Psych Fools Itself

I am about to make Mary Ellen Santare very, very proud.

I was watching Psych this week (a show I generally love), and noticed an error and a related continuity problem. Shawn Spencer, our resident pretend psychic, was trying to ferret out a possible killer while teaching a high school class on what he called "Phsysics," or the physics of psychics. One of the students, in order to test Shawn's psychic ability, wants to play Jeopardy. The student goes and writes something up on the blackboard behind Shawn so that Shawn cannot see it. Shawn manages to avoid having to give the question, but that does not concern me. The problem is actually in the answer the student writes on the board.

The board reads "6.002… x 10^23 atoms/molecule" The question should be "What is Avogadro's Number?" or "What is a mole?" Or, at least it would be if the student had written down Avogadro's Number correctly, which starts off "6.022…" not "6.002...;" actually, it seems as though when carried out further the number used in the show is even more inaccurate as the later digits are wrong as well. As the scene continues, different shots of Shawn occur with the number behind him. This is all well and good, except that the number on the blackboard changes. At times it is, as the student appeared to originally write it, "6.002…" and at other times, it is the correct "6.02…"

For a show that centers around the main character being absurdly good at picking up small details in order to solve mysteries, this sort of continuity error is rather ironic and certainly quite glaring (at least if you had Mary Ellen Santare as a chemistry teacher in high school).

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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