CLASSIC SHOWS WITH CLASSIC ERRORS/GOOFS

[gregg75]

On Andy Griffith, the female escaped convicts episode. Andy looks straight ahead at the
"Greyhound" bus stopping in town..............it's right on time. Then Charlie come walking
behind Andy and he does a double take. It is assumed that Charlie got off the bus, but if
he got off the bus wouldn't he be walking towards Andy? Maybe he hitch hicked the last
30 miles?????

On I Love Lucy the salad dressing episode. They are getting sacks of mail orders. I think
they say something like "another 1000 orders today". But the people appear to be ordering
from post cards, since they read a couple of them. You could fit 1000 post cards in a shoe
box. Even if they were tossed around, a mail sack would probably hold 2000 or more. I think
they have two sacks in one scene. Plus, at the end Lucy has salad dressing all over
her house. She does have a lot (maybe 600 or so) but that's no 2000!!! Can you imagine
the hassle of sending 2000 jars of salad dressing C.O.D.? There is some flawed logic in there
somewhere.

 

[mleach]

There is at least on Lucy & Desi Comedy Hour episode where Little Ricky is seen being pushed onto the set by a stagehand.

Dennis The Menace..despite the show being set in California, the episode where George Wilson runs for park commissioner, Dennis Mitchel is seen walking into a TV station whose call letters begin with "W".

Bloopers involving the "location" of their series....quite a few there.

*Alice...in one episode Flo made a mention that Phoenix had only a handful of deputies in the Phoenix Sheriff Department.

*Mork & Mindy...one episode as I can recall had Mork talkiing ( or what he planning ? ) a bus trip to Denver but backed out because the trip would had taken "several hours" while the episode where Mindy had hosted a kiddie TV show on local Boulder TV. The thing is about those two scenes..Boulder is a suberb of Denver meaning that Boulder wouldn't have their own TV station nor would it take several hours to get between the two.

*Emergency....exactly how big was Squad 51's coverage area? It seems it was the entire county of LA. One minute up in the mountains..the next out into the ocean.

Then there are episodes where I would call "dated bloopers" meaning OK then..but not now...

*The epiosdes of various TV shows in the 70's such as Here's Lucy for example that had featured OJ Simpson as a guest star and comments such as "..he is such a great husband" and the mid 70's episode of Bob McAllister's Wonderama with the Jacksons doing the song "Enjoy Yourself". At the end of the song Bob brings up to the stage a little boy and a little girl and of course Michael Jackson gives them each a kiss on the cheek..however Michael then looks straight into the camera..."my goodness..I like little girls and I LOVE little boys". Since Jackson still has his hardcre fans, wanna see a big debate? next time this clip pops up on You Tube read the comments.

 

[Braves2005]

Happy Days - In a first season episode, supposedly they were in 1955 or 1956 but the Cunninghams were watching The Untouchables on TV which did not come on the air until 1959. In another episode, a current shot of Corn Flakes from 1975 is used and a magazine uses a from the 1970's cigarette ad on the back. Howard is also seen with a digital watch something that wasn't common until the early 1980's at least.

Laverne and Shirley - In one episode where they were at a grocery store for the shopping spree, the products seen were current day products for instance Tony The Tiger on Frosted Flakes which I don't think came into being until later on in the 1960's.

Green Acres - Oliver and Lisa were rich people supposedly because Oliver was a lawyer but apparently didn't have the money for fixing up the house but Oliver was driving a Lincoln Continental and Lisa was still wearing gowns and dresses when they moved to the farm and apparently couldn't afford a new tractor either.

 

[gregg75]

On another Lucy they are putting up wall paper in the bedroom. It goes on the wall crooked,
yes I can see that. But how stoned/out of it would someone have to be to paper over a door
and window??? Then Viv opens the door and comes out of the bathroom. So what was she
doing in there FOREVER while Lucky was papering her in?

There is another Andy, I think it's the chain letter episode. Barney is sitting in a chair and
you can tell it was done twice and spliced together because his hair bangs keep jumping from
one side to the other back and forth as they cut between him and whoever he is talking to.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Green Acres - Oliver and Lisa were rich people supposedly because Oliver was a lawyer but apparently didn't have the money for fixing up the house but Oliver was driving a Lincoln Continental and Lisa was still wearing gowns and dresses when they moved to the farm and apparently couldn't afford a new tractor either.

"Green Acres" is far removed from the usual concerns of continuity and logic...

Speaking of food packaging goofs, I do remember a "M*A*S*H" episode where they showed a package of Fig Newtons with the then-current label. "M*A*S*H" had a zillion contniuty errors, like Radar talking about a Godzilla movie (1954 or 56, can't remember what year the first one was made), Hot Lips reading Radar a letter written to him by a schoolgirl as a homework assignment where she says her favorite song is "The Wayward Wind" (1956), and Radar doing his John Wayne imitation using the line "I'm not gonna hit ya...Like hell I'm not!" from the movie "McClintock!" (1963). (Sorry to pick on ya, Radar...)

