Emergency! ( 1972 )

Continuity mistake: Before they bring in the young girl who fell (with a dog bite), Dixie tells Brackett that she'll set up for her in treatment 1, and after Squad 95 brings her in, when Brackett and the paramedic (Donald Mantooth) leave the room we see that she is indeed in treatment 1, which is beside receiving. However, when Brackett takes the parents to see her, they go through the door that's between the double doors and treatment 2, which are on the opposite side of the hallway from treatment 1. Then in the next shot they're back in treatment 1.

Continuity mistake: In the first shot as the engine and squad roll up to the winery fire, the entire trailer with the wood barrels is engulfed in flames with huge plumes of black smoke, but when it cuts to the next shot the trailer and barrels are fine, and there's only a very small fire burning on the ground while Marco pulls the hose off the engine, before the explosion.

Continuity mistake: When the squad and engine roll up on scene at the winery fire, there are wood barrels at the back of the burning trailer, and in consecutive shots the short barrel at the back left corner suddenly appears out of nowhere, then disappears, and then it reappears again.

Continuity mistake: When Roy and John are with the man who has a live grenade in his belly, they're given flak vests. During this scene frayed material on the long horizontal seams, both at the front and on the back of John's vest, suddenly appears, disappears, reappears and disappears again.

Continuity mistake: When Johnny and Roy visit Mrs. Johnson on the 6th floor, they take the elevator near the nurses' station, at the south end of the ER wing, and when they exit the elevator they turn left to room 603. This is completely impossible considering the actual floor plan of the hospital, since in all the exterior shots of the ER it is only 2-storeys.

Continuity mistake: When John and Roy are at the park with the injured football player and his son, the shadows that are cast over the entire area change significantly when the ambulance arrives.

Continuity mistake: When Johnny and Roy are on the "child locked in a bathroom" run, Johnny makes a hasty retreat leaving Roy to deal with the "child." The bar of soap Roy uses is on a curved pedestal soap dish, and that dish is either curved towards the wall, or turned the opposite way, depending on the camera angle.

Continuity mistake: When Brackett tells Morton that he can go keep Early company while he awaits test results, Brackett's wearing a patterned tie, and when Brackett walks into treatment 3 his tie is tied differently.

Continuity mistake: When Johnny and Roy are in the basket with the man who was electrocuted by a power line, they are atop three more power lines. Chet and Mike cut the two outer lines and only the center line remains, but in the closeup of the basket there are still three power lines under the basket.

Continuity mistake: After Dr. Early fixes the squad's engine problem, while Roy is driving we see a two-way radio mounted at the top of the dashboard, just past the steering wheel. When the dispatcher calls on Squad 51 to respond, there's a closeup of the Motorola two-way radio/Interceptor units which are mounted under the dash (near gas pedal), and Johnny lifts this mic, but then we see that he's speaking on the mic from the top of the dash. Additionally, in those two closeups of the two-way radio, we can see the gas pedal, but Roy's foot is nowhere to be seen, even though the squad has been moving all along.

Continuity mistake: Roy and Johnny move a barking dog, who is tied up in front of a hermit's rock-faced cave, and retie the dog to a branch in some bushes, but in following close-ups of the dog he is still tied up at the original spot.

Continuity mistake: When Chet quickly takes off his turnout coat, one of the sleeves is inside out when Johnny uses it on the dog, but then both sleeves are right-side out while he and Roy are trying to subdue the dog.

Continuity mistake: When they bring the Hermit into the ER, Brackett tells them to take him to treatment 4 and he's wheeled there, but in the shot from inside the treatment room we see that he's actually inside treatment 1.

Continuity mistake: While climbing the tower to rescue the "man" at the top, after Johnny slips and slams into the cross beam, when he and Chet are heading back down the tower, the two lights attached to the tower keep switching from the right side to the left side, depending if it's a closeup of them or a wide shot of their doubles. Additionally, in the closeups the lights are large and round, but in the wide shots one of them is a small square.

Continuity mistake: After the woman has staggered into the ER she is seated in the wheelchair, and when she jumps out of the wheelchair there is a tall ashtray can behind her beside the wall, but in the next shot that tall ashtray can has vanished.

