Ok, so i know better than to expect consistency in the show, but this bugged me. In a recent episode, Penny learns of her pet pig’s death, and is apparently horrified when Bernadette suggests that Moondance is part of the “breakfast meat family” and wonders why they didn’t just eat the pet. Bernie is the bad guy for even making the remark.
But in the episode with Professor Proton’s funeral, Penny confesses that she has never been to a funeral, because she has never known anyone who died. She says that she had a pet pig as a child, but when he died, there wasn’t a funeral-- they just had a barbecue. The same thing that had so horrified her when Bernie had suggested it.
What the hell, writers?
Ok I got that off my chest. Minor issue but I was watching reruns today and noticed it. Grr.
I don’t think there’s a lot of concern about things that have been done and said in previous episodes. I’ve often noticed little things like that, tho I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Because the writer’s rightly figured no one would care. Do you really think they go over every line to make sure it doesn’t contradict a joke they made three years before?
Remember what they say about foolish consistencies…
When these “inconsistencies” in TV show scripts pop up (like Sam Malone making a reference to his ex-wife or Fraiser saying that his father is dead, in early episodes of “Cheers”) it usually means the show’s bible isn’t as detailed as the Show Runner would hope.
Yeah, there’s continuity, and then there’s continuity.
Would you really expect a sitcom writer to comb through every past episode, to make sure that the throwaway joke in the episode he just wrote doesn’t somehow contradict a throwaway joke in an episode from 5 years ago, written by a completely different writer who he’s never met and who isn’t even on staff anymore? That would be going above and beyond the call of duty, in my mind.
I suppose that’s what bothers me. And i know it’s incredibly minor and petty, but shouldn’t Kaley Cuoco or someone say “wait a minute, why is Penny supposed to be horrified at the idea of eating my beloved pet? The family totally ate the last pet pig Penny mentioned having…”
And she may have had lots of pet pigs, and maybe it makes sense to blithely eat one pet and be horrified at the thought of eating a different one.
I don’t really expect total consistency in a sitcom, but sometimes it irks me.
Right. If a viewer can remember the reference you’d think, if not the writers, than the actor saying them would. I mean, wouldn’t one internalize a joke about a pet pig just enough so that a second similar joke would spark a memory of it?
And it could have been avoided with a throwaway line like “I can’t believe you’d even suggest eating Moondance! I mean, yeah, we ate that other pet pig, but he was a jerk. Moondance was awesome!”
I think you may overestimate how many details an actor remembers about past episodes. These are people who are memorizing and performing a new script every week, and have been doing so over a period of several years. Not to mention that scripts are often tweaked and rewritten during that week, jokes that aren’t working punched up, and so forth.
In that sort of time-crunch environment, it would be incredible if the actors remembered every single line they had spoken over the past nine years. Really big, set-piece scenes like Leonard Nimoy’s DNA, or Amy getting her tiara? Sure. One quick joke about eating a pet pig? Far less likely. They’ve got to worry about getting next week’s script memorized. No time to make sure you still remember every line from that script you did last season. It’s over and done with.
And even if they did, do they care enough to make an issue of it? Do the producers and writers care enough to rewrite the scene, when filming this week’s episode is already running behind schedule, and they’ve already started worrying about next week’s episode, and they’re still arguing with the network about that raunchy joke in the episode they wrapped last week, and…
You see what I’m getting at. In the environment of producing a high-profile network sitcom, on time and on budget, I suspect it’s pretty far down on anybody’s list of things to worry about.
I also think the viewers wouldn’t have noticed, except the two episodes aired close together in syndication. I certainly didn’t remember Penny had a pet pig that got barbecued when the episode where Moondance was run over aired.
I dunno. Last year I did a TV pilot, a stage play, a commercial for a local restaurant, and three short films. Sitting here today, I do not recall all the details of the various characters I played. If my character in the TV pilot said, for example, “My favorite color is blue”, and then later this year, the show gets picked up for a season, and in one of the episodes my character says “My favorite color is red”, I doubt the discrepancy is going to leap out at me. I’m concentrating on many different things during a shoot, but minor details from a throwaway line in a previous episode isn’t one of them.
I think TBBT has poked fun at the overly anal viewers who get too caught in the continuity inconsistencies.
Remember the episode where Amy watched the Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time. She pointed out all the plot holes to Sheldon and it made him not like the movie as much. And to get back at her, he mocked the inconsistencies in her favorite show, Little House on the Prairie.
BTW, Amy’s favorite show growing up should have been Blossom.
In the episode where they were trying to come up with a couple’s Halloween costume idea, one of Amy’s suggestions on the white board was “Blossom and Joey.” So we know she watched it!
