Maddening inconsistencies/discontinuities in old TV shows: forgot how to watch with "old eyes"?

The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

We see Mary's job interview with Lou Grant in the very first episode - you know, the one where he says "I hate spunk!" Then, in the last season, Lou tells Mary he hired her because she kept trying to cover up a run in her stocking. Never happened.
Lots of familial info for each character during the series run is built on shifting sands. Rhoda mentions a sister and brother early on but the brother is never mentioned again. As to that sister, in season 4, Rhoda & Mary go to New York to attend her wedding. Her name is Debbie (nice Jewish name), she's thin and perky and as anyone who watched Rhoda knows, is nowhere in sight during that sitcom's run.
Murray's kids are mentioned and occasionally shown but the exact amount keeps changing. I'm still not sure how many daughters he had and like Rhoda's brother, a son is mentioned early on but several seasons later, he adopts a boy because he's always wanted a son!
Ted's equally obnoxious brother is introduced in the 2nd season played by Jack Cassidy and is never shown or mentioned again.
Valerie Harper's then husband, Dick Schaal portrayed Mary's boyfriend Paul Arnell in one episode and his brother Howard in another. He also turned up in other roles in the early seasons.

 

When I heard this I totally heard it as a lie. The telling line is "You don't buy that excuse, I quit". I managed women in an office for almost 20 years - that story is nothing! So I would say they were pretty consistent with her character Carla was a good provider and parent but she used her kids as an excuse not to be at work.

 

Well, they kinda tried by introducing Alice Ghostley as Esmeralda, the bumbling witch/maid who faded away anytime she got nervous and flustered.
Speaking of Paul Lynde, he's one of three actors who appeared in early episodes as a one-off mortal character and was later brought back as a recurring supernatural one. Bernard Fox (Dr. Bombay) and Alice Ghostley being the other two.

 

To say nothing how early on in the series it was established if a genie married a mortal they would lose their powers...something forgotten when Jeannie and Tony finally got married!

 

I honestly just never understood why Tony just didn't roll with all of it. Actually I didn't get why he even married her. She's a genie - a magical being that lives in a bottle. Is it necessary to marry her? He already had everything and she wasn't leaving. He had the bottle!
It's not like Samantha and Darren where he thought he was dating a non-witch. This all reinforces that old advice - if you don't like your girl being a stripper, real estate agent, genie, witch, don't marry her. She isn't changing.

Should we resurrect Vidiot's thread about the practical, logical and existential issues of the Cars movies? That was great fun.

 

I copy and pasted the lines from an online script site but just now scanned the episode and the line was "I'll quit".
To me, that is the best warm-hearted parental comment she made of them when they were off-camera, which was my point.

Off-camera she may have been a good parent to her kids but ultimately, did any of them succeed at anything positive other than never kicking a blind dog into the lake at the show's end?).
Norm, Cliff, and Carla's kids were Cheer's version of MTM's Ted Baxter.

I loved the show, but she was also a female Louis DePalma of sorts, even with the same kind of vocal and physical delivery, and pronunciations at times.

Off-camera phone call from someone at her house:
Carla, its for you, your youngest kid is in the clothes dryer.
Tell them I'm not here!

Another, she was mentioning how depressing the movie 'Ordinary People' was, and she was "trying to get her kids to watch it!"

Those are the two of many that immediately come to mind showing her lack of compassion, albeit if only for a cheap joke.
Compare those two to her first reference to her kids:
"I don't work for a man who has no compassion for my children".
She never mentioned them in a truly positive warm/gushy compassionate way, outside of her first reference to them, and just because she demands compassion from others regarding her kids doesn't mean she gives it to them herself.
For better or worse, that was my only point.

 

I don't remember that episode but Jack Cassidy could wonderfully play obnoxious. I wish he was in more episodes.

 

I guess witches must eventually pass on - they probably wouldn't live forever. They could have referenced that Aunt Clara "passed on" sometime during season five, rather than not referring to her again for the rest of the series.

