered, jewellery still on, and regular clothes beneath the apron. In reality, you're seldom just making one cake or one lovely loaf of bread, you're making 10-20 at the same time, for orders and the store. And owning your own bakery is an incredibly tiring job, both physically and mentally with early hours, a lot of heavy lifting and a toll on your back, neck and arms. You most definitely can't run one alone.

You should do one on teachers too. They are usually shown as morally correct and caring and even contended with just changing lives. I am a teacher and I find this profession not just underpaid but stressful and unsatisfying

Doctors, not only for the amount of free time doctors in screen seem to have, but also for being ready and focused after 24 hours shift and for treating the diagnosis like a detective-case: in most cases it's old people with multiple diseases we have to treat, with confusing exams (like one parameter could be wrong for thousands of reasons), but in tv shows it's always "oh my god, we didn't think about that, that's the solution!"

One thing that I found pretty funny in the Netflix show "Beef" is that both the main characters aren't actually good at their jobs and the skills you'd think would be gained from their professions never end up helping them. Danny tries so hard as a contractor. But he can't actually fix anything. And when he finally gets to build a house, it explodes. Amy runs a plant shop. But it turns out she doesn't know shit about plants. And when she has to survive in the wild, she ends up eating poisonous berries.

My Cousin Vinny isn’t taught in law school because the trial is realistic. There are small excerpts that are used as good examples, usually in evidence class, of things like hearsay rules and expert witness qualification. It also is a frighteningly familiar tale of a lawyer adrift in uncharted territory, really unsure of how to find their way through in a high stakes situation. Non-lawyers might be surprised to know how common this is in the profession.

I work a generic corporate job, but I think this applies to other professions: TV shows wayy overrepresent how close coworkers are with one another. I know that romances/hookups are the bread and butter of TV and movie drama, but if people at my workplace hooked up to that extent at work, they would be written up by HR and then fired. Also, dating subordinates is normalized in TV when in reality, there are major moral implications to this IRL. You could get in major trouble for dating a subordinate. Same with the extent to with coworkers are portrayed as being friends. More often than not, coworkers only see each other at work and maybe the occasional after work happy hour, but hang out with their own friends outside of work. (Obviously, people date/befriend their coworkers IRL, too, but not to the extent that it is portrayed on TV on aggregate.)

I am glad someone mentioned the romance architect thing at the beginning. 500 Days of Summer didn't go much into Tom's desire to be an architect being part of what is wrong with him. Tom's desire to be an architect could have been shown to be just as misguided as his infatuation with Summer.

My mom is a nurse and my father a teacher, so I want to see how accurately the jobs are portrayed

I’m on a rewatch session of ‘Bones’ every other day and I’m so bummed out by this inter-office dating that’s…quite something.

This is fantastic, really like the format of looking at unrealistic portrayals of professions followed by a more realistic example. Some ideas for future installments, which I hope will be in the works: businesspeople/executives, soldiers/military, spies, actors/filmmakers, doctors, farmers, teachers, bank robbers, gamblers/poker players, athletes

Every time I watch anything with a school, I keep wondering where the office staff is, or the support staff or why there's like one or two teachers in the whole building and the kids are allowed to be anywhere without adult supervision. Not to mention there are unions, child services, occupational therapy and physical therapy, guidance counselors and disciplinarians. Basically, none of the onscreen schools have any of this. Not even the ones that are made to look well funded.

I work in Claims and most of my day is spent working and after I get off work the only hobby I do is work out and that’s it. I shower, eat, watch a show or movie, and go to bed. A lot of shows and movies push this idea that people have all the time in the world and go to the bar everyday or a nice coffee shop with their friends everyday after work. Most people just watch tv, go on their phones, and go to bed. 🤷🏿‍♀️

The scene in The Bear where he gets home and makes himself the easiest throw-together meal possible - peanut butter jelly sandwich and eats it like it's the first thing he's eaten in weeks is so scarily accurate to someone in the service/cooking industry

Can we talk about how high school theater is portrayed on screen??? Or just theater in general. No one ever gets that right. And I wish movies/ tv talked about the process of making a show! How long it takes to write a good musical/ play, how many people influence the design of a show. How it changes for practical, personal, and or current political reasons.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend seems like a more realistic portrayal of being a lawyer. She only goes to court like a couple times, and she usually is shown doing research or meeting with clients.

