According to a recent thread here, the Golden Girls would surely be a contender. Throughout the series it seems like they could never get the women’s ages straight, or for that matter their kids’ ages, the number of kids they had, what their kids looked like or the details of their living arrangements.
Any other shows that stand out?
Some of the biggest inconsistencies are in reunion movies. Here’s a run down of one series that had reunion movies:
The TV series The Waltons seemed relatively consistent during its run, but the sequel movies were wildly off.
The TV series ran from 1971-1981 and covered the years 1933-1946. Ma and Pa Walton are roughly late 30s/40ish at the beginning, so let’s say that John was born ca. 1893 and Olivia ca. 1898. Their son John Boy is 17, so that makes him born in 1916, roughly. Their oldest daughter Mary Ellen would be born about 1917, she marries sometime around 1938 and she has a son around 1940. Over the course of the show a couple of other kids marry and have children, and Ike and Corabeth Godsey adopt a child who’s roughly the same age as the Walton’s youngest daughter Elizabeth (born ca. 1927). The old maids who are friends of the family are the Baldwin sisters, both of whom were little but alive by the end of the Civil War (it’s established they remember Reconstruction in one episode), so let’s say they were born around 1861 (they weren’t twins but I can’t remember which was oldest) which would make them each 80ish by the end of the series. This is all pretty consistent in the series and may be in the first couple of movies as well (I never saw those).
The trouble starts in the 1993 movie The Waltons Thanksgiving Reunion. It’s set in 1963, the Thanksgiving after JFK was killed. The grandson by Mary Ellen would be in his early 20s, but in the movie he’s about 12. The other grandchildren born during the course of the show would be teenagers, but in the show, they’re little. The Baldwin Sisters are moving kind of slow and still peddling moonshine even though they’d be in their late 90s- possible perhaps, but highly unlikely. Johnboy is an established newscaster said to be in his 30s (the actor Richard Thomas was about 40 when this was filmed but looked younger than his age) and it was a big deal he was going to propose to his girlfriend; in reality he would have been at least 46.
The Godseys daughter has run away from home and they have not heard from her and are devastated. At the end of the episode she returns along with her (unexpected by the grandparents) baby. She’s college age or so and unmarried. In the show timeline she’d be at least in her mid-30s (certainly still capable of getting pregnant but not as likely to be living at home and making a youthful mistake doing it). John and Olivia are a super youthful seeming couple of 70 and 65 at least, though in the movie they seem much younger because the actors are much younger, and Grandma is still alive and would by TV plotline be at least 90 and probably older (she wasn’t at all a young granny even in 1933)- definitely possible she’d still be alive, but keep watching.
The last of the TV movies, A Walton Easter, was made in 1997 and set in 1969. Olivia has gone to school and become a teacher. This is impressive considering the character is now at least in her 70s. (The actress playing her was in her late 50s, a more likely age for somebody to begin a new career, especially in a time where the age 65 retirement age was still enforced in many places.) Grandma, who had a major stroke in the 1930s (written in when the actress had a stroke) is still around and at least 100, and the Baldwin Sisters are still selling moonshine even though they’re well over 100. And the grandchild born more than 30 years before is now a teenager. Pa is still managing his farm and mill but talking about letting his sons take over, which is understandable since he’d be almost 80. (The actor was in his 60s.)
Lots of shows take some time hammering out backstories. It’s almost to be understood that for the first half season or so nothing said is granite as the actors and characters are still kind of meshing.
Example: In early episodes of All in the Family Archie has a sister Alma, a brother Fred, and a living father whose name is David. Edith makes reference to at least two sisters and a brother of her own who, to my knowledge, were never mentioned again. Archie later says he’s an only child, then his brother Fred shows up- this was retconned to the fact they had a falling out many years ago, but it was just the two of them and their sister is never mentioned even though she was living when the series began. His father we’re told died when he was young (as in late teens/early 20s- he was old enough to work but not yet married) which means he wouldn’t have been living in the early 1970s. After that initial takeoff though they’re pretty consistent.
