# Major TV/Movies series where canon doesn't matter? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 19, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978 "2009-08-19T18:27:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/21 "2009-08-20T09:40:23Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I’d say that the \*Law & Order \*canon is pretty loose - especially if you take the “repeat offenders” (actors who keep on returning in different roles) into consideration. It’s inconsistent in the regard that the face that matches a name may also match another name. Jerry Orbach, S. Epatha Merkerson, Diane Neal and Courtney B. Vance all played roles on various L&O shows before becoming series regulars, and various people have shown up as two different defendants, witnesses or victims. Where they do try to keep a strong consistency of face and name is in judges and defense attorneys. But the canon is very controlled regarding the regular characters. There are no surprise brothers or fathers in the L&O verse. Anita Van Buren has always had two sons. Jack McCoy’s father is always a cop, never a politician or lawyer or garbage man. Olivia Benson only exists because abortion wasn’t legal when her mother was raped. Hell, they’re even careful with the canon of John Munch _that’s been established via **five** other series_. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/22 "2009-08-20T10:23:58Z")
> [@tumbleddown](#): > > Hell, they’re even careful with the canon of John Munch _that’s been established via **five** other series_. Oh really? So did he grow up in NYC or in Baltimore? ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/23 "2009-08-20T10:29:06Z")
How many times did James Bond and Ernst Stavros Blofeld meet for the first time? Two, at least. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/24 "2009-08-20T10:29:34Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Series’ where time travel, dimensional fiddling, or even heavy interference by the supernatural get a little leeway, in my book. As it’s easier to reconsile problems as being from changes to the timeline or damage to the universe itself. > > I think Discworld has used something like that, on occasion, to explain away problems—time had been “shattered” at some point, and basically “stitched back together,” but not all the pieces were there, or fit together anymore. Yes; part of the background mentioned in _Thief of Time_. Time was shattered, and the History Monks put it back together as best they could. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/25 "2009-08-20T15:07:42Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > It doesn’t prevent endless debate among the fans, though, for whom the idea of canon is so ingrained that they’ve invented the oxymoronic “personal canon” to squabble over. Is that anything like the “season cannon” for “M_A_S\*H”? ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/26 "2009-08-20T15:14:27Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > _Superman II_ and it’s [ass-pull](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AssPull) superpowers pissed me off at the time. I was 11. Now I’m pretty meh about it. The Richard Donner Cut helps with this some. The thing with Sondra on Cosby Show was weird. Adding a cute little kid is one thing, but adding an _oldest_ child pretty much by definition screws with canon. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/27 "2009-08-20T15:44:41Z")
> [@The New and Improved Superman](#): > > I read an interview with one of the animators who said that the entire production staff deliberately throws in inconsistencies, just to screw with the Comic Book Guys out there who demand every show be perfectly consistent with “the canon.” The one example he recited is the layout of the Simpsons house, which they arbitrarily rearrange from one episode to the next (the door beneath the staircase for instance sometimes leads to a closet, sometimes it leads to stairs to the basement.) How about the one where Dr. Marvin Monroe comes back to Marge’s book signing? He was on the trivia lists for years as a character in the Simpsons who had died. Marge even said that she thought that he was dead, and he said no that he had merely been very, very sick. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/28 "2009-08-20T15:51:19Z")
_Scrubs_ seemed to play very fast and loose with canon, from what little I saw. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/29 "2009-08-20T17:01:15Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Of course, you can always deal with canon violations the way they did in _Frasier._ Heh. I love the way they explained that away! And it does sort of make sense for Frasier to talk about his dad that way since they’ve had all that friction. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/30 "2009-08-20T17:11:12Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > How about the one where Dr. Marvin Monroe comes back to Marge’s book signing? He was on the trivia lists for years as a character in the Simpsons who had died. I thought that was a joke from “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular”: [quote=] Which popular _Simpsons_ characters have died in the past year? If you said Bleeding Gums Murphy and Dr. Marvin Monroe, you are wrong: they were never popular. [/quote] Granted, it’s not like he hung around a lot. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/31 "2009-08-20T17:11:41Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Actually, they pretty successfully reset the Trek canon, so violations don’t really matter at all any more. I think it’s great. Few are buying into _that_ travesty. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/32 "2009-08-20T17:47:18Z")
Meaning what? _Star Trek_ is rated higher than both _Wrath of Khan_ and _First Contact_ on rottentomatoes, and took in $150,000,000 more than Voyage Home at the theatre. You apparently don’t like it, but you’re in the minority as it’s the most critically and financially successful movie in the Star Trek franchise. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/33 "2009-08-20T18:01:04Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > _Scrubs_ seemed to play very fast and loose with canon, from what little I saw. How? ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978/34 "2009-08-20T19:29:09Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > How? I’m not the person you quoted, but just going from memory: At one point Turk and JD mentioned that everyone always asked: When are Turk and JD getting here?" because they didn’t have a car (it led to an Indian girl having sex with Turk because she thought his name was Turk Enjadi.) Yet JD had his Volvo (Meleke) since high school, and Turk said he initially became friend’s with JD as a freshman because he had a car. In the first season when JD and Elliot first start dating, she gets _very_ upset that JD talked (very little) about their sex life, yet just a season or so later she has absolutely no trouble talking in public about her sex life with other people, and eventually about her sex life with JD. (Of course, we could write _novels_ about how Elliot went from just slightly neurotic to full-blown, should be on medication-level OCD.) And speaking of JD and Elliot, for the first few seasons it was established that JD was always great with patients, a good beside manner, as it were, and Elliot was more “book smart.” Yet later, when they were co-chief residents, JD suddenly becomes “Doctor Diagnosis” because he is so good at knowing what’s wrong. Huh? And yet again with JD and Elliot: In one episode Elliot was all flustered and was even getting in the way of the nurses bringing in the crash cart during a code, and got mad at JD because she had yet to have “her moment” like he had and wasn’t good at codes. But then in a latter episode JD comments how he sucks at “trainwreck” codes, but suddenly Elliot shines at them and acts like she has more than two hands. And yet more Elliot: From the very first episode, people said how nice her ass is (JD says he thought it looked like two Pringles hugging, Carla said she’d kill for that "wagon she’s draggin’,) yet in other episodes it’s been called “flat.” In season 8, when doing a sketch making fun of the senior hospital staff, the interns pretend to be Elliot by giving one of them a really flat butt. The last Elliot one, I swear: She joined a private practice in the sixth (?) season, yet she is seen doing things only an actual doctor employed by the hospital would be doing in later seasons, like being assigned interns, doing the graveyard shift, etc… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/major-tv-movies-series-where-canon-doesnt-matter/506978.md?page=1)