What I noticed was the changing narrative on Halloween. In the first two seasons, the Halloween episodes showed that witches hated the holiday, but by the third season, Endora was celebrating the holiday by having a party. On the fourth-season Halloween episode, she hated it again.

Surprised that producer William Asher, who was with the show for the whole run, didn't correct this inconsistency.

 

Barbara Eden is on record as saying that their relationship should never have been consummated, and it killed the show for their characters to get married. I think the show was running out of steam and they just threw this in as desperate attempt to get one more season out of the show.

I've told this story before: an old friend of mine, a long-time Columbia TV exec, told me in the 1980s he was having lunch with Bewitched director/producer William Asher (married to Elizabeth Montgomery during the years the show was on the air). I told him to ask Asher several questions:

• they established that witches lived hundreds of years. Could they extend the lives of humans, too?

• could they bring the dead back to life?

• if the witches and warlocks are all-powerful, why not eliminate all the disease and suffering on earth?

• are witches connected to Satan? And if so, how?

• could they tell us if there's a god? Or a heaven? Or a hell? Or the meaning of life?

He asked my questions and Asher reportedly roared with laughter and said, "tell your friend if we had answered any of these on the show, we would've been off the air pretty quickly."

Asher did admit that the show had been borrowed from the films I Married a Witch and Bell, Book & Candle, but that core concept of a human marrying a witch was essentially uncopyrightable. And he pointed out that the latter Jimmy Stewart film was owned by Columbia Pictures... who also owned Bewitched.

There were tons of inaccuracies and inconsistencies on all these "magical" shows of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and it basically boils down to the producers only caring about whether they got a good script out that week, and not if it refuted something done way back in Season 2. Nobody had any idea that reruns, streaming, and home video would allow viewers to scrutinize every frame of every episode and pick up on all the mistakes.

Noted Hollywood writer Ken Levine just recounted a story from his many years on M*A*S*H where he had worked on a season 6 or 7 episode of the show, and was horrified to discover in reruns that the plot was very similar to a show written by the great Larry Gelbart back in Season 1 or 2. He was mortified, and from that moment on they made a little card-catalog indexing all the episodes so they could check to see if a basic story idea had already been done before. Nowadays, they have computers and databases and writers' assistants to check on all that stuff, but nobody thought of this back in 1975.

 

Thanks! I forgot to mention the Halloween aspect. There are all sorts of inconsistencies when it comes to witch lore, particularly their powers and the thing about one witch not being able to negate another witch's spell. Sometimes it was a matter of degree, other times it was more rigid. Medical issues also flip-flopped. In the first season episode that introduced Sam's father Maurice, they try to pass Darrin off as a warlock but Maurice sees his birth certificate and becomes suspicious since witches and warlocks don't require medical assistance. Yet, in the second season, Sam has an obstetrician and gives birth in a hospital. And then in season 3, we got Dr. Bombay.

 

Sure nuff - marriage and babies kill a show almost every single time. It's a different thread topic but I wonder if there are examples of either actually improving a show? I don't think I Love Lucy counts because it didn't improve the show - that show was gold already.

The worst example for me was Mad About You. Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser had fantastic chemistry. Why couldn't they be portrayed as a couple of DINKS (Double Income No KidS)? I guess it's like you say - they ran out of ideas.

 

I seem to recall on That 70's Show that Donna had a younger sister in the first season who only appeared in one episode and was never seen or talked about again. I think the official term for it is the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.

 

They often have the same effect in real life.

 

And then there's the "Cousin Oliver" syndrome:

That inexplicable kid added to the show's roster, usually in an attempt to liven up an aging cast with a character the younger demographics.

Cousin Oliver - TV Tropes

And the other really corny sitcom plot trick is the "going on vacation to Hawaii" deal. Brady Bunch is a rare show that used both of these.

 

To me the worst character disappearance was on The Bonnie Hunt Show. She had a daughter who was in every scene that took place in her house. Not a Chuck Cunningham who was rarely seen. This kid was prominent in every first season episode. Second season, she's gone with no explanation.