 

[mleach]

Speaking of food packaging goofs, I do remember a "M*A*S*H" episode where they showed a package of Fig Newtons with the then-current label.

Same thing had happened with Mama's Family. In a flashback epiosde from the 40's on the floor in the living room one saw not only a package of Figs but also a six pack of Dr. Pepper with the words "Be A Pepper" on the package..part of Dr. Pepper's then-current ad campaign.

I had mention this one before but in season 9 of Roseanne, the episode where Rosey takes a drive around Lanford, Illinois , in the background one can easily spot an In-N-Out Buger, Lucky Supermarket and a billboard for "K-Earth 101"..all things associated with Los Angeles.

 

[firepoint525]

Almost all time-period shows are going to have continuity issues like these.

A couple more:

In Freaks and Geeks, Daniel drives what was then a late-model Firebird/Trans Am. Theoretically possible, given the time frame in which the show was set. But we are led to believe that there was absolutely no way that Daniel could have afforded such a car. The producers of the show later admitted that putting him in such a then-new car was a mistake.

Another, more minor mistake: In The Wonder Years, Paul and Kevin are walking down the street, when they walk past a parked Chevy pickup truck which appears to be an early '80s model.

 

[MattParker]

Walt Disney's Zorro. Zorro would escape by jumping from a wall or a second story balcony onto his horse below. Usually there was an arm reaching out from the shadows holding the horse's bridle.

 

[jwk1979]

Another classic goof from the Andy Griffith Show was the episode where Andy, Opie, Aunt Bee and Goober go to Raleigh to the New Car Show and Goober runs into his old friend from trade school. As Andy and the rest were leaving Raleigh, they stop at a gas station to fill up. As they were sitting the car while waiting for the gas attendant, a Coors Beer truck pass the station. Coors was not available in North Carolina at the time (late '60's), in fact, it wasn't available any place east of the Mississippi River until the late 70's/early '80's.

 

[Obtuse1]

Another, more minor mistake: In The Wonder Years, Paul and Kevin are walking down the street, when they walk past a parked Chevy pickup truck which appears to be an early '80s model.

There were quite a few of these street scene goofs on The Wonder Years. A more visible error was the family's 1965 Dodge Polara station wagon.

It was only 5 years old when the family sold it, was it really completely shot by 1970? Jack Arnold's 1964 Impala (seen in the driveway) held up just fine.

And in some radio-related goofs....WKRP.

In the pilot when Johnny launches the rock format by playing Ted Nugent, the tone arm is clearly resting on the record's label.

Also in the pilot, the map on the station wall indicates WKRP has 50,000 watts. In subsequent episodes, it says 5000.

...and if you've seen the awful Season 1 DVD's there are some pretty bad edits. Look for the spinning turntable from "Fish Story" used as a cutaway in other episodes (you can still see the reaction-time gizmo from that episode in the background).

I've decided to suspend disbelief over the fact that WKRP's DJ's choose their own music.

 

[Braves2005]

The Jeffersons - On when George started his cleaning business: On All In The Family it was said that George got the business through a settlement from his bad back and they had just opened their first store from that which would have been late in 1970. However, on The Jeffersons in an episode from 1980, it was shown that the Jeffersons were living in a rundown apartment and that they opened the store on the day of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968 a little less than 3 years before they moved to the Bunker's neighborhood.

Also in the episode from 1978 where George has his dream of when he dies and Louise, Tom, Helen, Florence and Mr. Bentley celebrate what would have been 25 years of Jefferson's Cleaners, I believe the date of the opening changed as well. It was the dream where he reads in the newspaper that Amy Carter is President of the United States.

 

[azumanga]

in the pilot, the map on the station wall indicates WKRP has 50,000 watts. In subsequent episodes, it says 5000.

Considering that WKRP was one of the lowest-rated stations at the time, maybe the producers felt that 50kw blowtorches should be reserved for higher-rated stations (in Cincinnati, WLW and WSAI were classic examples), so they decided to downgrade WKRP's power in future episodes.

 

[71dude]

Freaks and Geeks - Halloween 1980: Lindsay talks about the new "Friday the 13th" (there was only one at the time)

Wonder Years - Bob Seger's 1978 "We've Got Tonight" plays in the 1960's

American Dreams - the contemporary song "I Can't Remember" by the Thorns is heard on a radio in the 60's

The Jeffersons - Louise is excited about meeting Sammy Davis Jr. (she forgot that she met him in 1972 when she lived next to the Bunkers)
Mr. Bentley's apartment and the Jeffersons' bedrooms are in the same place
When George's nephew Raymond comes to visit, Louise remarks that they haven't had a child in the house for years. Since Lionel was a grown man when they moved in, they never had a child in the house. Raymond was 8 years old in 1978, but Henry was unmarried and childless when last seen in 1973.

 

[cwf1701]

*Emergency....exactly how big was Squad 51's coverage area? It seems it was the entire county of LA. One minute up in the mountains..the next out into the ocean.

and the same thing could be said for Adam-12, except for covering the entire city of LA (including LAX and close enough to take a boy to Rampart General/Harbor General Hospital, which is outside LA City). and the Call sign (1-Adam-12) as well. Adam-12 should be a Central Division (1) unit, but roll out of Rampart Division (2).