Thank you for mentioning the Wire. It does depict police work as tedious, with lots of paperwork, and in the courts lots of plea deals and cases that make one good bust, but so much is still left uninvestigated due to orders from command or to save some local politician's hide.

I once had a collegue whose husband was a chef. We were all quite impressed, because we thought she would have amazing dinner every night. But she said: 'No, I'm the one that cooks. When my husband has been cooking all day at work, he doesn't have energy left to do it at home.' Eye opener :p

Fashion designers! Please do a take on how we are portrayed as lone geniuses when in actuality there is a large team working on a fashion collection

Also everyone seems to have intense feelings about their coworkers, most love them and they are friends as well while others hate them, no one is ever just neutral about their coworkers

As a physicist I feel like we get a parallel set of misrepresentations to the ones discussed in this video for the biological/life sciences, but we sure get a lot of them. One of the most bizarre to me though is the "multiple PhDs" trope. Like, why on earth would Bruce Banner have seven PhDs? What went wrong with the first six? In real life that would make him seem less serious, not more. Interestingly, one movie that really resonated with the career experience of my friends and I was Whiplash. Even though it's about a completely unrelated career (music), it really captures the fine line between dedication to one's craft and unhealthy obsession - or even exploitation - that comes with trying to operate at the top of your field.

I love Legal Eagle’s film reviews because of how he points out the good and bad of these films. He understands what is used for characterization and entertainment, but recognizes the research some of these writers do.

Writers! Can youtalk about writers in movies and tv? Especially movies and tv based on books where the protagonist is a writer. The process is more grueling and involves more procrastination and writers block than how it's romanticized.

I really like the moments on parks and recreation that demonstrate how, emotional and uninformed the general public can be. Like, the less we know, the louder we get😂 and watching these people who want to help the public, navigate tricky conflicts of public opinions.

Most of the jobs and professions are not movie friendly as it would be kind of boring. However, there are ways to show them as interesting and more realistic, by avoiding the big dramatic aspects movies add

I think that custodians, and fast food workers are strong candidates as they’re almost always portrayed as dead end jobs that are grunt work. That it’s impossible to find fulfillment in these kinds of jobs. This might explain why SpongeBob SquarePants is beloved by adults as his passion for his job goes against this ideology, plus the show even highlights how ego, greed, and rude customers are the real antagonists of these positions. Often, they aren’t even subtle about it.

Doctors for sure! Literally zero doctors sit at the bedside of their patients for hours on end (looking at you Greys) and it's not constant 'groundbreaking' never-been-done-before cases. Also nurses. They don't just 'take orders' from doctors. They are highly independent, highly knowledgeable, highly skilled and trained critical thinkers, time managers and compassionate workers.

My favourite misrepresentation is Social Media Influencers (apparently we’re all watching various versions of one person) and Female Actors in a Murder Mystery about the Movie who are rendered passive and inconsequential.

Legal Eagle has a lawyer react to movies about lawyers. That is a good series. The song "Don't go to law school" from Crazy Ex Girlfriend was really good.

