Lostpedia Blog

Monday, March 23, 2009

Continual error

I've come to have a rant/investigation about the continuity errors of Season 5. One of the main talking points so far this season on the wiki, the forums, and IRC is the seemingly increased number of continuity errors, and the importance of the events are that wrong. Of course, it's not really hard to work out why: Time travel, multiple storylines, and a lot of wrapping up to be done. But here's a close look at some of the interesting ones. (Of course, if you don't really care about this sort of thing, don't bother)

Episode: "Because You Left"
Error: On the zodiac raft, Steve Jenkins was wearing a backpack immediately before the Island moved in "There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3", but when the sky turns normal again in this episode, his backpack is missing. Furthermore, a bearded background extra has been replaced by Neil "Frogurt", and another background extra sitting next to him has disappeared.
Reason: Most likely due to background casting change, so it's not that big of a deal. However, it would've made perfect sense if Frogurt was just on the beach instead of him randomly appearing on the Zodiac.

Episode: "The Little Prince"
Error: The light from the hatch the left-behinders see from afar looks more like the bright white light from the hatch after it had been blown open as seen in "Man of Science, Man of Faith", rather than the dim yellow light from the hatch window Locke was able to look straight into at the end of "Deus Ex Machina".
Reason: Gregg Nations at The Fuselage actually explained this. "Sometimes you tell production you want something to be a certain way, but what comes back in dailies isn't exactly what you'd hoped for." Source. In the end, it would've meant a whole reshoot, which means more costs and more time. I would be kinda annoyed if they spent a lot of their budget on getting the Hatch light exactly right.

Episode: "This Place is Death"
Error: Danielle gives the date of leaving Tahiti as November 15th 1988. In "Pilot, Part 2", Sayid says the message Danielle left had been playing for 16 years and 5 months as of the day following the crash of flight 815 (September 23rd 2004). Furthermore in "Through the Looking Glass" we also find out that Danielle had left the message at the radio tower 3 days before Alex was born which would have been 2 months after Danielle first arrived on the island. Therefore the message had been playing for approximately 15 years and 7 months.
Reason: Well, Sayid had a pretty complex calculation to do...

Episode: "316"
Error: Locke's head is resting on a different pillow and he is wearing a different necktie than in "There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3" in the coffin.
Reason: That's just lazy.

Episode: "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"
Error:Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute is portrayed in earlier episodes as a place Jack can stop by after work to visit Hurley. However in this episode, the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute is identified as being in Santa Rosa, CA. which is over 400 miles from the hospital where Jack works in Santa Monica, CA. While the city of Santa Rosa, CA is mainly a large metropolitan area, there are numerous foothills and outlying undeveloped territory as the mental institute is shown to be set in the countryside.
Reason: Interesting, maybe they always meant for the institute to be there but just did a lack of research early on.

Episode: "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"
Error: The content of Locke's conversations with the O6 and Walt seem to be very different to what they had previously described.
Reason: The pessimist would say laziness/lack of research, the optimist would say it was time constraints, and we didn't see everything. I think both.

Episode: "LaFleur"
Error: The little girl that Daniel presumes to be Charlotte exists in 1974, yet Ben previously mentioned that Charlotte was born in 1979.
Reason: An actress who interfered with the writing of the show. The March 19, 2009 podcast revealed that the original script for "Confirmed Dead" stated that Charlotte was born in 1970. Damon and Carlton said that Rebecca Mader, the actress who played Charlotte, changed the year (on her own) to 1979 to correspond to her own birth year. The error was not fixed in editing, though Damon and Carlton admit now that it should have been 1970 all along.

Episode: "Namaste"
Error(?): A mystery woman appears behind Sun in the processing center.
Reason: May not actually be an error. It was this mystery that inspired me to write this post. Personally, I think it's some really poor on-set and post-production work, and some random production assistant got caught in the frame. Others think it's deliberately someone we know Claire, Charlotte, even Libby. If it is an Easter Egg, it's a damn good one.

Here's another two of my favourite "possible errors" from seasons past.

Episode: "The Man From Tallahassee"
Error(?): Locke comes back wet when he "detonates" the sub.
Reason: Many fans have speculated, and still do, that Locke only blew up the jetty and is saving the submarine for some other time. Personally, I think he did blow it up otherwise we would surely know by now...but the theories continue.

Episode: "Confirmed Dead"
Error(?): In Miles' flashback, the picture frames in the home change in style after he comes down the stairs.
Reason: I really don't know, and would love some closure from Darlton. (Hint hint, Ama) If it was a Faraday/Desmond scene, I would immediately call deliberate, but it was Miles. He's pretty much a "redshirt with a twist", it's been one and a half seasons and he's had no real character development. Another weird point is that all the pictures and their positioning are the same, only the frames have changed. Weird, but that's Lost for ya.

16 comments:

Tori said...

Really, the only one that bothered me a lot was Charlotte's age, but now that it's been explained, I don't really care. And the differences in the conversations with Locke are definitely annoying. But all the rest--if they are really keeping people from enjoying the season, those people might be a little too nitpicky.

Oh, and the Sayid calculation--he said the message was approximately 30 seconds and figured it out from there. Why would you think that he would be absolutely accurate?

I can understand why people would be annoyed by a bunch of continuity erros, but a lot of these examples really are reaching for something to be annoyed about.

Joyce said...

