First Encounters of the Close Kind - S3-E10
Plot hole: Joey tells AJ that her Mother used to read "Little Women" to her, and in fact named her 'Josephine' because "Little Women" was her favorite book. But in a previous episode when Joey and Dawson visit her Mother's grave, the gravestone has printed 'Lillian Josephine Potter', meaning her Mother already had Josephine as her middle name. So naming Joey 'Josephine' wasn't only because of the book "Little Women"; her Mother more likely named her that because it was her middle name.
Plot hole: Jack and Jen go to Capefest, primarily because Jack wants to run into Ethan who invited him there for the festivities. Jack and Ethan spend time together at Capefest, and become friends. Ethan makes a comment that he wants to go straight to sleep because he is tired, and the next day was a big day, meaning 20 bands starting at dawn. But the next morning, before breakfast Ethan and Jack talk briefly, Ethan says 'Goodbye' and they go their separate ways without enjoying any of the music fun together. It doesn't seem plausible that Ethan would invite Jack to Capefest to enjoy the music scene, and then take off just when all the fun is starting on the main day. Why wouldn't they have spent the day together as friends enjoying all the bands and festivities which is what they went there for?
A Weekend in the Country - S3-E12
Plot hole: When everyone is staying at the Potter B&B, Joey mentions that it's supposed to be the coldest night of the year. Also, Mr. Fricke tells them at breakfast that the heat went out again during the night. After such a cold night and the heat going out, the house must have been freezing that morning. Yet Joey wakes up and is wearing only a skimpy sleeveless top and PJ bottoms, more like summer pajamas. She continues walking into the very cold house without putting a robe or anything else on. It looks a bit odd, considering how cold the temperature is and the fact that everyone else that morning is already wearing long sleeves. Later that morning, the house is still so cold Joey is sleeping by the fire with a blanket over her. Yet earlier that morning, she seemed to be comfortable in scanty summer PJs.
A Weekend in the Country - S3-E12
Plot hole: The morning after everyone stayed at the Potter B&B, there is a fun kitchen scene showing all the kids dancing together preparing breakfast. Andie seems to be making pancakes. Yet later at breakfast, Joey finds out that Bodie has come back and is the reason the pancakes taste so good. Apparently he was the chef that morning, but he is nowhere in sight during the breakfast-making scene. So if all the kids are cooking - where is Bodie? Wasn't he supposed to make the pancakes?
Suggested correction: Bodie didn't make the pancakes (at least not all of them) it was his recipe.
A Weekend in the Country - S3-E12
Audio problem: During the scene where the group (including Mr Fricke) are all having breakfast together, Pacey says 'this is for you, Mr Fricke' and hands the B&B critic a plate. A few moments later, when Joey is in the kitchen area talking to Bessie (away from the group in the dining area), the exact same dialogue can be heard from Pacey as background noise to Joey and Bessie's conversation. The laughter and general chatter is also the same, showing that the entire audio was lifted from the breakfast table scene and placed over the kitchen conversation scene.
Factual error: Not only are the Northern Lights the wrong color, they also move far, far too fast. They look like they've been sped up. Northern Lights move slowly.
Valentine's Day Massacre - S3-E14
Factual error: This episode is set on Valentine's Day, but there is a shot of the front of the school where a girl is wearing shorts. It snows in Massachusetts in February, where Capeside is set.
Valentine's Day Massacre - S3-E14
Revealing mistake: When Jen goes to visit Henry at the hospital, he is eating a small individual-sized Jello. There is another identical Jello on the same tray, in front of Jen when she sits down to talk to Henry. You can see that the corner of the Jello lid has already been pulled up rather noticeably. This is probably to make it easier for Michelle Williams, the actress to be able to open the Jello quickly during her scene.
Factual error: When Jack and Andie are talking at the dinner table about her cheating on the PSAT, Jack says, "Do you really want to get kicked out of school for cheating on something that has the world 'Practice' in front of it?" PSAT actually stands for Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, not Practice SAT. This is the same mistake that Pacey made in an earlier episode.
Continuity mistake: When Pacey is nursing his black eye with a raw steak, Joey comes into Doug's apartment to talk to Pacey. Just when Pacey says, "Looking out for ya," there is a frontal shot of Joey. Her hair is bunched up considerably in the back, near her right ear. As Pacey says, "To look after said girl," the next shot of Joey shows the bunched up hair in the back suddenly gone, and her hair is smooth.
Continuity mistake: At the end of the episode, Joey and Pacey are repainting over the ruined mural with light blue paint. Joey starts to paint a small section of the wall with her roller. Dawson then comes out of a room, and glances down the hallway to see them both painting. But Joey's patch of light blue paint at this point is suddenly much larger. It doesn't seem realistic that Joey would have been able to paint that much more of the wall, in the short amount of time elapsed.
