TELEVISION SHOWS

It isn't easy finding gaffes in a TV show. Unlike movies, which we can see repeatedly, most TV episodes afford only one viewing, maybe two if it's rerun, and then it's gone forever. But, hey, we slip-spotters LOVE a challenge! The payoff is below:

Are You Being Served? (1972-1985):

Like I said, finding slips in the fleeting time of a TV show is tough. Sometimes, though, a show is good enough to be syndicated, and then you can see it many times, which gives any slip-spotter a marvelous opportunity. This British sit-com is an excellent example - it runs on my local PBS stations three times a day. I tune in daily to the hilarious escapades of the Ladies and Gents staff of Grace Brothers department store, and I've noticed a few things ...
(X-tra special thanks to Percy, Daft Boy, Mr. Crowley, and all my fellow AYBS? fans at The Canteen for pointing some of these out.)

In the episode titled "A Change is as Good as a Rest", the reflection of the boom mike can be seen in a shiny conference table as the camera pans from Miss Brahms (Wendy Richard) to Mr. Lucas (Trevor Bannister).

In the episode "Anything You Can Do", the group must prepare lunch for the store. They vote on who will be the chef, and Mrs. Slocome (Mollie Sugden) gets the job. However, when they serve the meal, Mrs. Slocome is waitressing, and Mr. Humphries (John Inman) is now the chef. Did they take a revote when we weren't looking?

At the end of "Happy Returns", the staff performs the song "Steppin' Out". Mr. Tebbs (James Hayter) is clearly not among them. Then, towards the end of the song, he suddenly appears next to Mr. Rumbold (Nicholas Smith), and stays there for the remainder of the song.

A pair of slips were found in "Do You Take This Man?" First of all, When Mrs. Slocombe comes out of the fitting room after putting on her final wedding dress, a hand mysteriously appears at the lower left-hand corner of the screen, fixing her train. Second, when Mrs. Slocombe destroys her fiancée's bouzouki, she is actually just plucking the strings. You can see her doing this through the fitting room curtain!

In "Fire Practice", when Mr. Harmon (Arthur English) is demonstrating CPR on Myrtle, the "rubber simulated lady," he mangles the line about bringing life back to the body. You can see Mr. Grainger (Arthur Brough) cracking a smile and looking toward the director or somebody, probably wondering for a moment if there will be another take. But English made a joke of it and recovered nicely. Incidentally, it looks like this was already at least Take 2 of this scene; there's an edit cut right after Mrs. Slocombe says "It's sexual discrimination!"

A cassette plays a sales pitch in praise of a men's and women's cologne and the prizes offered with purchase in "His and Hers". One line states, "So keep your chappy happy with something snappy." At the end of the show, when Mr. Lucas reads the spiel, he says "happy" twice. Either Bannister mangled the line, or the scriptwriter got distracted.
In "Goodbye Mrs Slocombe", Mr Spooner (Mike Berry) has a bit of trouble with his drawers. This happens almost at the very beginning of the episode just as "Are You Being Served?" appears on the screen. Mr Spooner takes Captain Peacock's coat and tries to stick it in the second drawer from the top. It's stuck to the top one. He tries again. Same thing. He finally then tries the bottom one, and it works.
In "Roots?" (the 1981 Christmas special) you really have to look closely for this one! In the scene with the Scottish dance, Mrs Slocombe and Miss Brahms are off at their counter having a chat just before Old Mr. Grace's secretary comes in with a telegram. If you look real closely, you'll see Mollie Sugden in a huge smile! Sure, she grins once in a while, but never like this!!
In "Shedding the Load", Mr. Harmon brings out a display with tights and steel wool operated by a mechanical hand. The tights are removed, but the hand remains. When Mr. Humphries goes over to see Captain Peacock (Frank Thornton) about his chit, Mr. Humphries just happens to be standing in front of the hand. However (and this is pretty obvious), you can see John Inman leaning over to see where he is. He doesn't only make this large move once -- he does it twice!!

