The majority of television shows have taken place in coastal areas of the US or in major cities like Chicago and New York. Do small-town, midwesterners feel left out?

I’m from a small town in the Midwest and the last thing I would have wanted to see was a show about a small, Midwestern town.

That’s why Friday Night Lights is so good.

But those are the places where most things are filmed anyway (though I’m seeing more shows filmed in places like Georgia and North Carolina lately). Nothing bugs me more than a show that’s supposed to take place in Kansas but it’s filmed in California and you can see hills and palm trees in the distance. lol

I’d love to see more variety in settings, but mainly for geographical reasons. It was great to see Albuquerque by watching Breaking Bad, although I don’t know how its inhabitants feel about their city now famous for being portrayed as a major center of meth use and meth manufacturing.

Well Walking Dead takes place in Georgia!

That 70s Show was all about Ohio. And The Middle takes place in Indiana, the whole premise is that it is middle class life in the flyover states.

Roseanne was vaguely Illinois.

Quite frankly, settings on the Coasts allows for more castling diversity rather than just plain white folks.

There have been some very popular shows set in the Midwest. Roseanne, Mary Tyler Moore, and One Day at a Time come to mind.

I actually find it interesting that “the rest of the country” like the NY Jewish humor of shows like Seinfeld or The Nanny. Do some of the references go over their heads like the relatives living in Boca and the bits of Yiddish.

That 70s show is Wisconsin.

Field Of Dreams

Bridges Of Madison County

Radio

Something like half a dozen movies based on Caril Ann Fugate

Catch Me If You Can

Coal Miner’s Daughter

An episode of Millionaire starred a very young Betty White as a waitress in Keokuk, Iowa. I rode my bike from across the Mississippi River to Keokuk once, and that bridge is creepy. The one in Burlington is worse, and I’ve had to drive across it a few times when I was still driving on permit.

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Little House On The Prairie

The Woman Who Loved Elvis

The Wizard Of Oz, sorta

Twister

What The Deaf Man Heard

Ok, most of my list is comprised of movies, but that balances things out. I feel like the central rural areas get quite a bit of play.
Even on those big city shows, we get a lot of mention.
On Big Bang Theory, Penny is from Nebraska. So is Mr. Kotter’s wife.
Captain Kirk is from Iowa, Radar O’Reilly is from Ottumwa. In one MASH episode, Radar gets a leave. I think it was his dad died or something. He met a girl during a transfer in Lancaster, Missouri. To get a smaller town than that, you would have to be an old, bachelor farmer.

By the way, the loose meat sandwiches Roseanne made such a big deal about, was reference to an actual small business called Maid Rite. That is their whole menu. Their home office is in Des Moines, but Roseanne actually had her first one in Ottumwa. That is where Tom Arnold is from. She visited there several times with him, so that was where she got the loose meat idea for her show.

I think the Midwest is actually pretty well represented.

Coal Miner’s Daughter? That movie’s set in Appalachia. Far eastern Kentucky, which is absolutely not the Midwest.

Read the details.

I don’t feel left out.
The town where I live was featured on a show about tourism and it made me want to visit it someday.XD

The Andy Griffith Show came to mind (Mayberry, which is down south) which was fun and charming but had a very different vibe than a police show that takes place in Miami or LA or NY.

Lots of movies have been filmed or taken place in WV. A recent one was Dark Waters. Moth Man, October Sky. Clarice’s character in Silence of the Lambs was from WV. Also the genius in Hidden Figures was from here. This is a southern state and not considered Midwest, but still a lot of good stories have come out of here.
But to film a regular TV story from here would be boring.

@chyna: The OP added the south in the comments.

No, I don’t feel underrepresented, but misrepresented.

Like Ozark that was filmed out of state. Over the top misrepresentation of us all meth heads and living in trailers. Roseanne was kind of trashy, too. It’s annoy

@JLeslie I loved Seinfeld, Frasier and all kinds of shows about big city life. It’s not like we have no Jewish people here.

@KNOWITALL I didn’t mean so much city vs rural as I mean region. Of course there are Jewish people in MO, in fact my doctor in St. Louis wore a yarmulke. But, in NY and other parts of the northeast the Jewish culture permeates into non-Jewish communities in a different way than many other parts of the country.

Did The majority of people in Omaha or Arkansas know where Boca Raton, FL was before those shows? Do they know Boca has 25% Jews while they are living in their 95% Christian communities? Some people do, sure, but I’m not sure how prevalent. Do they know what the word nosh means 20 years ago when Nanny Fein used it? I also do not mean specifically Jewish people, I mean an overall cultural thing in the northeast and stereotypes. I’m only talking about the minutia, not the overall storylines.

I think everyone is similar in wanting love and happiness and humor crosses many boundaries. Whether the story takes place in another state or another country doesn’t matter much.

@JLeslie: I feel like “NY Jewish” is almost a culture in itself.

My grandmother was Czech and I realize now, thinking back upon a lot of her comments and phrases that she used, that a lot of them are Yiddish in origin. I am betting that where she grew up probably had a lot of Jewish people in it, speaking Yiddish phrases, even if in English.

Great answers folks!

The culture is really what got me thinking about this as emphasized by the location.

@JLeslie and @jca2 are on top of it.

New York Jewish. Boston sarcasm. Certainly more diverse populations, as mentioned above. I just wonder if those resonate with more rural, small-town viewers, or if they find it foreign.

