And it made sense to change that for multiple reasons, chief among them the fact that no one has played baccarat on purpose since the 1800s. You probably know this, but in the original Casino Royale, Bond and Schiffre played baccarat. The second made them try it with James Bond. The first showed that it was possible to script poker that wasn’t stupid. The second, which was heralded by the first, was the explosion of popularity in the World Series of Poker. The first was Rounders, which gave us fairly well-scripted poker (there were problems, to be sure, but far fewer ones, and subtler ones, than scripted poker had before). Nobody who has ever played poker watched scripted poker at any point before the late-‘90s with anything but derision. I’m talking multimillionaire games with five-card draw, guys who can’t call a bet if they don’t have enough money, Urkel coming in and running the show for no real reason. But the closest I ever really get to that is when Hollywood tries to script poker.įor years, scripted poker was garbage. I’m sure, if they ever make a TV show about an out-of-work fantasy football editor (I’m available, Hollywood!), I will be absolutely repulsed by the liberties they take with my reality. The hours Monica “worked” as a chef in Friends were outright comical. Lawyers can’t abide the proceedings in court TV shows and movies.

Doctors cringe when they watch House or E.R.