I've also found several continuity flubs from one episode to the next:

First of all, the floor the department is on keeps jumping. The opening theme places them on the first floor. However, on several occasions, they're mentioned as being on the third floor, sometimes on the fourth, and in Are You Being Served? The Movie, they're on the second floor.

In "Fifty Years On", Mrs. Slocombe's famous pussy is eight years old, and Miss Brahms calculates that it must be 56, by multiplying it's age by seven. Yet, in "The Hero", Mrs. Slocombe mentions that her pussy is "coming of age", and Miss Brahms incorrectly assumes that Mrs. Slocombe has had the cat for 21 years. Mrs. Slocombe must then explain to Miss Brahms the multiplication concept that Miss Brahms had such an excellent grasp on before. Not only that, but the cat is now three! Does Mrs. Slocombe lie about the cat's age, or did she get a new one when we weren't looking?

Several episodes show people using the telephones behind the sales counters to call outside the store (i.e.: Mr Humphries phoning his mother). However, in "The Hold-Up", Mr. Harmon states that the only outside line is in Mr. Rumbold's office.

On the show, the characters refer to each other formally, on a last-name basis. Sometimes, however, they do mention first names, and trouble has arisen here. In "The Clock", Mr. Lucas is referred to as "James", but in all later episodes, his first name is Dick. It was apparently changed during one episode as a cheap laugh and remained that way. In the pilot episode, Mrs. Slocome tells Captain Peacock to call her "Betty". He does so in "Cold Comfort", but then can't remember it in "Fifty Years On". What a forgetful man.

In "The Junior", Mr. Goldberg (Alfie Bass) is hired as the new assistant of the Gents department. According to him, he owned his own clothing store for a number of years and applied for a new job when his store burned down. It's clear he never worked at Grace Brothers before. However, in "Anything You Can Do", he suggests preparing a dish that the canteen "used to make". How would he know? Seems the writers forgot that, unlike the character he replaced, Mr. Goldberg had not worked at Grace Brothers for many years.

The executive dining room is torn down in "Up Captain Peacock", but is mentioned or used in subsequent episodes, most notably in "Anything You Can Do". Maybe they rebuilt it.
Speaking of "Anything You Can Do", Mr. Humphries mentions that his mother always says, "Common is as common does" whenever his dad blows his nose on the table (speaking about his dad in the present tense). However, many episodes seem to establish his mother as being single ("I wish she'd get married again").

One more discrepancy is in ages. Mrs. Slocome goes from her mid-forties to her mid-fifties, but she's always lying about her age anyway, so that's probably insignificant. However, the plot of "The Clock" centers around Mr. Grainger's 65th birthday, but in "A Change is as Good as a Rest" and "Goodbye Mr. Grainger", he is referred to as being over seventy. This show lasted a long time, but I'm pretty certain both of those episodes came less than five years after "The Clock", which means Mr. Grainger did some high-speed aging between episodes.

© BBC/Lionheart

Boston Common (1996-1997):
In the episode where Wyleen's (Hedy Buress) friend comes to visit, Boyd (Anthony Clark) and Tasha (Tasha King) have a conversation in the school cafeteria. Julie Schroeder observed that Tasha has an awfully interesting bottle of mineral water. Not only does the water level change without Tasha drinking from it, but the cap can't decide if it wants to be on or off the bottle, and the straw comes and goes.

The Burns and Allen Show (1950-1958):
In the pilot episode, titled "The Klebob Card Game", as George Burns shows Bill Goodwin to the door, the shadow of the boom mike can be seen.

Dallas (1978-1991):
Vinicio Perez Coto, a loyal watcher of the show, sent me some gaffes he found. In the 8th season (1985-1986), Sue Ellen was drinking a lot (between episodes 2-10) and her fine Mercedez was stolen. A few episodes later her car has magically been returned with no explaination whatsoever.
In the same season, JR's detective Pete Adams was held prisioner by Angelica Nero and Nicholas. We are never told of his fate; he simply disappears. What happened to him? Murdered? Who knows?
In the 9th season (1986-1987), just 2 episodes before the Ewings confront B.D. Calhoun, Bobby is swimming with Christopher at the swimming pool. Watch carefully, and you can see it's a fake background. They used a wall to recreate it. The proof can be seen on the shadow reflection on the bushes next to Pam.

