Yeah, they kind of kept Ziva (from NCIS) like that for a while. It was cute at first since she was a non-American dealing with American idioms, but it doesn't seem like she graduated from that stage.
By contrast, I'm rewatching Farscape, and it bugs me how Crichton (did I spell his name right?) will make an obviously pop-culture-centric joke and then look around at the aliens like they're clueless. "Has nobody heard of Houdini?" Well, no, John, these people haven't, or did you forget that you're light-years away from Earth? At least when Kiefer Sutherland's character does it in Dark City, it's purposefully mocking his captors and their lack of emotion.