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New Show about engineers 10

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Lutfi

Structural
Oct 20, 2002
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Tunring like to change to a lighter subject, TV.

I like to hear my colleagues in put on a national TV show about engineers. What would you call it? What disciplines would you portray? Which actors would you like to see in it?


 
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Let's face it, we're not the most exciting thing. So do you see something like a medical emergency show? Someone runs in. "I need these plans reviewed STAT." Maybe the fellow doing the Visine commmercials could star.

Engineering is the art of not constructing...of doing that well with one dollar what any bungler can do well with two after a fashion.
 
Yeah, about the only way to make it exciting is to have Engineer vs. crooked (developer, contractor, architect..etc) with a collapse involved. Kind of like every-day life along the Florida coast with condos!
 
Lutfi, you have some imagination. I would like the scene of trying to rescue some shopping customers from a retail mall. The firemen are there, but due to recent earthquake, they just can't go in. Why asks the reporters and the commisioner? The Structural Engineer has to ok that the columns have not buckled and nothing is collapsing. The S.E. oks it, but then the Geotechnical Engineer pulls in to the parking lot and must ok that instantaneouis settlement on the liquefiable soils is not too great a magnitude to settle the building.

I would say Bruce Willis would be the Geotech and just can't get a name for the S.E. just yet.
 
Don't forget about that "Arlington Road" (think the name is right) movie a few years back with the bad guy played by a structural engineer (Tim Robbins I believe). My wife had a field day with that one.
 
Since they have all the CSI shows now how about "Forensic Engineering" where they go into a disaster and show why the structure collapsed, or the roof blew off. Some of this is done on Engineering Disasters on the history channel but it could be made into a prime time show.
[reading]
 
There was a movie featuring an engineer with horn rimmed glasses, short sleeved white shirt and pocket protector. Michael Douglas flipped out and shot up a McD for not serving breakfast and beat up some hoods with a bat. I've forgotten the title.

Engineering is the art of not constructing...of doing that well with one dollar what any bungler can do well with two after a fashion.
 
Don't forget about "Family Affair." Uncle Bill could afford a Park Avenue apartment, a butler and he was a Civil Engineer (I suspect more Structural than Civil). Plus he was always travelling to exotic locales and dated some fine looking women.
Just like all of us.
 
Can't quite think of a name for the show or even much of a plot but the head man has to be Sean Connery as a structural guy. Depending on the character, if he is debonaire he could be Harrison Steele or if more of the action type, Harry McColumn. Must have the Scottish accent of course.
 
Oh, yeah! MacGyver! But they didn't call him an engineer. He was just a real resourceful guy who didn't mess with guns or babes and could build a nuclear reactor out of a fork and half a banana peel. I think he was a private consultant working under industry exemption.

Do we need to make the engineer/scientist distinction in our show?

Sci-fi has some geekish roles (like the various Star Trek ships' engineers), but that's preaching to the converted.

Hg
 
LOL @ "Falling Down"

Donald Sutherland was a structural engineer in Space Cowboys...and he got all the women!

It seems that the Discovery channel has about the most exciting shows about engineering but they are more like documentaries. Lets face it, like PSlem said, we aren't the most exciting things in the world. There's hope though, they made shows starring lawyers.
 
The show should be called “Desperate Engineers”. Some potential plot lines:

“Architecture in a nutshell” (special guest star Rocky the squirrel).

“Lost in space”- Begins with a crisis for our hero Engineer when the Architect moves a half dozen building columns in a ten million dollar building a day before the structural drawings are due. He then moves them again the next day. Unbeknownst to all, the Engineer uses his secret black box with a single pushbutton that absorbs all changes and instantly spits out corrected designs and drawings. The Engineer also uses a modified Delorean that allows him to go back in time and modify the contract to include the changes. However, a problem arises because by changing the past, the Engineer has also changed the future. The Architect moves more columns.

“Smallville”- A structural engineer with secret negotiating superpowers tries to use them to increase his fees. His task is complicated by the fact that a green gas emanating from meteor rocks effects everyone’s brain and makes them think they can do his job.

“Borg again” An Engineer who is actually an automated alien and is part of a larger collective that is secretly out to conquer the galaxy comes to the United States, goes to college for four years, then works for five years before becoming a registered P.E. He works at a large A/E firm. All his structural designs come out looking like compacted automobiles, but he is really fast. He is immediately promoted to head of the structural group. The universe is put into jeopardy.

 
The subject of a popular engineering show was talked about in the ASCE publications awhile back.

Now there's some new show on Friday nights (one of the major networks), something about Medical Investigators... these folks are supposed to be from something like the CDC, investigating plagues and outbreaks and Legionaire's disease, etc.

This is no more worthy than is engineering. I mean, they really play up these medical investigators...make them seem like "secrit agents" with leather sport jackets, etc.

I agre wtih Dave... bring back Mr. Ed!
 
I believe Uncle Bill was an architect....which explains the Park Av apartment. Had he been a civil engineer, he would have lived in Queens, next door to Archie.

Steve Douglas on My Three Sons was an engineer (Aerospace, though perhaps a bit early for that monicker...maybe Aeronautical). Geeky as the rest of us.
 
Uncle Bill was a consulting engineer and seemed to be always going to, or coming from a big job, usually a bridge somewhere in another country.

Mike Brady, the dad on the "Brady Bunch", was an architect.
 
When I was in architecture school, we always laughed about the episode where Mike Brady designed a courthouse complex (I think) on a landfill site in one night.

DaveAtkins
 
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