Betty Ross: [Looking at a subway map] The subway is probably quickest.
Bruce Banner: Me in a metal tube, deep underground with hundreds of people in the most aggressive city in the world?
Betty Ross: Right. Let's get a cab.
The message that many
Sit Coms seem to send: subways (a.k.a. the Metro, the Underground) are always more trouble than they're worth. They're always breaking down and trapping characters inside for
wacky, wacky antics or
heart-felt learning and personal growth — in other words, you're
Locked in a Room that just happens to have wheels, or trapped in a huge sideways elevator full of strangers. That's public transportation for you.
Combine this with
the myriad problems with cars and you almost want to resort to going everywhere on foot, or on a bicycle. And don't even get us
started on the
Sinister Subway!
Could have something to do with where the entertainment is made —
New York's subway is
one of the oldest in the world and at various times has been so filthy as to get the nickname
"The Electric Sewer", while
L.A's subway (while the largest system
in the western US) is either ignored or
abused by media as a setting for geological disasters (though this seems to be turning around).
Not to be confused as a
Take That to the sandwich chain
Subway.
Real Life subways that
don't suck include (but are not limited to)
The London Underground,
New York Subway, Le Métro de Montréal,
Le Métropolitain (in Paris),
Moscow Metro, and pretty much every subway system in Japan.
Examples:
Live-Action TV
Theatre
- Averted in Linie 1, a German musical from 1989, set in the Berlin subway.
Webcomics
- Greg runs into a bunch of foul tempered subway riders during his morning commute. They give him a widely used single fingered salute in this instance as seen here
.
- Least I Could Do devotes an arc to Rayne being forced to take the subway while his car is in the shop.
Music
- The Man Who Never Returned is a song about a man who is forced to live on the subway train when the train company raises the toll without warning and he can't afford to get off at any station. The song fails to mention 1: Why he would be paying to get off rather than get on, and 2: Since his wife shows up and passes him a bag lunch through the window every day, why can't she slip him a couple bucks to cover the added cost?
Western Animation
- Even the animated show Hey Arnold! did this.
- One episode of MTV's Downtown featured a battle-of-the-sexes train race of Chaka and Mecca versus Mat and Fruity to get to Coney Island. Chaka acts impulsively and takes random trains while Mecca is too spineless to stop her. Mat looks at the maps, makes a plan and firmly sticks to it despite Fruity's complaints, but all for nothing when their train line ends abruptly due to construction. Chaka and Mecca get there first, but only by cheating and taking a cab.
- Rocko's Modern Life, "Commuted Sentence": Rocko's car has been impounded, and he must take public transportation to get to work. Since every day is a bad day for Rocko, this does not go well, and that includes the subway. He gets trampled by a bunch of business lizards, a laid-off postal worker goes crazy in the subway car (or at least feigns insanity so he can get some "swinging room"), and the subway is stopped for police activity. (Which is "Arts and Crafts"!)
Comics
Film
- The Midnight Meat Train seems to be built around this trope. A killer is roaming the subways.
- In The Warriors, it seems like they would be able to just take the subway home but every time they try they get jumped by another gang.
