Getting Even - S4-E3
Plot hole: At the end of the episode, having conned Veronica Powell out of £600,000 - the purchase price of the house and contents they sold her - Danny taunts her by telling her that they did nothing wrong, implying that she has no legal recourse to recovering her money. He's wrong. One of the gang, Billy Bond, bids against her in the auction for the house, boosting her bid from £220,000 to her final offer of £600,000. Bond has no money and no access to any, and no assets that could be realised to cover the bids he made, something that would be easy for a lawyer to prove. It's called shill bidding and it is very illegal indeed. Since Bond and Ash Morgan (who gave Powell false information during the auction, spurring her on to bid against Bond) are both standing next to Danny when he makes his announcement I find it hard to believe that a shrewd, hard-hearted businesswoman like her would not realise that she had been conned and would not get her lawyers and the police on the case on the spot.
Plot hole: Columbo is in the Pauley's hotel room trying to figure out how the bottle landed upright next to his body after he was shot. Devlin - the murderer - turns up unannounced and uninvited. How did Devlin explain that he knew where the victim was staying when he was murdered? Media reports might have mentioned the name of the hotel but there is no way they would have included the room number.
Plot hole: At the end of the episode McCoy and his team tape a conversation between Melissa Corbin and her mother Lorraine in order to record her admitting to murdering Alan, her first husband. Trouble is, she says nothing incriminating. The closest they get is Lorraine asking her why she killed Alan, and she replies "You didn't have to sleep with him." That means nothing, and in fact Lorraine says absolutely nothing of any legal significance during the entire conversation.
Under & Out - S3-E11
Plot hole: Gretchen, Lincoln, and Sophia were able to visit Scofield and Whistler in Sona without Gretchen being recognized. She was taken in for questioning in episode 9, but she managed to escape and kill General Zavala and one other guard. The other guards knew that she was the one who killed Zavala but she was still able to sign in for visitation.
Mr. Monk and the Astronaut - S4-E14
Plot hole: There is no drug in the world that could render a healthy adult unconscious for two days with a single dose, but let's go with the dramatic licence and allow that there is. Any such drug would be instantly detectable in any one of a dozen toxin screens carried out during an autopsy, and isn't someone going to wonder how a comatose woman hanged herself?
Plot hole: In this episode, the Duboises make such a big deal about Ariel being old enough to finally learn to drive. However, two episodes previously ("Things to Do in Phoenix When You're Dead") Ariel drove to school with Joe, and Joe complimented her on her prowess.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - S3-E1
Plot hole: Can't fault this massive plot hole to the adaptation, but to the source material; the culprit (forgetting the stupidity of writing an incriminating letter detailing the plan to murder someone, and put it in a desk he shares with her) since there are people outside the room that are about to enter, tears the letter in 3 neat vertical strips, rolls them, puts them in the vase on the mantlepiece, and then opens the side door to slip away...instead of simply pocketing the letter and going through that same door. Nobody was going to search him or anything and could have burned it, torn it into confetti, anything, later. It takes way way longer to do what he did, which needed him to stay there in the room increasing the chances of being found out. And of course he and his accomplice do not retrieve the letter after.
Plot hole: A central plot device in this episode is that there is no six letter word made up of the letters EXVIN, so the murdered man cheats at the word game by playing a word he knew to be inadmissible - exvin, a wine connoisseur who no longer drinks. Since he is supposed to be a stone cold killer player at this word game, don't you think he would have thought of Vixen? Sara Sidle points that word out later - why wouldn't a world champion word game player have figured it out, using a safe, common word and avoiding a possible challenge?
Suggested correction: If you watch the episode (timecode 00:36:20), in the flashback it shows exactly why he did not use vixen. There were 2 spaces between the "x" and the "n" on the board, so Adam played a bluff and used the fake word exvin.
Plot hole: At the end of this episode Red takes off his shirt revealing his burned back, which leaves us to think that he might be Elizabeth's dad. However, this particular mark should have been noticed and written down in Red's prisoner file when he was taken into custody the first time (Episode 1). In that case Elizabeth would already know that Red is burned and could have asked some questions about it.
Dead Freight - S5-E5
Plot hole: Preparing to steal methylamine from the train, Walt, Jesse and Mike measure off a predetermined distance from the railroad crossing, which happens to coincide with a handy arroyo, where they bury their tanks. Problem is that they couldn't have known that distance (calculated by knowing the position of the methylamine tanker car in the train) until Lydia told them. But she didn't call that info in until the night after they'd already buried the tanks.