Dallas: J.R. returns (1996):
According to the series, Christopher Ewing (Chris Demetral) was born in 1981. Since the reunion movie took place in 1996, he should have been 15, not 18 like Bobby (Patrick Duffy) states. Dedicated slip-spotter and Dallas buff Vinicio Perez Coto found the discrepency.

Days of Our Lives (1965-____):
It's difficult to find flubs in soaps, since they're usually close to being alternate realms anyway. In a way, they're like movies, in that it can take a week to shoot one "day" in the soap world. The difference is that it can also take a week's worth of episodes to broadcast that one day. Here's where this show ran into trouble. In an episode that broadcast in April or May of 1996, Kate Roberts (Lauren Koslow) was confronting Sami Brady (Allison Sweeny) about Sami's evil plots. In shots showing Kate's back, you could see that the fastener on the back of her evening gown was crooked, and a piece of facbric on the fastener's back was showing. The next day's episode picked up where the last one left off - Kate was still in the evening gown, but the fastener had been straigtened. Most likely, a costumer had noticed it and fixed it between takes, hoping the imperfection hadn't been caught on film. Sorry, but it was.
Another gaffe surfaced in one of the show's many dream sequences, in late 1997. When Peter (Jason Brooks) dreamt about seeing Jennifer (Stephanie Cameron), she and Jack (Steve Wilder) were wearing disguises. These disguises were to hide themselves from Peter, and he had no way of knowing what they looked like. So how did he dream about them? Is he psychic?

ER (1994-____):
In an episode titled "Post Mortum", Jeannie Boulet (Gloria Reuben) and Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) chat about a viral specialist that Jeannie has a date with. The eagle-eyed Julie Schroeder noticed that Jeannie's purse strap is over her coat collar, then under it, then over it again, depending on the camera angle.

Magnum, P.I. (1980-1988):
In a 1987 episode entitled "Laura", New York-based Sgt. Michael Doheny (special guest Frank Sinatra) traveled to Hawaii to avenge his daughter's death. At the end of the show, he's in a New York graveyard, telling his daughter she can rest in peace now that her death is avenged. Joseph Martin's father couldn't help but notice how well the touching scene was offset by some beautiful palm trees ... in New York. A tree may grow in Brooklyn, but not the tropical kind.

The Mouse From H.U.N.G.E.R. (1967):
In this sketch from The Tom and Jerry Show (which may have originated as a film short), Tom - here known as "Tom Thrust" - is missing a tooth. The tooth sometimes appears fully intact, then disappears again.

The Simpsons (1989-____):
In the episode "Brother From the Same Planet"(original air date 02/04/93), a poster appears on the outside of Lisa's (v: Yeardly Smith) bedroom door, then later has moved to the inside.
In "Radio Bart" (01/09/92), as Homer (v: Dan Castellaneta) looks down into the well (as seen from inside it looking up), both his hands are on the well's rim. He picks up a shovel, in the next shot has both hands on the well again, then is holding the shovel again.
In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" (09/20/93), the group's name, "The Be Sharps" is listed on the church's signboard when they perform there. However, Chief Wiggum (v: Hank Azaria) is still part of the group, and they didn't pick a name for themselves until after he'd been replaced with Barney Gumbel (v: Castellaneta).
Also, it appears that one of the show's cartoonists is a very big fan of Les Miserables. In the "Barbershop Quartet" episode, Principal Skinner's (v: Harry Shearer) POW number is 24601, as is Sideshow Bob's (v: Kelsey Grammer) prison number in "Cape Feare" (10/07/93). 24601 is Jean Valjean's prison number in Les Miz.

The Time Tunnel (1966-1967):
In the pilot episode, "Rendezvous with Yesterday", Tony (James Darren) tells the captain (Whit Bissel) he was born in 1938. But, in "The Day the Sky Fell", they land in Pearl Harbor, 1941, and Tony tells Doug (Robert Colbert) he was 7 years old when the attack happened. That means he was born in 1934. Vinicio Perez Coto did the math.

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