Saying that the writers don’t care about continuity hardly covers it. They openly mock the idiot fans who care enough to remember throwaway lines from two seasons earlier. And rightly so, since 99% of the audience only wants something entertaining to watch for a few minutes and then puts it out of their minds the second it’s off. One thing to treat continuity errors as a fun game, another to think that the world turns around it.
Or as William Shatner so aptly summed it up: “Get a life!”
Certainly in the 70s & 80s, the more rabid Trek fans delighted in explaining away the endless inconsistencies in Star Trek, which always seemed like an exercise in futility with me.
Bull. They are very clearly doing it on purpose due to whatever’s funniest for that episode. For example, early in the show’s run, a comet is going to crash into the town and the citizens of Springfield can’t leave because “the only bridge in town” is destroyed. A few episodes later, Springfield and Shelbyville are shown to share a long border and “the only bridge in town” goes unmentioned.
Didn’t care? No, “Rule of Funny”.
Speaking of which, what about Get A Life? A cop shoots Chris dead early on in the series, but he’s back in another episode in time to die at the hands of a strangler – and then he returns, with no explanation, only to be stabbed to death before successfully competing in a number of spelling bees – I’m not sure we can square any of that of with his later years as disgraced celebrity Walletboy. 
Mama’s Family has alot of continuity erros as a result of the move from network to first-run syndication. In the NBC episodes the Harper house had 3 bedrooms; Thelma’s, Fran’s, & Sonia’s. Buzz slept in the attic, Vinton & Naomi in the basement. In the first syndicated episode Vint & Naomi were so excited to finally move out of the basement now that Buzz & Sonia were gone (& Fran was dead), but Bubba arrived and Thelma gave him Fran’s old room. This means that either Eunice, Ellen, & Vinton all shared the same bedroom growing up or Vinton slept in the attic. Also Buzz & Thelma once spent an afternoon cleaning the attic (to distract Thelma from a surprise party) and it was just an unfinished attic. And let’s not forget Thelma’s best friend, Iola Boylan, who grew up with Vinton and lived in Raytown her entire life, but was never mentioned in the NBC episodes.
What TV shows have the most inconsistencies?
FOX and Friends
And Mama wasn’t a feisty old lady- she was a backstabbing old horror.
A Country Practice, an Australian sorta-soap opera from the 80’s to mid 90’s, switched networks for its final season. In so doing, the sleepy town of Wandin Valley, NSW became the sleepy town of Wandin Valley, Victoria without anyone in town noticing the move.
No, they noticed. But everybody was warned not to mention it.
The Flintstones are pretty bad too. I remember watching it once where Wilma was walking through the house and she passed the same damn table and lamp 12 times. But in outside shots of the house – the building looks nowhere near big enough to have a room so big.
Same thing happened when Fred and Barney were in the backyard. They were walking and the stone fence went on for-freaking’-ever.
Well, to be fair, how much continuity do your dreams have?
if Roger Meyers Jr. made that show it never would have happened.
The pictures were fuzzy and there were no VCR’s, so we couldn’t go back and check, even if we wanted to.
Tony Dow (Wally on Leave It to Beaver) used to tell the story of a fan who had written, claiming to have figured out the combination of Wally’s locker. Dow had to explain that opening his locker was merely a piece of visual business to accompany the dialog, the lock was a non-functioning prop, and that he simply moved the dial back and forth with no thought to what he was actually doing.
Nip/Tuck had some inconsistencies mainly in season 6, though a few turned up in season 4 and maybe 5 too.
Annie’s age: She was supposedly born in 1996, but in season 4, set in 2006, she was 12. Then she was 13 in the first half of seson 6, set in 2010 (the next half was set in 2011, though that was problematic in itself).
Annie’s Rapunzel syndrome problem in s. 6: She was pulling her hair out and eating it, but seemed to recover very fast by the time she moved in with her grandmother, just a few days or so after having a hairball removed.
Sean’s age: He and Christian were supposed to have been born a few weeks or days apart in June 1964, but in season 6, his birth year appeared to be 1967.
Christian, Liz, and the aborted fetus from season 2, revisited in season 6: In a group therapy session, Liz implies that Christian would not have wanted the Down Syndrome baby she was carrying back in season 2 and wanted it aborted. Actually, Liz made that decision on her own and did not tell him until after it was done and over with.
(Yes, I’ve seen all the seasons many times.)
There was also a 2 hour live special presentation in 1982 that spanned the lives of Eunice/Ed and Mama from 1955 to 1978. In that one Ken Berry played the successful brother Phil- for consistency Betty White was on board with snooty sister Ellen- but there was one really major and irreconcilable difference as far as Mama’s Family was concerned: Mama died in 1978. The last third of the teleplay has to do with her funeral and its aftermath.
I didn’t watch this show, but I was visiting friends once who were rabid fans, so I was stuck sitting thru an episode. Within the first few minutes, I knew I was right in not wasting time with the series.
The main guy was awakened by a phone call, and at the bottom of the screen, it said something like “Baltimore 8:27 AM.” Because of the call, he leaps out of bed and the scene fades to him getting out of his car and the caption reads (can’t recall the exact city or time) “Providence, RI, 11:43 AM.” The point is, he went from asleep in bed to cleaned up and dressed and 7 or 8 hours away (with good traffic) in a ridiculously short amount of time. I don’t think he could have met the timeline if he’d had a jet warmed up and waiting for him in the back yard.
I was a polite guest and didn’t mock the show as I normally would have…
Or is that too specific to be an inconsistency?
If that’s an inconsistency then every hour ever of “24” qualifies. :rolleyes:
Tell me about it. I remember one episode where Jack beats LA traffic to arrive at a house across town before an Air Force jet does.