Continuity mistake: After Station 51 is dispatched to the fire/explosion at the chemical company, when John heads inside to rescue the chemist, the SCBA cylinder he's wearing has one white sticker and one pinkish sticker. By the time John brings the victim out to the sidewalk, his air tank has changed back and forth repeatedly to one that has two red stickers.

Continuity mistake: In the opening rescue where Roy and Johnny rescue the woman from the burning car, Johnny is relaying the woman's vitals to Rampart. Over his right shoulder, you can see a sticker on the trunk of the car behind them. This is probably a dealer sticker. In one scene, it is blue and red, and in another, it is blacked out. It returns to blue and red, only to be blacked out again.

Continuity mistake: After the ambulance Roy is riding in is involved in a traffic accident, when Johnny arrives he jumps into the back with the injured attendant and patient, and we can see that the stretcher's footrest is light brown. But when the attendants exit, they carry the stretcher out of the back of the first ambulance then wheel it to the second ambulance, and the footrest is now red. It would seem that they merely transferred the patient from the first ambulance's stretcher to the second ambulance's stretcher while still in the ambulance, but they couldn't have done that because two full size stretchers cannot fit into the back of that first station-wagon style ambulance, especially with attendants back there, so they would have had to do the patient transfer on the ground outside. Hence the problem.

Continuity mistake: The cut that Roy receives over his eyebrow during the traffic accident changes characteristics, such as when he and John are at the poker game, it looks considerably better in following shots, then it looks much worse again.

Continuity mistake: Just before the ambulance Roy is riding in is involved in the collision, we see a crowd of people at the corner near the stop sign, but in the next shot they've all vanished, only to reappear just as the vehicles collide.

More for Emergency!

Mistakes

The Indirect Method - S5-E6

Factual error: When Roy is electrocuted and falls from the roof, after Karen uses the defibrillator paddles on Roy, she lifts both paddles, looks at the EKG monitor and says "He's converted." How exactly could Karen have known that he's converted? It's impossible for the EKG monitor to show anything at all. Either the defib paddles have to be in contact with Roy's body for the "quick-look" to get a reading, which they weren't, or the ECG electrode discs have to be on Roy's chest connecting him to the EKG monitor, and they weren't. As an aside, just watching Marco having problems attaching the air mask, and quickly glancing up towards the camera frustrated, then giving up is priceless.

More mistakes in Emergency!

Quotes

Trainee - S2-E8

Roy: I think you're on some sort of an ego trip, Ed. And in my book that makes you a very dangerous character.
Ed: [Laughs.] Ego trip, huh? Well, I didn't realize that psychiatry was part of the paramedic's training.
Roy: Oh that's good, Ed, you be funny. But that isn't gonna change anything. You wanna know what I figure? Well, I figure when you were working in Vietnam, it was rough. So rough you started playing over your head. And you were making it, you were doing real good. Considering it was a combat situation. And pretty soon you started getting all blown up about how Ed Marlowe is just as good as the real doctors. And you've been living on that ever since. And the trouble is, Ed, you are good. Except for two little problems. You can't quit competing with real doctors. And you can't face being wrong. You see, those people we treat out there, I mean the people we work for, the people who pay for this whole operation, they're real people, Ed, with real problems. And they have a right to expect more than just being used by you for some sort of trip. [Completely exasperated.] I guess what I'm trying to say to you, Ed, is that in my book you're just plain unprofessional.
[Ed walks out.]
John: Do you think it did any good?
Roy: Do you?

More quotes from Emergency!

Trivia

The Promise - S3-E11

Trivia: During Richard's rescue from the ledge at Rampart, the snorkel that Roy and Brackett climb onto is Truck 127, from Station 127 aka Station 51. Truck 127 is used in many episodes requiring a snorkel, including 1x6, "Dealer's Wild" and 3x16, "Fools." There's a particularly nice shot at the end of this episode, when Engine 51 and Squad 51 are parked parallel to each other, and when Johnny responds to dispatch that Squad 51 is available, Truck 127 drives away between 51's vehicles. Nice touch.