Trouble following TV/movie Plots

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I have trouble following the plots and such to some movies or TV shows (these are sometimes worse cause they come on once a week or whatever)...

Sometimes it has to do with my general interest in the show... but there are other things i'm noticing cause it'll happen to things i'm very interested in watching as well.

Some things that come to the top of my head are

Sopranos: I love this show but i can't ever remember who did what or why things are going on. I've seen all the shows multiple times--in order-- and I still have extreme difficulty following it. I doubt I could tell you the names of two people outside of Tony's immediate family. I can't think of why i have such trouble with this other than they're always talking on the phone to (someone) or talking about someone not present and... i don't know, i just have no clue.

Movies in general where the camerawork focuses A LOT on their faces... I don't know why, sometimes it's cool cause i understand what they're saying better... but it just seems to float that much faster out of my head when a movie is filmed in such a way.

I can't think right now... I'm at work and procrastinating while I eat a snack lol

Maybe I'll think of some more specifics in a bit

I have trouble following movie plots as well. TV shows I'm better with because they're shorter and usually less complicated. I have trouble recognizing faces, understanding character motives, and plot twists, especially when they screw around with time. You're not alone.

I don't follow the plot as per se - like your 'Supposed to'

-note: movies and such are written by artist ,,, they usually have a 'real plot' masked by average I need to make sales plot.

-Remmebering charaters -never! -I'm not watching it for the 'Characters'


e.g All Bruce Willis films have an educational plot about being Autisitc - Bruce is the Autiste.

i see what you're saying... but i'm trying to find specifically WHAT it is...

"screw around with time" ... i seem to do ok with... like that movie "momento" where he's trying to solve his wife's murder but has only his longterm memory available (no short term).... i followed that thing perfectly and it's time plot is ALL screwy.



at least for me... i don't think it's the plot complexity... seems to be hit or miss with that...

maybe it is face recognition cause i do have lots of problems with the movies shot primarily at people's faces...


anoher thing i just remembered about watching cartoons as a child:

there is a kind of humor in cartoons/movies ect... where they try to insinuate a character's intentions for the immediate future... to make you think you know what the character is gonna do... this kind of humor usually tries to direct your logic into thinking they're up to something no good... and then, their intentions turn out beneign. I remember seeing this kind of thing and falling for the trap: thinking the character is up to no good... and when they reveal what he's actually doing... I would feel bad for having had those "bad thoughts:"... I remember feeling guilty.. like, "only someone as terrible as me would think the character ACTUALLY would have been that bad"... It never dawned on me that it was MEANT to mislead you into thinking such thoughts.

I usually have problems following movie plots more than tv plots as well. Usually, i like to know the basics about what it mainly is about before i see a movie so i can keep up with it while i watch it. Either way, there are maybe a couple of scenes where I don't get what is going on, but someone usually helps me along during the movie, or i'll ask at the end of the movie.

sometimes... it can even be as simple as missing one LITTLE thing... I can be following the show perfectly up until I miss one lil aspect... it doesn't even ahve to be pertinent to the plot... but if i miss it... then i may as well leave the theater or w/e and go for icecream

OMG this is so totally true of me. If I see a show, I have to be right in front so I can see it and hear it, and if anybody talks, it is SO annoying because then I didn't hear what they just said and it's so hard to keep following it once you've been distracted...

I find that putting on subtitles helps immensely with certain shows. For instance, I can't watch the Sopranos without subtitles - I can't understand a thing any of them say. Once I learned that trick, I found the Sopranos much easier to follow.

BTW, I have CAPD (central auditory processing disorder)

Not always, but often enough to see myself in this mirror.

We are all peas in an oddly shaped pod.

I used to and sorta still have this same problem.

I have the same problem, and I can never recall any character's name; also all characters of the same weight, race, and gender look pretty much identical to me. This makes things extremely confusing! When I watched "Heat" I couldn't tell Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro apart. They looked like identical twins.

I had this problem a lot when I was younger, but I don't really have it much anymore. However, I seem to understand plots more when I'm watching it by myself rather than with anyone. How weird is that?

Yeah, I hate movies where there's a lot of white guys in suits....I can't tell them apart. I also watched a Spike Lee movie in class once (terrible teacher...irrelevant for this thread) and the whole time I thought it was Will Smith. When watching movies, I tend to refer to people as the color shirt they're wearing: the red guy, the blue guy, the black guy (which confuses others since the don't identify by shirt color). Then when the characters change their clothes . . .argh!

Try watching a DVD from Hong Kong or, sometimes, other parts of Asia. Often, the subtitles make very little sense because they weren't translated by someone with a good knowledge of both the language of the film being subtitled and the language of the subtitles. So it sometimes comes across like nonsense. Which isn't easy when they're talking in very fast Cantonese...

Yeah, I have that too. I guess it has to do with my fixation on details instead of the big picture. At school that bothers me too, I don't hear what the teacher said because I was so fixated on how his right sleeve was higher up than his left sleeve...
Also I have trouble remembering faces so I don't always know who is who.

Something weird: I'm Dutch, but I have trouble understanding what people are saying on a Dutch show. While if I watch an English or American show, I can understand it without subtitles.

Oh good, so it’s not just me! LOL.

I love this show too, and I’m not even sure why because 75% of the time I don’t even know what’s going on! It could have something to do with the fact that they use so much slang and “mob talk”, and since I’m so bad with slang and expressions I’m not familiar with, it sometimes seems like the characters are speaking another language. Worse, they often refer to each other by nicknames (not necessarily nice ones, either) rather than their actual names, and if you stop paying attention for half a second you can miss the context that would have told you who they were talking about. Plus, I’m so horrible with faces. I have a hard time following the more minor characters, and never know who belongs to what family, or even if they’ve been on the show before because weeks can go by between appearances.

you'd love 24 then -- no clothing change the entire television season