I see teachers once again are overlooked or misunderstood by everyone to not even get a spot on this list. The media hugely underrepresents the fundamental basics of being a teacher: you can’t just walk off the street and get a teaching job because you’re “passionate” about a subject. It takes years of schooling, a Masters degree, and multiple certification tests to even qualify to become a teacher. Never mind once you actually work as one. Sure, summers are usually off (if you don’t have a second job to continue paying bills), but during the school year you’re typically working well past the kids get on the bus, weekends, and “vacation” time. Never mind the endless meetings (and emails), state-mandated professional development, and collaboration with colleagues. It’s not all “I’ll just throw on a movie!” or flighty wannabe writers who “couldn’t hack it.” One show that I love, but gets it wrong is New Girl (oh, and when did she get her administration certification? Because that’s more school and more tests and interning). There’s definitely more, but I’m drawing a blank right now. HOWEVER, I will say that Abbot Elementary is the closest to getting it right. How the principal got her job is still a little off, but the day-to-day grind and the hoops teachers need to jump through just to get some glue or a carpet that isn’t falling apart is realistically portrayed.

0:47 Cops 3:39 Politicians 5:39 Chefs 7:28 Lawyers 10:50 Scientists

What about teachers? We are either treated as inspiring mentor-like social assistant figures or as repressive gears of the system most of the times. Abbot Elementary and Bad Teacher at least make fun of many of those tropes.

I'd love to see you guys talk about how historians are represented because, to put it lightly, National Treasure isn't exactly the most realistic....

Therapists! Please do therapists! Screen representations of mental health care typically depict it as being about Big Breakthroughs - getting a patient to have One Big Moment of clarity or understanding, which will then fix them forever.

Please do a part two. As you were naming more professions at the end you could really do one, probably a part three as well.

Teachers!!! I've never seen a realistic depiction of the teaching profession onscreen. Either the teacher has a ton of free time, an immaculately decorated classroom, and a relationship with a single dad of one of her students OR the story only focuses on what a teacher did for a few years but ended up having to sacrifice their personal lives in order to achieve those results. Society at large holds unrealistic expectations for teachers, yet none of the decisions made in education center the well -being of the teachers.

Please do retail workers next. I'd like to know how my favorite show, Superstore holds up to real life.

You could do an entire video on Teacher Tropes alone - the fish out of water who comes to learn about the (usually other’d) community where they’re teaching, the wild card who upsets the stuffy institution with their radical thinking, the inspirational speaker who convinces their students to become like them, the bored burnout who sees teaching as a ticket to an easy life, the disconnected / disillusioned who have given up trying to be good at their career , the widely mocked new teacher who is wide eyed and eager to make a difference, the hot predator who sees the school social circle as their dating pool … the list goes on

As an educator, I can tell you that media gets teachers wrong. They're usually depicted as wholesome, wise types, but they're honestly just like everyone else. I love my job, but it's simply my 9 to 5. I have a whole life outside of it.

I love how scientists are portrayed, they are always tasked to solve and conveniently invent a cure for a zombie virus. But she specializes in colon cancer.

0:20 Lee Pace in ‘Pushing Daisies’ deserved more love. Also, what an impeccable man.

My contribution to this conversation is how little people in TV and movies work lol. Or how much life they're fitting in outside of work. They're always off in the middle of a work day meeting friends and colleagues, and having dinner out or friends over 7 nights a week. People popping over before work...do they have 43 hour days or what? 😂😂 Its that or theyre workaholics yet never get tired despite never getting sleep.

Please do a Part 2 for this too! Like doctors, journalists, HR people, firefighters, and other typical office jobs (clerical jobs)

"Drama is real life with all the dull parts removed." -Alfred Hitchcock

My favourite commentary had to be the ‘Scandal’ Parody on SNL and how ridiculous procedurals can get.

Can you do a video that explains what movies got wrong with school and college?

6:15 Jennifer Coolidge talked about how chefs operated in restaurant kitchens. There’s also a spoken word piece by Dan Souza (a culinary expert) on a day in the professional kitchen.

I would love this to become a series! I'm a therapist and it is rare for a therapist to be portrayed accurately onscreen. I just watched the movie Bad Therapist and cringed all the way through. You could do this for actors, teachers, finance-related work (ahem Wolf of Wall Street), and so many more!

