‘And Just Like That’ Writers Address the Twice-Dead Dad Controversy — but Continuity Errors Aren’t New

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The writers and executives producers of “And Just Like That…” Julie RottenbergandElisa Zuritsky were not exactly expecting the audience reaction when Lisa Todd Wexley’s (Nicole Ari Parker) father died… for seemingly the second time. After all in the first season, Lisa literally said, “I was exactly the same when my father died last year.” In the current season, years later, her father (Billy Dee Williams) died again, and she attended the funeral. HBO quickly explained this time her real father died and before it was her stepfather, and Rottenberg and Zuritsky told THR that it was a sign of just how lower the viewers are.

“That was surprising to me,” Zuritsky said. “It’s the close viewing, but that comes back to the relationship that people have with the show.”

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“You want close viewers,” Rottenberg added. “We know our viewers are smart and paying attention, and you want that. Then sometimes, the thing that you wish people would pay attention to, they don’t. You just never know. It’s sort of like being a parent. You bring these children into the world and then you hope for the best. And then you’re lucky enough, as we are, to have a big audience, a very passionate and expressive audience who is not afraid to express their feelings.”

It’s funny to think that a couple decades ago, before social media drove a flutter of easily accessible and highly public discourse around any given series, that a slip-up (or an assumed slip-up) might not have even been noticed. Or, if it was noticed, few fans would’ve bothered to write a letter to the network.

As any true binge-watcher of classic television knows — and I guess TV’s classical period is now just simply defined as pre-streaming — inconsistencies once happened the regular. Continuity, particular in episodic television, wasn’t that important —especially it retconning helped facilitate a good guest spot or a new regular when a show goes south.

“The Golden Girls” is probably one of the worst offenders of the top tier of TV. Consider this: Dorothy and Stan had to get married right out of high school because Dorothy got pregnant with their daughter Kate, who appears to be 30-ish when we meet her in a 1985 episode. But Dorothy and Stan have been divorced for several years and were married for 38 years. Make that math work.

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And how many kids did Blanche have? She lists five at one point, we do meet a couple (including one who gets recast on her second appearance). But how did she raise all those kids to then be an empty nester by the time the show started in 1985… and still have caused a supposed ruckus as a single woman at the 1964 Democratic Convention only 21 years prior?

But we can’t just pick on our favorite Miami ladies. There’s also “Family Matters,” who stole a page from the “Happy Days” playbook and deleted a child from the family after multiple seasons (Judy and Chuck, respectively). It’s also extremely unclear as to when Tom and Lynette moved to Wisteria Lane in “Desperate Housewives.” Why did Topanga’s parents keep getting recast on “Boy Meets World?” The “That 70’s Show” timeline makes no sense. And on the dad subject, Dr. Frasier Crane’s father was dead on “Cheers,” and very clearly alive on “Frasier.”

“Sex and the City” itself was inconsistent —I mean, why doesn’t Carrie break the fourth wall like she did in the beginning?

The point is, if it matters, that even if “And Just Like That” really intended a retcon, there is plenty of precedent to rewrite a story point mid-series. We just didn’t have the vast resources to notice in the olden days.

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And what’s a continuity error between friends? Or even on “Friends” (don’t get me started on their shifting birthdays or the number of times Rachel met Chandler in flashback episodes).

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