Things that make me angry: Telephones on Television

An unanswered telephone is the most annoying dramatic gimmick ever employed. It's a tired cliché used either to establish just how overworked a mother is (in which case it precedes a shot of the mother carrying a baby on her hip and little Timmy’s lunchbox in her hand) or to set an eerie mood right before a body is revealed (generally slouched in a wingback chair right beside the phone). But what the unanswered phone does particularly well, is annoy the hell out of me. Why so loud? Why so ridiculously many rings? If I wanted to hear the telephone ring incessantly, I'd work the Christmas Eve shift at the suicide hotline. If I was lucky, screenwriters, depressed over their complete lack of originality, would call me in their hour of need. And I’d let that bloody phone ring a thousand times.