A more current example: in the pilot episode of Big Bang Theory Leonard and Sheldon go to a sperm bank. Jokes are made about how often they both masturbate. Sheldon awkwardly flirts with Penny when they first meet by trying to get her interested in his charts. There’s absolutely no way that Sheldon would flirt or take an interest in Penny as he’s portrayed by the end of the season, and if he masturbates you can be sure he’d never mention it and he has no reason to sell sperm (he has plenty of money- Leonard’s not indigent either for that matter).
There’s also the Simpsons, but I guess that’s inevitable with any show that’s been on for 20+ years where the characters never age. Marge and Homer are in their late 30s, which means their teenage years would have been in the late 1980s and early 90s. Bart is 10, which means he would have been born about 2001, or 12 years after the show debuted.
I’d bring up the grunge episode they did a few years ago, but the less said about that, the better.
That 70s Show played pretty fast & loose with its’ stated setting. The first episode takes place in 1976, and the final episode is set on New Years’ Eve, 1979 - but the show ran for 8 years! Supposedly, each real-life season didn’t necessarally correspond to a single year (two or three episodes of episodes could take place in one year, in other words), but every season seemed to depict a change of seasons from late fall, winter (with holiday decorations), spring and early summer.
In the first year, Donna has a kid sister (and mentions having an older sister away at college.) After the first season, Donna is an only child.
Jackie is also a year behind the other kids in school originally. By the time they graduate, she is in the same grade as her friends.
At one point, an ex-girlfriend is obsessively pursuing Fez. The other kids specifically say that she is “stalking” him. But the term “stalking” (as it refers to one person tracking another) was not coined until the late 80s at least.
In another episode, Red & Eric are going to visit Eric’s sister at her new apartment and bring her a bag of Krispy Kreme donuts - and outside of the deep south, there were no Krispy Kremes then.
There were a lot of inconsistencies in the gothic soap “Dark Shadows” dealing with Barnabas Collins, Josette DuPre and what happened and when. Of course Barnabas was only supposed to be on for six weeks before he was staked but he proved to be so popular they kept him on and built the show around him.
On one of the DVD interviews during the “Leviathan” storyline, Kathryn Leigh Scott says during a writers meeting they were so confused as to what was going on, they sent someone down to the street where fans would wait for cast members and asked them. The fans knew.
In 1897 storyline Count Pertofi is a very powerful warlock who wears thick eyeglasses. Dude, couldn’t you cast a spell to give you 20/20 vision?
Just taking inspiration from That 50s Show … um, I mean Happy Days. Chuck Cunningham, Richie’s older brother, went upstairs in one of the first couple of episodes.
And was never heard from or spoken of again.
The drifter that rented the garage and compensated for Mr. Cunningham’s sexual dysfunction with Marion killed him and buried him in the back yard.
Ah, good old disappearing family members.
In an early episode of MASH, Hawkeye closes a letter to his dad with “Say hi to mom and sis.” And Sidney Freedman used to be Milton Freedman.
MASH was inconsistent in terms of their timeline too-there was an ep. about the 1951 NL pennant race between the Dodgers and Giants. The problem was that it occurred in the latter stages of the show’s run, by which time Trapper, Burns, Henry and I think even Radar were already gone. But the Korean War began in June 1950, which means all of the characters I named had to be given their stateside papers by March of 1951 at the latest, which means they were there for no more than 9 months? That can’t be right.
Interesting trivia story about “Dark Shadows” - the original storyline was going to have a Van Helsing-like character Dr. Julian Hoffman come to town and lead the hunt to stake Barnabas. Early in the storyline, when Barnabas was stalking Maggie, her doctor at the time is baffled by her condition and tells Maggie’s father that he is calling in a blood specialist - Dr. Hoffman - and repeatedly refers to him the doctor as “he” and “one of the finest men I know.”
When it came time to cast Julian Hoffman, series creator Dan Curtis had a secretary type up a character outline, and the “n” was left off because of a typo - turning the name into “Julia.” On a whim, Curtis decided to go with it, and cast a woman in the role. Grayson Hall was hired. The chemistry between Jonathan Frid (Barnabas) and Hall was intense, and was the crucial factor that drove the ratings up. So, “Dark Shadows” (which was headed for cancellation) owed it’s continued existence to a one-letter typo.