Suggested correction: They were counting on the tankers being at the back of the train, far enough away and at a curved angle so that the conductors wouldn't see them, and the hoses they were using would have been long enough to reach the tankers on either side of the one they stole from. Their heist hinged on a lot of educated guesses and luck, especially because they would have had to abort if the tanker was at the front of the train, but being lucky doesn't make it a plot hole.
I'd have to respectfully disagree. When they paced off the distance to the trestle over the arroyo, they had a particular number in mind (814). It's not explained whether this number represented knowledge of how far back the tank car would be if the engine stopped at the crossing. But if it did, how could they have known that? Not even Lydia knew until much later. And why would they assume the tank car would be toward the back of the train? Lydia doesn't mention that. When she calls Walt, all she says is, "I've got it." And even if she were to tell him, at that point everything's in place for the heist to happen at the location where the tank are buried.
IIRC the crew contacted an expert on hazardous materials shipping for advice on the scene. Rail guidelines require tankers containing hazardous materials are at a minimum "six-deep", that is, six cars away from the engine. Lydia probably told them in advance how long the train would be in terms of cars, so they had a rough guideline for which three or four tankers could possibly contain the methylamine. From there, it seems like their hoses were long enough to get to any of the other cars.
The 814 feet was to ensure that the spot they chose would be far enough away from the conductors so as to not be seen. And they weren't assuming the tankers would be at the back, they were just hoping they would be. As I mentioned, if the tankers were at the front, they wouldn't have been able to move forward with the mission. Lydia told them they would only have 6 hours to prepare for the heist after she told them where the tanker would be. That wouldn't have been enough time for them to get an excavator out there and dig the holes for their own tanks to transfer the methylamine into, so they had to guess the best spot to do it ahead of time and hope that's where it would end up being.
Guy Walks Into a Psychiatrist's Office - S2-E1
Plot hole: In this episode Tony tells Janice that he has just put their mother's house on the market. In season one, the house had already been sold.
Suggested correction: Tony and others say many things that aren't accurate. While season one gives the firm impression that the house is sold, it's not confirmed on screen. There may have been a deal where the intended buyer couldn't get financing or a closing never took place for other reasons.
Plot hole: The protagonist gets in the exclusive, multi-millionaire, invites-only auction because the invitation is on a printed letter that he faked. This means that the guards at the entrance don't have a guest list to check, and since nobody knows who this person is, the staff does run a background check on his identity when he makes the first outrageous bid...by looking his name up on Wikipedia. That's mighty low standards of security, especially for an auction that was supposed to be for a selected audience and the most important in France.
Strawberries and Cream: Part 1 - S3-E23
Plot hole: In the heat of killing fake Red John, Jane forgot to notice that Craig O'Laughlin never knew about the mall setup to lure Red John. So definitely Gale Bertram himself was in contact with the serial killer which he may have missed first up, but all that time in jail afterwards he could have figured it out.
The Governor's Pleasure - S3-E1
Plot hole: The governor refuses to open the door for the prisoners when they have Vera hostage, and you can hear her saying "no" "return to your units" over the radio, which Channing had to overrule. Later on in the show somehow Vera doesn't know the governor refused and has to find out from Channing. But Vera was there next to the radio the whole time. They use normal radios without earpieces so there is no way she didn't hear. (00:38:05)
Plot hole: Burke is murdered so that Doward will be sent out to replace him, as both hold the same rate of CPO sonar operator. But there are many CPO sonar operators in the Royal Navy. How can the GRU be so sure that Doward will be the man chosen to replace him?
Day 2: 7:00 A.M.-8:00 A.M. - S2-E24
Plot hole: Peter Kingsley is shot and killed by a man in a helicopter just as he is about to kill Jack. Kingsley would definitely have heard the helicopter approaching.
The Man in the Fallout Shelter - S1-E9
Plot hole: At first the victim (Careful Lionel) is described as not returning to pick up his new shirt in November 1958, and possessing love letters dated from 1957 through early winter (November) 1958. Booth reports the fallout shelter where Lionel's body was discovered was sealed in 1958. Later Lionel is described as reported missing by his boss in January 1960, and the illegitimate child he fathered was born in 1960 as well. That would mean his boss didn't notice he was gone for over a year, and his pregnant girlfriend was with child for at least 14 months.
Episode #1.5 - S1-E5
Plot hole: Leon Hamilton is the most hated man in Sainte Marie, with over 900 people on the island conned by him. Yet exactly one person in the whole island knows how he looks like, every newspaper and website never ever published a picture of him even during the very public trial when they were trying to get their thousands of dollars back nor publish an archive picture after his death.