 

Ah yes, disappearing characters. Crystal on Roseanne. She was a regular occurring character for the first 5 or 6 seasons then eventually disappeared and I'm not sure if an explanation was ever given. Randall Carver was a principal cabbie character in season 1 of Taxi but gone by Season 2, again with no explanation although in this case, getting Reverend Jim was more than a fair trade.

 

The first 13 or so episodes of Mad About You, Paul had a best friend who was in every episode. He then disappeared and was essentially replaced by cousin Ira.

 

The show that's the template for "worst plot/character changes ever" was The Doris Day Show. Season one had Doris as a widow living on a farm north of San Francisco with her father and two young sons; season two has her working in San Francisco for her boss, McLean Stevenson, with Rose Marie as the wisecracking secretary; Season 3, she moves to San Francisco and lives above a pizza parlor with the kids and a dog (and they get rid of the father); in seasons 4 & 5, the kids are inexplicably gone, she's suddenly single, and is now working with John Dehner at a different magazine with Jackie Joseph abruptly replacing Rose Marie. That is one strange show (and not a good one).

 

The 'Ritchie' character left King of Queens in 2001 (Paint Misbehavin').
He started in the 1998's first episode, but from 1999 on, he wasn't in many episodes, though he did receive screen credit for many that he wasn't in.
If anything, I would have liked to seen him cast as the Spence character, although somehow it seemed to fit Oswalt better.

I thought it was rather funny in an odd sort of way that the main characters in Taxi were always in the garage together waiting for a cab to drive, especially Alex Reiger, who was supposed to be the top booker.
They didn't even have any background actors visible in some episodes, or at least the same exact ones all the time, did they get the cabs first....

 

Furthermore, in the last episode of Season Three of MARY TYLER MOORE, Rhoda leaves Hemple's Department Store to open a plant boutique, and requires a loan from Mary to do so. Mary spends much the episode wondering if Rhoda will ever pay her back, especially after it appears that the plant shop is doing well. The kicker of the episode is that Rhoda not only gives her her money back, but puts a down-payment on a yellow convertible that Mary had her eyes on.

Season Four starts and there's absolutely no mention of the plant store, Rhoda is back working at Hemple's without explanation, and Mary, in the credits sequence is seen washing a blue convertible.

 

Not sure if I got this right, but weren't on-screen couples at that time allowed to sleep in the same bed, so long as they were married in real life?
That certainly applied to Ozzie and Harriet.

 

There is an inconsistency within one episode of Mad About You.

In the beginning of The Ride Home, Fran is celebrating her birthday party at her apt, and she mentions that she's kind of nervous because it's her first party without her husband Mark (Richard Kind), yet not only is he is seen at 13:41 in the episode, he is seen talking to her in the background, then occasionally thereafter.

But the kicker is, not only did his name not appear in the beginning or ending credits, he isn't even credited in its IMDB episode- specific entry.

 

I don't recall Rhoda actually saying she quit her window dressing job to open a plant shop but was doing it as a side thing. She initially used her apartment to house the plants. To be fair, they did mention her plant expertise in a couple of later episodes but yeah, the store thing was dropped. And she didn't pay her back in cash but used that money and a little extra, you know, for interest, to make a down payment.

 

If that real life couple thingy was correct, why were Lucy and Desi in separate beds, especially if it allegedly was done previously in 1947?

This is one of the most disputed facts in television history.

I looked this up years ago after remembering that Florence Henderson once claimed the Bradys were the first.
Then someone erroneously tried to claim it was Fred & Wilma!

When I checked at that time, I think the article mentioned that the married couple that was mentioned earlier in this thread may have been the first, but since no visual evidence was available, it was merely hearsay.

O&H did share the same bed and did sleep in separate beds as I mentioned previously.
I don't know if it was in chronological order or they mixed it up to keep the sponsors happy.

One can always "go to the the videotape"(film) as they say, as most of the O&H's are available on YouTube.