I think you should do architects, artists (and how the glamorisation of these careers makes it seem that these people are living the dream while they aren’t) and doctors (how most of them have no time to even shower or sleep but we see them on tv having multiple affairs)

Librarians are never depicted correctly onscreen. The only ones ever depicted are usually public ones who are old white ladies with glasses who are constantly shhhshing people, a trope that was old as soon as it became a trope! Most librarians are simply boring public servants just like all the others. We don't read books all day or tell people to be quiet (nobody cares if you talk in the library) and we actually love kids! The most realistic depiction of what being a public library worker is like is the 2018 The Public, starring Emilio Estevez.

Not only that, but movies and shows often show people in lower paying jobs having their own apartments. In New York City.

I'm a writer and comedian, and I'm so tired of the idea that creatives have to suffer for their craft, until they get their Big Break™ and then overnight they go from not being able to afford rent to world famous millionaires. I feel its why many don't sympathise with the WGA strike because they wrongly assume that if they're working at all, they must've had their Big Break™ so they can't complain. The world is full of working professional writers you've never, and probably will never know about. They work in teams, they work in gaming, they work in advertising, they work in museums- they can make comfortable livings, and they likely also have multiple jobs/income streams- sometimes related to their writing (like coaching/ workshop leading) sometimes not, like yes... Waitressing. But the solution isnt to expect writers to struggle and starve until they DESERVE to be a millionaire.

Looove this video!! Could become a series! Helped me! Especially as an aspirating writer!

A film noir of the early fifties (a great one) called 'On Dangerous Ground' gives a much more accurate representation of the lives of different policemen, It is rare in that it depicts the long boring hours of police work, sitting around in a car waiting for someone to come out of their flat or return to their flat. It also depicts their different family lives, from fathers of multiple children to loners, but all rather poorly paid (as their homes testify). Also, they depict policemen working on various cases throughout the day, not just one. When 'action' begins, about 30 mins. into the film, the police detective's role is more focused on stopping vigilante action rather than be himself the one who acts to catch the assassin (a 16-year-old with a neurological condition not actually accountable for the murder of a young girl -the whole film is melancholy like that). The great Robert Ryan plays the detective, and criminally underrated wonder Ida Lupino the blind sister of the young man. Highly recommended.

this is such a great video!!

Psychologists. As someone training to become one, I now wince at so many on-screen psychologists. A lot of the times they are weird and/or manipulative or the villain in some way. And a lot of "sessions" portrayed are so unprofessional. They are sometimes too involved in the patient's life or otherwise clearly judging them which is a big no-no.

Any customer service job like fast food or retail. Honestly, the most accurate depiction I've seen was Squidward from SpongeBob, and you could argue that was still much more family-friendly than the reality.

I really liked The Good Wife, but as it went on I started to get exasperated with how many billable hours they were passing on to spend time scheming for power in the firm. One of my favorite parts of the serries is when Carry has been double crossed again, and rather than plotting his next move, he remembers this is SO not why he became a lawyer, and just walks away.

Teachers. Being a teacher is less about inspiring the next generation and more about soul crushing paper work.

Thank you, thank you for mentioning chefs(actually cooks) in this, and getting it right.

Nurses. I’m too busy to have an affair with a physician in the supply closet. Plus many of the tasks you see doctors do on tv are the nurses’ responsibilities.

I work in hospitality, and I recently watched a film that did a similar duty at my place of work. When they film there a couple years ago, it’s very surreal, watching my occupation on screen and also our own policies that conflict with what is going on on the screen so it made me think. Wow this is what it’s like to see somebody do your job on camera and get it so wrong.

I'd love an archaologist analysis, becaus people keep asking me where they can find dinosaurs close by, if I can read hieroglyphs and if I ever heard of ancient curses.

I'm an IT network infrastructure engineer. Apparently the role of me, my team, and the entirely separate cyber security team can be played by the guy that fixes the printers who is also a genius security professional (i.e. hacker).

