And they thought we wouldn't notice: the inconsistencies caused by lazy writing

In season two episode four of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Det. Jake Peralta makes a bet with Capt. Raymond Holt that he can steal the watch straight off of Holt’s wrist by the end of the night—in keeping with their annual Halloween heist bet. If Peralta succeeds, Holt must do his paperwork for one week and call him “an amazing detective/genius.” If he fails, Peralta says he will give Holt one week of overtime for free, but the pot’s not sweet enough for the Captain—who has a few tricks up his sleeve—so Peralta, thinking he has the heist in the bag, says he will “five-druple” the overtime. Sounds a little uneven of a bet, right? Well, Holt agrees and they “have an accord,” and the heist is on.

However, if you are a B99 superfan and have rewatched the episodes multiple times—thanks Hulu—you may have picked out an interesting inconsistency. During the first annual Halloween heist in season one episode six, the terms of the bet were that Holt would do Peralta’s paperwork just for Halloween night if he lost, and Peralta would give him five weeks of unpaid overtime if he lost.

So, either Holt and Peralta forgot the terms of their original heist, the writers forgot and didn’t bother to check, or they were hoping no one would notice. Well, I did.

But, I never would have noticed if I wasn’t such a big rewatcher, which brings up an interesting question: How many inconsistencies happen because writers hope no one will notice?

It’s not just B99 that has had this issue. Without any Google searches or research, I know of a few more off the top of my head.

In the third episode in the first season of Showtime’s Shameless, Mickey Milkovich mentions in passing that his mom is off picking his brother Iggy up from juvie. Now, like I said, this was in passing and the exchange took about five seconds, but I love Mickey Milkovich with all my heart, so I’ve rewatched specifically his scenes more than a few times—I need help, I know. This is the only mention of the Milkovich matriarch being around. The only other time she’s brought up is when Mandy Milkovich explains that her dad sometimes confuses her forher mother when he’s drunk—which, on a side note, is the reason why a Bring Mandy Back and Protect Her at all Costs coalition needs to be formed.

So, from Mandy’s comments, one can assume that her mother is not around anymore, whether dead or run off. And sure, she could have died or left between Mickey’s conversation and Mandy’s explanation, but there isn’t a lot of time between season one episode three and season two episode ten. I’m left to assume again that the season one comment was either forgotten or there was an assumption that no one would remember or care about the Milkovich mother enough to point it out. But here I am, a supporter of the Milkovich siblings, wondering what happened to their mama.

For those who are fans of the parentage inconsistencies in TV, I’ve got another one for you. In the second episode of Psych—one of my favorite crime shows of all time—we meet Det. Juliet O’Hara for the first time. She’s sitting on a stakeout at a diner and everyone’s favorite fake psychic Shawn Spencer is trying to chat her up, but she’s not having it. Instead, Shawn decides to have both sides of the conversation himself and creates Juliet’s dialogue using clues he gets about her life from things like her open purse and the cat hair on her pants. He mentions that she is close with her parents and that they’ve been together for 30 years, which she basically confirms by asking if they know each other.

Now, she never fully confirms Shawn’s statement, but her reaction is a bit odd if he wasn’t right. But in season six episode seven, we meet Juliet’s dad Frank O’Hara who is a conman and hasn’t been with her mother since Juliet was a child. Sure, Juliet’s mom remarried a man named Lloyd, but there’s no way they could have been together for 30 years when Juliet is around her late 20s in the first season. It also brings up the question of whether Frank is also the father of Juliet’s brothers due to his flighty nature, but let’s just assume he is.

Again, this is more likely due to a hope from the writers that viewers would look past this issue in favor of being able to have William Shatner and Jeffrey Tambor play Juliet’s dad and stepdad, respectively.

This last one may be less of an inconsistency and more of a well-hidden clue to future plot points, but it deserves a mention anyway since it was never really cleared up. In the pilot of Lucifer—another example of how shows about the devil don’t seem to last unless it’s Supernatural: rest in peace Reaper—Lucifer and Det. Chloe Decker are confronting their first bad guy together, and of course he has a gun and of course he doesn’t want to go quietly. After Decker shoots him, he shoots her right back, but spoiler alert, she’s going to be okay. Lucifer clearly does not appreciate his new detective friend being shot by the guy who already killed one of his friends, so he approaches with vengeance in mind. The bad guy is laying on the ground, but gets a handful of shots off at Lucifer, but obviously they don’t hurt him because he’s the devil.

And yes, we’re grateful that those shots didn’t kill Lucifer in the first episode because that would have been a short-lived show. However, it is made evident just a handful of episodes later that Lucifer can get hurt and can die in the presence of Chloe, so how did he survive about half a clip of bullets in the chest with her just a few feet away?

The skeptical answer is that the scene in the first episode was really cool and showed how badass Lucifer is and they hoped nobody would put it together. The answer that has more faith in the Lucifer writers is that Lucifer couldn’t be hurt in the presence of Chloe at that time because she didn’t love him yet. In season three, we meet Cain—yes, the Cain—doing double duty as the crime lord Sinnerman and Lt. Marcus Pierce. All Pierce wants in life is to be able to die but he was cursed by God to never die. He realizes that the reason Lucifer can die when he’s around Chloe is because she loves him, so he comes up with a plan to get Chloe to love him so he can die too.

However, when Pierce realizes he’s done enough and he’s able to die, he also realizes he loves Chloe back and doesn’t want to die anymore. So there’s actually a few options as to why Pierce is suddenly able to die. The first is that he’s right and Chloe’s love made him mortal again, which would explain Lucifer’s mortality around her too. The second is that it was his love for Chloe that made him mortal, which would take care of the Lucifer issue as well. The third is that because Pierce stopped wanting to die, he was finally able to, which leaves the Lucifer problem unsolved. The last one is even more complicated but was actually posed by the angel Amenadiel as the reason he lost his wings as well as why Lucifer lost his devil face and got his wings back: Amenadiel didn’t see himself as an angel anymore due to the things he had done, so he lost his wings; Lucifer was doing good on Earth, so he no longer saw himself as a devil, so he lost the face. Lucifer brings this up as a reason why Pierce could have lost the scar that marked him as cursed with immortality.

So depending on which reasoning you go with, that pilot episode could be an inconsistency or just a cleverly placed allude to future plot points. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

As I mentioned, these are just the ones I’ve noticed and had tumbling around my head for a while, but I’m sure there are many more. So, if you have any others, I’d love to hear about them, so drop me a comment.

P.S.

Okay, I lied, I have one more. It’s a little baby one and really just me being nit-picky probably, but still deserves a mention. In the fourth episode of Supernatural, the Winchester brothers face their first of many, many demons—at least on screen. They use a little trick to figure out who on the plane is possessed: apparently, demons will shudder and go all black-eyed at the name of God spoken in Latin, which is Christo if you’re not up on your Latin. Seems like a neat trick, right? Super useful for two people who seem to be demon magnets, wouldn’t you say? Too bad they never use the trick again. If I were a hunter who kept running into demons, I would say Christo to every person I met, just saying.

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