The overall effect of this show is what counts. Why would anyone care about ties and bags or any of that nit picky stuff?

Its a TV show and we are to indulge in a willful suspension of disbelief and just enjoy it.

Anonymous said...

Did you read some of your errors? Ties and pillows? Really? Don't you have something better to do than tear apart tiny little details? I mean, really, tiny details.

SarahJean said...

I'm glad someone is pointing out continuity errors! They drive me crazy. On the season 4 dvd extras they talk about how they have one person assigned to keep track of guns...who has them and how many there are and what kinds they are... It seems like they should be able to keep track of what a character is wearing or how old she should be!!

Shea said...

You stated that Santa Rosa, California does not have rolling foothills and undeveloped areas, but I would just like to let you know that Santa Rosa has ALOT of undeveloped countryside. I live here and we do actually have a mental hospital out on the outskirts of town. It is surrounded by feilds and hills. Its really a beautiful area. I do agree with your Santa Monica and Santa Rosa distance though. They are about 8 or so hours drive away.

Anonymous said...

I think the woman sitting behind Sun in the Namaste episode has to be either Charlotte (another dead character) or the (yet to be declared dead) Penny Widmore. They are the only two white women with red hair, right?

There's also another minor continuity error in Namaste as well...when Christian shows Sun the 1970s picture there are 16 people in it, but there are only 15 people when they cut to the live shot in color a few moments later. I think this is just an error, not a clue.

Eugenia said...

While the Ajira 316 is crashing you can hear in their radio the "numbers". They should have not be hearing the numbers as the writers have said that time is 2007 when the plane crashes. The radio tower does not transmit anything for ~3 years at that point.

Blue eagle islander said...

Tori - I know there's no way he would be accurate, but his calculation was considered gospel until TPID

Joyce and Anonymous - You're both totally right, the overall picture is the most imporant part. But really, couldn't they get the right tie?

Shea - I based that Santa Rosa bit off the ep's wiki page; I've never even been to Cali. Be good to have a local resident edit that part.

Brianna64 said...

Episode: "LaFleur"
Error: The little girl that Daniel presumes to be Charlotte exists in 1974, yet Ben previously mentioned that Charlotte was born in 1979.
Reason: An actress who interfered with the writing of the show. The March 19, 2009 podcast revealed that the original script for "Confirmed Dead" stated that Charlotte was born in 1970. Damon and Carlton said that Rebecca Mader, the actress who played Charlotte, changed the year (on her own) to 1979 to correspond to her own birth year. The error was not fixed in editing, though Damon and Carlton admit now that it should have been 1970 all along.

**It can be updated that Damon and Carlton both have apologized to Rebecca Mader she did not make any changes it was a mistake on their part stating that she was the one who changed the dob...

Anonymous said...

Yeah, this is a sign that you spend too much time watching Lost/reading Lostpedia. I am speaking from experience so don't be offended.

YouAllEverybody said...

Is there an explanation for why nobody thought it strange that Juliet the mechanic was able to deliver a baby?

KissyS006 said...

I'd like to point out that the mention of Santa Rosa in this blog and on the wiki are wrong. According to Darlton in the March 19th podcast, Hurley is at the Santa Rosa Mental Health INSTITUTION, not Institute. I was surprised to see that the wiki entry was wrong. In the podcast, a listener had asked about the term "institute" being used in the pop-ups in the enhanced episode. Carlton Cuse explained that the pop-ups aren't meant to be canon, but like a helpful Uncle Larry reminding you of things, and that Hurley was not being housed in a place for the furthering of mental education.

KissyS006 said...

Also, regarding the woman behind Sun in the processing center in Namaste, if you think about how some storylines play out over a few episodes, they may just shoot a scene all at one time, and then break it up in the editing room. It's entirely possible that the woman back there will be part of the scene, just in a later episode. Certainly makes more sense to me than it being a crew member. That would just be AMATEUR AND EFFING UNPROFESSIONAL!! (j/k)

Chuck said...

Even the best edited books have misspelled and omitted words when they come out the other side of press...that doesn't fault the author or the edit it just requires us to be really good readers.

Lance said...

In response to Eugenia-
"While the Ajira 316 is crashing you can hear in their radio the "numbers". They should have not be hearing the numbers as the writers have said that time is 2007 when the plane crashes. The radio tower does not transmit anything for ~3 years at that point."

I don't think that this was an error. I'm pretty sure that it was deliberate. I am someone who is subscribing to the theory that by killing Ben as a child, the people on flight 316 are on a new altered timeline. This would be similar to what happened in Back to the Future Part II when a false 1985 was created by Biff when he traveled back in time to give himself the almanac.

I take the fact that they heard the numbers over the radio as evidence that the 316 survivors are in an altered time that was created by Sayid.

But once again, that it just my humble opinion.

Anonymous said...

Darlton confirmed the sub was blown up, so that shouldn't be a theory any longer.

16 years, 5 months would be April 1988, so that is a really bad continuity error; they can't even pass it off as the wrong year because not even the month is right.

Charlotte error has been updated, as noted.

On the Miles picture change, there are differences in the pictures as well as the frames. They were shown in close-up, so this makes me think it's more than bad props.

The conversation in the Life and Death of JB were accurate, but incomplete; we are seeing more about what happened in that month, and these pre-emptive complaints are really annoying. Just wait and see.