Chris Cameron

I don’t normally get picky about continuity errors but the above sequence hurt my brain because it was so obvious.

From a recent episode of Awake, the detective interrogates a man and hands him a photo. In the first image you see it’s just a headshot of some guy, but when we see the closeup insert, it’s a photo from the crime scene of a dead (presumably from the whole shut-eye photo thing) guy. 

But then in the next shot it’s back to the headshot. This alone is not a big deal. The problem is in how the scene plays out. The detectives suspect this guy killed the man in the photos so they want to see if he recognizes the guy. The man just reacts like, “Nope, don’t know him. Who is he?” instead of, “Whoa, is that guy dead?” because the photo is supposed to be just the headshot. 

So I’m thinking, as I watch this scene, “Uhh, it’s a photo of a dead guy, why do you think they want you to ID him.” And then later in the scene, the mystery/tension is broken as the detectives reveal to the suspect that the man in the photo was found dead. Oh, he was supposed to shown the headshot, no wonder this scene made no sense whatsoever!

You’d think a network show would catch that. “Hey, why is this guy confused and then shocked to learn the guy is dead when he was just shown a picture of the guy presumably dead? Oh cause they screwed up in editing. Awesome.”

The other thing that bugs me? NDSU, on the dead dude’s jersey, somehow represents a Seattle-based football team. ????? Okay, NBC, whatever.