The Wire, VEEP, The Bear and Saul/Vinny are excellent picks... good job @The Take

Friends portrayal of Ross's academic career was bad too

We need a part 2 heck even a part 3

With all of the medical dramas, I would like one to one day even show a competent health care chaplain. Or show that doctors do not do everything.

For good pollitical shows Yes, Minister and it's sequel series Yes, Prime Minister are great examples, though quite a bit older.

The media always portrays HR as boring or straightlaced or always against employees. But working closely with them, it's actually colorful and exciting because there are so many branches of HR (if you are a creative or into tech or into teaching etc, theres always something). Plus, they actually do what they can to help employees, it's just that they have to balance it with the business interests as well, and unfortunately they become the scapegoat when the two sides dont like the outcome. When in fact, most of the time, they are the only reason why it isnt worse.

Stay-at-home parents. It is always a mother, unless it is a comedy about how 'dad can't cut it'. There are a lot of great stay-at-home-dads, but according to Hollywood only if it is force on the family and the dad has no idea what he is doing (pushing the idea of mom has to do all at home stuff even when she works just as much as the dad). It also loves to show how the stay-at-home parent has everything together, again unless it is a comedy laughing about the parent having a hard time. Not every stay-at-home parent makes their kids perfect lunches for school or has everything perfect for when the kids bring a bunch of friends over, yet still has time to make a perfect five course meal by the time dad gets home. Another one is teachers. Teachers are always shown to be nearly stalking their students. They are always in the main character's (sometimes a side character's) business. They are always there way before school and stay way after school. If the kid/teen has any personal issue the teacher is right there to listen and help with the perfect advice. In reality a lot of teachers are overworked. They want to help, but do not know how or spread too thin to really notice small details showing a kid needs help. Of course you also have horrible teachers as well who seem to hate teaching and hate children yet are there. Those teachers are never shown.

I’m always shocked that tv character liked their jobs

I’d love to see a continuation of this topic with more examples of misrepresented professions. Some from the art world, some in the office world, and some in the healthcare world (bout not doctors, more of nurses and caregivers)

Nurses. According to TV/movies, we don’t exist in the medical setting until doctors need someone to sleep with in the call room. Almost everything they show doctors do in shows (direct pt care) is a nurse’s job.

Programmer, like 90% of the time I was sitting there looking at a problem to understand it and then researching possible solutions.

Okay, this isn't a career that's unrealistic, but can we talk about the size of some houses and apartments on TV shows? Especially when there's a super-expensive area like New York or San Francisco, and people with low level jobs have all the space in the world! And the houses are always multi-million-dollar mansions. Does no one live in a basic 3BD/2BA ranch anymore? LOL

In Germany, there's a really funny police show centered around a police station in a small town in deepest Bavaria, and the main trait of almost all the protagonists is being hopelessly incompetent. I've talked to an actual policeman and he said that's one of the more realistic depictions of actual policework he's ever seen.

I think the Revolutionary/Manic Pixie Dream Teacher trope and the Misanthropic/Antagonistic Teacher trope. I know a lot of teachers in my life who, though that job can be (and often is) f**king exhausting, they still really do love it. But 'loving their job' doesnt mean that they are encouraging their students to stand on desks, or teaching Shakespeare through rap to under priviledged kids. It means getting on with your job, the good and the bad, and finding what solutions you can along the way. Its one of the reasons why I love Abbott Elementary so much. It shows the younger, more optimistic (and therefore perhaps more naïve) teachers, as well as the older (and therefore wiser to the complexities) teachers, but each group teaches something to the other, and usually ends in how to have realistic expectations, but to still have hope and strive for better, even if you lose or fall short. And all of it in a under funded public school in Philidelphia. I mean, even the SCHOOL BUILDING is portrayed as solid, but needing lots of work! But in the end, with the teachers in the show, much like in real life, they all love their jobs and do what they can to educate and take care of their students to the best of their abilities.