Also, @KNOWITALL makes a great distinction with being misrepresented (like on Ozark or Breaking Bad).

Even individual characters. I’ve been rewatching Grey’s Anatomy and noticed that April (small-town, Christian, farm girl) is presented negatively a lot because of her background, now transplanted into big-city Seattle.

@JLeslie As far as Jewish culture, I don’t know much other than accumulated knowledge over the years through documentaries, coworkers, friends and tv.
And yes, nosh meant eating or snacks. Many phrases and words are incorporated, even here but again, Isreal-friendly Christians are more accepting of Jewish religion than, let’s say, Buddhism from the Thai or Vietnamese. Just being honest.

@Darth_Algar Wasn’t Footloose painful to watch?

@cookieman There’s certainly a lot I can’t relate to on shows like Seinfeld, but that’s what made it funny.

@Patty_Melt

Despite reading the post twice, somehow I missed “south” in in. My apologies.

@KNOWITALL “Wasn’t Footloose painful to watch?”

No idea. I’ve never seen it.

@KNOWITALL I didn’t mean accepting of Judaism at all. I was just talking about expressions and customs and psychographics. I don’t even know if a lot of people in the middle of the country even realize nosh is Yiddish? Or, Jewish so to speak. I realized a while back that a lot of people are completely clueless how many of their favorite actors are Jewish. Not that it matters, I’m just saying, that’s my point it doesn’t matter.

@jca2 I think of Italians in NY contributing to the same overall NY culture.

It’s kind of hard, I suppose, to put on a production that requires so many people when you’re in a town that hasn’t enough overnight accommodations for the entire crew.

@Darth_Algar It wasn’t Little House on the Prairie or the Walton’s! haha!

No one even mentioned The Andy Griffith Show. Mayberry was about as far removed from Chicago as you can get.

@seawulf575 Oh yeah @jca2 did above.

That one was okay, my mom says it reminds her of this town when she was young so she enjoys it more than I do. I’m a Walton’s girl, the large family intrigues the only child in me..haha!

@seawulf575

Jca2 has already mentioned them here.

@JLeslie: I google famous people all the time (old singers, actors, etc.) and it’s very surprising how many have Jewish parents and have changed their names.

@jca2 I get surprised too. I have the Idiots Guide to Jewish History and Culture, and it has a list of Jewish actors, and I had a lot of surprises.

One thing I know, speech differs more from one place to another more than you get on tv. My daughter spent her first decade in Reno. When we got a rail pass, and took trains to visit a few places she didn’t experience before, it was a big influence for her. She had never seen wild bunnies playing in a yard before, or squirrels brave enough to sit right above you on a tree a listen to your talk.
She had heard southern accents on tv, but somehow it is far different in person. She tried to engage people in Memphis because it was fun hearing them talk. She worked our waitresses because it was funny hearing their accent.
What you see on tv and movies don’t really resonate even when you get it right, but you can sure tell when writers or actors have no experience with the place they are portraying.
When I left the Navy, and got back to Missouri, I was startled how different was the place I’d lived in and left. It is more noticeable in the little rural villages than the cities, but Missouri exists at a whole different speed than most other parts of the country. Sorry @KNOWITALL, but it is true. Speech and motion are just incredibly slower. When I first came back, it was like watching the DMV scene in Zootopia.
The air smells like air, and you can see stars. No matter how you slice it, tv can’t make those work.
So, when I say the Midwest gets a good representation, I mean as well as can be expected. Cities are portrayed funny too.
As far as @KNOWITALL taking issue over the meth thing, and trailer life, Missouri is more about weed, and coke. Iowa is deeper with meth. Trailer living gets over represented because people of the Hollywood persuasion are stunned by certain aspects of other locales, and sometimes over represent. On the other hand, we sometimes get so adapted to the environment we live in, we overlook things in our own environment.
There is only so much reality that can be done with tv and movies. I have lived in so many different environments. I think the Midwest is portrayed as well as any of the others. Actually better than California. Mostly California is portrayed as being Beverly Hills top to bottom unless the focus is on slums. I never see redwoods.

Missouri

Iowa

Nebraska

Arkansas

@Patty_Melt haha, no need to apologize! I never claimed it was fast-paced haha!
I’ve noticed the same thing speech often “slows down” the further south you go, too.

The bad thing about that is the perception that our mental facilities are slower, because our speech or pace of life is.

True! Maybe the slow comes out of, the work never stops. Trying to fast track would kill us in a 24/7 life.
Let somebody’s barn catch fire, and then see fast, also, everyone moving together as a team as though trained together extensively.
But, if you pull in to that gas station where you still get full service from the same old man who was an old man filling your dad’s car when you were little, you might as well go inside by the cash register where it smells like tires, grease, ashtray, and doubemint gum. Grab an ice cold soda, (which he might not charge you for) and wait for him to come back in and tick tick your total on his antique cash register. (Which probably is valued higher than any one month’s drawer cash.) Don’t even bother getting impatient. It will make your dinner taste better to remain calm, and let the guy finish talking about bean prices (by the wagon, not by can) with his friend who just pulled up.
That’s what tv shows can’t deliver.

@Patty_Melt You know that’s right. It’s a credit to your writing and familiarity, that I literally saw that scene in my head. And you know pretty girls never get charged! haha