Matlock

Matlock (1986)

48 mistakes - chronological order

(6 votes)

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: When the stepson arrives at the villa, he makes his way to the front door, shoving aside reporters. Between his POV and the next shot, the same reporters move away in different ways, with different timing. (00:03:10)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: The limo bringing Ben and Charlene Matlock to the fancy house in Rhode Island pulls over under an overcast sky, but Matlock steps out of the car in a brightly sunlit zone. (00:08:15)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: When Ben Matlock rings the doorbell of the Harrison residence, he is standing with his hands behind his back while the door is opening. In the next shot, the door is still opening, but Andy Griffith is standing with his hands by his sides. (00:08:30)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: When Matlock is interviewing the kid poolside, she just came out of the water and wraps a towel around herself without as much as touching her own head. Still, in close-ups, her hair is somewhat dry. (00:14:30)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: When Matlock is talking to Harriet and Christina Harrison Ward after his attempt at re-enacting an alternative route for the murderer, Christina defends herself, saying, "But I was asleep." Matlock answers in the reverse shot, and you can see her pose with a hand in front of her chest that wasn't raised a moment before. (00:18:30)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: Tyler makes his exit from the bar, switching the power off; Kene Holiday pulls the lever down, and you can see him in the darkness go past the man by him and push the door open with a clean way out. In the shot from the exterior, though, he still has to push the man out of the door and goes around him, coming out by the side of the lock instead of the hinges. (00:20:40)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: At the Latino bar, Matlock begins playing pool to look cool with the local gang crowd - it is just as believable as it sounds. The positions of the billiard balls keep changing between shots. (00:30:00)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Revealing mistake: The attempt on Rodriguez's life is quite phony looking; leaving aside the trope of a person who wants to avoid being murdered by a car by trying to outrun it instead of getting out of the way (the first semi-POV of the car does a terrible job at that, since the car looks much closer to The Victim and slower than it should be, and wide room for Rodriguez to escape sideways), the impact does not happen and the stuntman jumps into a pile of garbage without anything remotely close to connecting. (00:32:00)

Sammo

The Affair - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: When Matlock talks to Sonia after the attempt on Rodriguez's life, Theresa Saldana plays with the wedding ring in different ways as the different angles alternate. (00:33:20)

Sammo

Matlock mistake picture

The Angel - S1-E10

Visible crew/equipment: On the last day of the trial, Matlock, his daughter and Angel all rise at the arrival of Judge Richard Cooksey. The boom mic pops up at the top of the screen (spotted in the DVD version). (00:35:05)

Sammo

The Angel - S1-E10

Continuity mistake: During the deposition of Danny Blaster, Matlock asks him if he trusted his manager. He pauses in a specific pose that is only approximately replicated after the cut, same as Mr. Blaster's hand position. (00:35:30)

Sammo

The Professor - S1-E11

Continuity mistake: When Professor Tate congratulates Eric Lane for the improved grades, the two have a playful banter, and Tate says he's "happy to be proven wrong." Christopher McDonald has to wipe off some streamers that got in his hair. In the next close-up, he still has streamers on his shoulder despite the fact he brushed them away entirely. A similar mistake happens later on when he is carrying the unconscious professor out of the room; streamers suddenly are all over him from one shot to the next. (00:02:40)

Sammo

The Professor - S1-E11

Plot hole: Matlock figures out that The Professor wouldn't have been able to see the security guard from 50 yards without glasses, and that's what tips him off about The Conspiracy: the guard testifying that the man wasn't wearing any. However, when we see the scene happen at the beginning of the episode, the person posing as Prof. Erskine Tate is, in fact, wearing glasses. (00:04:15 - 00:22:15)

Sammo

The Professor - S1-E11

Factual error: This takes place in Atlanta, but in the scene where Tyler pulls up to Matlock and The Professor on the bench, there are California-style palm trees visible in the background. (00:18:35)

The Professor - S1-E11

Plot hole: The forensics for this case have been quite shoddy at best, considering that Tate was drugged and not simply intoxicated (yet no toxicology test was performed) and the dog wasn't run over but repeatedly beaten with a tyre iron (which is a wildly different kind of injury). Nobody brings this sort of objection forward - the dog one would have easily destroyed the prosecution's case right away since The Professor was asleep at the wheel and not in shape to beat assault dogs up.

Sammo

The Fisherman - S2-E22

Continuity mistake: Matlock is inside a jail cell, speaking to a man who has been accused of murder. In an outdoor scene, someone throws a raw egg at the window as Matlock looks out. Inside the cell, as Matlock turns away from the window, the splattered egg has vanished.

Steven Lee

The D.J. - S3-E5

Factual error: This episode involves the murder of Bobby Moore, a program host at Atlanta radio station 98.6 WBW. In the United States, all FM stations end with an odd number.

Steven Lee

More trivia for Matlock

The Victim - S4-E17

Question: During the trial, Matlock says that he paid a man to follow Bret which is how they were able to find the rope that Bret used. Would what Ben did to prove that Bret was the killer actually be allowed?

Answer: I did not see this episode, but YES. Both prosecution and defense lawyers use investigators to search for and uncover evidence that is legally admissible.

More questions & answers from Matlock

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