The Top 3 TV Stereotypes of the Week: Please Disgruntled Mr. Postman

This week in TV Stereotypes, Movieline features old-fashioned generalization about inner city gang members, perfect boyfriends and grumpy postal workers. Unlike in previous weeks though, one of these stereotypical characters was portrayed by an Oscar winner. Can you guess which one before proceeding?

1. Disgruntled Postal Workers (Weeds)

"Whatever you do, do not go into that locked room," William Schiff, the former high school math teacher who romanced Nancy Botwin when she was still his student, told the Botwin family once they moved into his house. Since his days teaching, Schiff (played brilliantly by Richard Dreyfuss) had switched careers to mailman. Like television's most famous disgruntled postal worker before him (Newman, Seinfeld), Schiff was portly, angry, complained of a bad back and, on occasion, chose to just not deliver the mail at all. Prisoner of his own rage, he kept those undelivered letters captive in his own home. But Weeds is a premium cable series (and Dreyfuss is a premium caliber actor), so William Schiff was not just a frustrated government worker. He was also an avid hat wearer and deluded Skymall addict who thought that if he ordered bunk beds for the boys, Nancy and her family would stay and live with him forever. When that fantasy finally eroded, he packed his life savings into a neck pillow, bought a one-way ticket to Copenhagen and followed the family to the airport. Alas, this disgruntled postal worker would not live happily ever after because at the last minute, cops boarded the plane and arrested Schiff for burglary of a United States post office.

2. Gangbangers (Law & Order: Los Angeles)

The opening of this week's Law & Order: Los Angeles, "Ballona Creek," played out like a stereotype mix 'n match. There were unhappy city employees in bright yellow vests being disrespected by everyone that passed -- including the hot, young California girls on roller blades and the Mexican gangbangers nearby. "Hey, Homes," one flannel-wearing punk yelled while his friends threw rocks at the city worker busy below. (That's gangbanger speak for "Hey!") Moments later, a body was discovered in the creek and the gangbangers were assumed the primary suspects. Because, you know, they are gangbangers and as one hard-nosed cop noted, "young people used to fish in the creek. Now they just hunt here."

As the investigation continued, Skeet Ulrich's senior detective observed, "A witness saw the 'bangers giving [the suspect] a hard time around Centinela." It was enough to convince the team to keep the 'bangers as main suspects.

Later, as detectives tried to narrow down which gang might have been responsible for the murder, an investigator quipped that all 'bangers "like to go to Ballona Creek and drink and get high." Had the investigators slowed down with the generalizations, they may have shifted their attention to other city employees sooner, specifically Luis Valdez, a former Latino janitor-turned-city employee-turned-serial killer, who ended the episode being tried for the murder.

3. The Perfect Boyfriend (The Big Bang Theory)

In this week's Big Bang Theory, "The Boyfriend Complexity," Penny asked Leonard to pretend to be her boyfriend while her father visited town, hoping to prove once-and-for-all that she was capable of keeping an intelligent, parent-friendly beau. But her plan backfired when Leonard played the role of "perfect boyfriend" a little too perfectly by engaging Penny's father in conversation, laughing at all of his jokes, openly displaying his affection for his daughter and even inviting Penny's dad out so the two men could bond. The ruse worked so well that Penny's father would not stop raving about Leonard his entire visit.

Frustrated, Penny told her father the truth, which still did not dissuade her father from loving Leonard, who continued to play the one-note role so perfectly that Penny's father pleaded with him to take Penny back: "Cheat! Lie! I don't care. I want grand kids before I die and I want them to grow up in a house without wheels."