I watch a lot of TV, and I observe things about it all the time, but these two stood out this week:

On the new episode of Desperate Housewives, when rivals Bree and Katherine decided to work together on a project, Lynette quipped:

I've faced cancer and a tornado, but I'm running from this.

Then, in a self-conscious change of pace for the show, the next shot showed all the other housewives laughing at Lynette's joke. I can only assume that the crew wanted to make sure all the viewers understood that Lynette was making light of the situation by referencing her recent misfortune, not belittling such devastating events. Anyway, it stood out as something I rarely see on the show (most comedies, actually).

Also, I've made a more general observation lately about a particular type of phrasing I simply will not stand for in fiction any longer. This is something people never say, at least not in the intonation I hear on TV. It finds its way into TV dialogue all the time, but the instance that sent me over the edge was an episode of Buffy I just saw, in which someone said something in this form:

I'd say it's worth two...maybe three hundred dollars.

Nobody says that. And if they did, they wouldn't pause so much after the first number. What most people seem to say is something like, "I'd say it's worth two hundred dollars...maybe three (hundred)." If it's an afterthought, it would be at the end of the sentence, right?

Just some things I've noticed as I consider writing another screenplay....