As for “the Simpsons” - the writers have stated several times that they deliberately throw in inaccuracies just to annoy over-bearing fans who DEMAND that everything be 100% consistent. The floorplan of their house, for instance, changes from year to year, episode to episode.
Shoot, sometimes it changes within episodes. The way the front door opens for example.
For a long running, major network series, King Of Queens has to be near the top.
Both Doug and Carrie had sisters who were part of the cast and disappeared with absolutely no explanation during the show’s run.
They had a dog that must have died overnight and was never mentioned again.
Doug’s best friend Richie, who was over at the house every single day for the first couple of seasons, was apparently abducted by Ted Bundy’s little niece, while none of the others ever noticed or commented on his vanishing act.
I have actually thought about starting a thread about this for a while, but never got around to it.
Does this take you out of the show?
Does a lack of continuity lessen your enjoyment of a series?
For me, with a sit-com that is not really supposed to be believable in the first place, (say King Of Queens for example), it doesn’t really bother me, as there is a certain amount of disbelief that is needed to watch the show in the 1st place. Much of the plot in any given episode is not realistic, from how the characters act towards their friends, family and employers, to how they can afford such nice cars, furnishings & houses with the jobs that they supposedly have.
The first/last time I watched a soap opera episode, there was script that appeared on the screen, “The part of Catherine now played by Cindy Brown” sorta thing.
Soap Operas are notorious for kids synchronizing their ages and taking growth hormones. Couple A has a baby one year, Couple B has a baby two years later, and five years later both kids are 16.
Well there is Chuck Cuinningham from Happy Days, the oldest son who mysteriously just disappeared in Season 2.
You’re not the first person I’ve seen bring this up here, but I don’t think it’s really an anachronism. The earliest cite in the OED for “stalker” in the sense of “A person who pursues another…with whom he or she has become obsessed” is actually from 1947. The movie The Night Stalker is also listed as an example, and that was released in 1971. Even if the term was not in common use in the late '70s, deer hunting is big in Wisconsin and I don’t think it would be a big stretch for small-town Wisconsin kids to compare the ex-girlfriend to a hunter “stalking” a deer.
Having lived in Wisconsin but not having lived through the '70s, the geographic inconsistencies of That '70s Show stood out to be more. Early on the fictional town of Point Place seemed to be consistently located in southeastern Wisconsin, near Kenosha, but later on it seemed to be located much farther north. One episode had the boys making what seemed like a day trip to Canada, while the girls went back and forth to Sheboygan twice in one day. The characters also tended to be underdressed for Wisconsin weather!
I wonder if anyone has ever done a timeline for “The Untouchables” as to what cases they were working on. They are listed as having 118 episodes and a two part pilot, all withing about 1928-1934. Five guys were all over every criminal in every town. Not to mention how a group of Treasury agents were in a gunfight with Ma Barker and her gang which didn’t make J Edgar Hoover happy about someone hogging the G Men cases (the same applies with Jack Webb and Dragnet as Webb refused to name any FBI guys as “law enforcement heroes of the week” on the 1950s radio/tv show.
He’s not lost, he’s in post #7.
So does the location of the house, the size of the backyard and the stuff in it, and really all the geographical features of Springfield. All of it moves around if a joke requires it. And in the first few seasons, the house number and the identities of their neighbors changed a few times. (Inconsistent aging of children has also affected the show - Maggie is still one, but Apu and Majula’s octuplets were born in season 11 and they are now are toddlers) Oh, and let’s not forget Bart’s age relative to Marge and Homer.
I think my favorite fungible thing is the relative ages of Grampa Simpson and Mr. Burns. Mr. Burns was evidently older at the start of the show, and in “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” we learned he’s 104. Later that season, we found out Grampa was Mr. Burns’ commanding officer in World War II, and he’s definitely older in that episode than Burns is. A few years later, there’s a scene where Grampa and Burns are competing to be named the oldest man in town and even Grampa has no idea how old he is - he keeps sitting down and standing up as different ages are called out. Burns wins, if only because he doesn’t sit down. Since then Burns has needed four numbers to type his age and said he was born in Pangaea. And consider how old Grampa must’ve been when he got married and had Homer (and, earlier, Homer’s half-siblings).