 

[LKellerIII]

*Emergency....exactly how big was Squad 51's coverage area? It seems it was the entire county of LA. One minute up in the mountains..the next out into the ocean.

and the same thing could be said for Adam-12, except for covering the entire city of LA (including LAX and close enough to take a boy to Rampart General/Harbor General Hospital, which is outside LA City). and the Call sign (1-Adam-12) as well. Adam-12 should be a Central Division (1) unit, but roll out of Rampart Division (2).

Well, obviously different locations make these shows more visually interesting - that's why they do it. I wouldn't call that a "goof" - just 'creative license.'

Along those same lines, Streets of San Francisco was the only show I've seen with a San Francisco setting that showed exterior shows of the actual central police headquarters - the Hall of Justice. It's an depressingly ugly 50s era building next to a freeway in a visually bland part of town, so most movies and TV shows use exterior shots of San Francisco City Hall (a classically beautiful building downtown with a rotunda) as police headquarters. Again - creative license.

 

[firepoint525]

Good catches on those, 71dude. It's possible that the use of "We've Got Tonight" might have been for the benefit of us, as the viewers of the show. If it was used as "transitional" music, then that may have been the case. As long as the characters on the show didn't "interact" with the song in any way. In other words, they didn't sing with it, or dance to it, or anything like that.

There was a similar example of this in the opening scene of American Dreams. It is 1963, yet we hear Stevie Wonder singing "Uptight, Everything's Alright," which didn't appear until 1966. However, since Meg and Roxanne didn't interact with the song in any way, that was, to me, an acceptable use of the song.

However, a couple of seasons later, it was 1965, and the Spencer Davis Group appeared on the revisionist version of Bandstand to sing "Gimme Some Lovin'," which wouldn't become a hit until 1967. This one especially pains me, because even in 1967, Steve Winwood was still only 19 when it became a hit.

I also previously commented on the fictitious appearance by Rick Nelson on Bandstand, since that never actually happened, due to Ozzie Nelson being opposed to it.

 

[MattParker]

*Emergency....exactly how big was Squad 51's coverage area? It seems it was the entire county of LA. One minute up in the mountains..the next out into the ocean.

and the same thing could be said for Adam-12, except for covering the entire city of LA (including LAX and close enough to take a boy to Rampart General/Harbor General Hospital, which is outside LA City). and the Call sign (1-Adam-12) as well. Adam-12 should be a Central Division (1) unit, but roll out of Rampart Division (2).

Well, obviously different locations make these shows more visually interesting - that's why they do it. I wouldn't call that a "goof" - just 'creative license.'

Along those same lines, Streets of San Francisco was the only show I've seen with a San Francisco setting that showed exterior shows of the actual central police headquarters - the Hall of Justice. It's an depressingly ugly 50s era building next to a freeway in a visually bland part of town, so most movies and TV shows use exterior shots of San Francisco City Hall (a classically beautiful building downtown with a rotunda) as police headquarters. Again - creative license.

Creative license? Bull. It's production convenience combined with a belief that nobody can tell the difference. Human Target is set in San Francisco. A recent show had scenes at the railroad station, which (guess what) looked just like the CN terminal in Vancouver. Oh, wait. Monk had a scene in a train station that looked just like Union Station in LA. One show tried to pass off Union Station as Grand Central Terminal. And how many Cold Case viewers who have ever lived, worked or spent any time in Philly don't know that the old Union Old Building (now a film studio) is not The Roundhouse (Philadelphia Police headquarters)? Also FBI headquarters in Numb3rs and various airport terminals. Sorry, license revoked for abusing the privilege.

 

[Markieo]

My favorite goof is on "The Brady Bunch" when Mike and Carol take Bobby to the ice cream eating contest. They drive away in the blue convertible (Dodge Challenger?), but come home in the brown station wagon!

And as for Happy Days (set in the late 50's, early 60's), I'm surprised the rednecks didn't drag Chachi off to the barber shop for a haircut! ;D

 

[flashback]

My favorite goof is on "The Brady Bunch" when Mike and Carol take Bobby to the ice cream eating contest. They drive away in the blue convertible (Dodge Challenger?), but come home in the brown station wagon!

And as for Happy Days (set in the late 50's, early 60's), I'm surprised the rednecks didn't drag Chachi off to the barber shop for a haircut! ;D

they obviously knew they were related to the fonze and knew better.
HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

 

[Obtuse1]

Not really a "classic show", but the set in 1973 US version of "Life On Mars" had plenty of visual goofs (DBS Satellite dishes on balconies, Verizon building in the background). These can be explained away by the show's ending, however and by the current-day things that appeared as plot devices.

Also a 1977 song was used on one episode's soundtrack ("Wild In The Streets"), but not in a way that involved the characters.

Also speaking of Happy Days, some of the cars in the Demolition Derby episode(s) would have been nearly new, or not even built yet.