Continuity mistake: When Pacey is driving Joey back from Boston in the morning, they start talking about what happened. Every shot of Pacey or Joey from either side shows a heavily wooded forest (mostly pine trees it looks like) in the background. But when Pacey abruptly veers off the road to the right and parks; suddenly the landscape on Joey's side is barren with a huge lake, and no forest or trees except a few they just passed on the curve. The pine tree footage was probably added in to make Wilmington, NC look more like Capeside, Mass.
Revealing mistake: When Joey and Pacey are talking in the car as Pacey drives them to the Train Station, you can see at least 3 lanes full of cars and a great deal of traffic behind them. But when Pacey suddenly turns right, off the main road and into the entrance to the Train Station; you can see that suddenly the main road he has just turned off of is almost completely empty of any traffic in either direction, except a truck that drives by at the last minute. It also appears to be a smaller road. Apparently the scenes with their dialogue in the car were shot with background video that wasn't the actual location.
Continuity mistake: When Andie and Jack are discussing Ethan's visit while sitting outside eating breakfast, Andie pours milk over her cereal, puts down the milk, takes her spoon in her right hand, then into her left hand. The immediate next camera angle shows Andie holding the milk again, closing it and putting it down, again. (00:06:22)
Continuity mistake: When Aunt Gwen is talking to Dawson and Joey in the store, just after she says, "General all around cuddliness between the two of you"; Joey is facing her and Dawson is turned the other way, with his back to her. But the next shot of Dawson is a close-up, and he is suddenly facing Aunt Gwen as he says, "OK, I'll tell you the long soap opera short". The transition was too fast to be realistic, or to have given Dawson enough time to turn completely around to face Aunt Gwen.
Factual error: In the second segment of this episode, there is a scene where Joey bumps into Dawson on a street corner after she has just left the library. As they are talking, there suddenly appears in front of them a large square stone monument which describes the 'North Carolina' battleship. The 'North Carolina' is a large battleship that is permanently stationed at the pier in Wilmington, NC where the show is really filmed. They had to shoot around this large ship constantly, being careful not to let it show as they are supposed to be in Capeside, MA. However in this scene, they accidentally filmed right in front of the large square monument which shows several lines of writing. On screen you can read: "On the west side of the river a little south of the causeway was Beery's Shipyard, where the Confederate ironclad North Carolina." This is apparently in reference to the battle ship 'North Carolina' which is stationed nearby in their location of Wilmington, NC not MA. Oops. (00:16:25)
Visible crew/equipment: When Joey is in Dawson's room, trying to tell him about her relationship with Pacey, she can't find the words and turns to leave. As she bends over to climb back out of his bedroom window, you can suddenly see a microphone wire protruding from the back of her white shirt. It's a visible vertical line, and as she continues to climb out the window, you can see that there is no mike pack on her lower back. (00:19:05)
Plot hole: At the beginning of the episode, when Joey and Pacey are kissing in the boathouse on the dock; he lifts her up and puts her on a counter right in front of a window. This window appears to look directly out over the nearby boats and dock, meaning they would have been in full view of all their friends waiting to christen Pacey's boat. Not very logical to be kissing on the sly, right in front of a window where everyone could see them.
Continuity mistake: This episode shows a full day's events repeatedly in 4 separate segments, and it appears they reused the same scenes and dialogues. But there are noticable differences between Act 3 and Act 4. At the end of Act 3, when Dawson confronts Joey and Pacey about their relationship; he says to William and Andie, "Better yet, ask Joey. Ask her how long [she's] been lying to me and to you." During this same scene in Act 4, Dawsons varies it slightly: "Better yet, Ask Joey. Ask her how long [the two of them] have been lying to you and to me." He also switches 'you and me' interchangeably. Act 3, Dawson further says, "Go ahead ask them, because I can't [stand to look at them]." But in Act 4, he changes it to "Go ahead ask them, because I can't [even stand to look at them anymore]." The way these two scenes were shot varies also. During Act 3, when Dawson is finished talking he storms back into his house, and makes it inside the inner front door alone. But in Act 4, Dawson starts running back into his house with Joey following close behind him, so that she is in the frame when he reaches the inner front door.
Continuity mistake: When Joey meets Dawson before The Anti-Prom, he loans her his mother's diamond earrings. Just as Bessie says "Put them on, and then I'll get one more picture"; there is a close-up of Joey as she puts an earring in her right ear. It appears that she has just started putting the earrings on; but then she turns to face forward for the photo with Dawson, and you can see both earrings already on her ears. Joey started putting the right earring in just after Dawson told her to put the earrings on, so how did the left ear get done?
