I know, we could write an entire encyclopedia on this subject. 
I recently found in a discount bin Manimal: The Complete TV Series. I had never seen the series, but I confess I picked it up because it had a black panther on the cover of the DVD. I’m fond of black panthers. The series is 80s sci fi about a guy who can change into any animal he wishes and uses this ability to help the police. Yes, it requires extreme suspension of disbelief at moments, but it was worth the discount price I paid for it, and there is indeed plenty of black panther action, since that was apparently the hero’s favorite animal to turn into. You get plenty of panther in every single episode. Beautiful panther.
However, the worst episode of them all was the one with a horse-racing plot. I couldn’t believe that some of those errors weren’t picked up. Hadn’t anybody on the writing and production team ever been to the races or placed a bet?
The plot there is that a Kentucky Derby winner was horsenapped years ago and held for ransom. The ransom was never paid. Thus, his horsenapper decided to cash in and collect his never-collected ransom by substituting the Derby winner for a major long shot in a stakes race. However, the trainer of the Derby winner also had a horse running in that race, and she recognized her former horse, even with star altered, as he passed her current horse.
In the episode, the horses are stabled on the backstretch at Aqueduct waiting for the race. The horse identifier comes back there to identify horses, and the jockey, already in silks, leads the long-shot horse out of the stall to get identified. Horse identifier signs off on identity, and the jockey tucks the long-shot horse back in the stall. Of course, the Bad Folks are waiting right there (literally, 15 feet outside that stall) with a parked trailer containing the Derby winner, waiting to make the switch once the identifier conveniently verifies ID and walks away, leaving horses unattended.
One of the very few sets of people around the very deserted backstretch at this time is the shapeshifting hero, who with his sidekick is attending the races and who is walking around the backstretch unaccompanied between races, going right up to the horses for the next race and petting them. The trainer of the former Derby winner comes up while he is petting her current horse for this race. She objects, and he apologizes, and she accepts that, after which she gives instructions to the jockey with her (already in silks) right there in front of the stall. Again, there is no paddock. Apparently, getting saddled in the paddock doesn’t exist in this episode any more than getting ID checked in the paddock does any more than having people from the barn always in attendance with a horse about to race.
Derby winner in disguise wins, of course, taking the place of the super long shot. The hero’s sidekick put bets on the medium shot (trained by the Derby winner’s former trainer). That horse finished second. The trainer recognizes her Derby winner as the substituted winner and goes storming back to the row of stalls, the SAME row of stalls (still with the horse trailer parked 15 feet away for convenience of the horse switch). These horses who have just raced are now tucked back in their stalls, having magically instantly cooled out. Trainer throws a fit and insists on horse being removed from the stall for a reidentification, but the horses have been switched back by then, so the original identification as the long shot stands. The people who did the switch, who are still parked 15 feet away from this action with their trailer, which now contains the Derby winner after reswitching, decide that they need to get out of there and pull out. Hero notices them and thinks they are suspicious. (He is the only one who thinks that having a horse trailer parked RIGHT outside the stall of the horse with no other trailers anywhere in sight was suspicious.) He collects trainer and goes in pursuit, and the chase and the case take off from there.
Meanwhile, his sidekick who bet on the horse that finished second thinks that if the Derby winner is DQ’d for being a substituted horse, the result will be overturned and the second-place horse he bet on will win. He tracks down his torn-up tickets and holds onto them throughout the rest of the episode so he can cash in once the DQ goes through. As anybody who bet on Medina Spirit or Mandaloun knows or is about to know anyway, a DQ after a race has been made official has no effect on payouts. They don’t redo those, and bettors are out of luck.
Oh, yes, and there is all sorts of crazy inaccurate horse stuff going on back at the farm where they wind up going to find the Derby winner.
I honestly can’t remember seeing so many horse errors in one TV show episode. It’s comic by the end of it. Hard to believe that they made that many mistakes.
But it is a very handsome black panther.
) the horse will stand without moving next to their unconscious comrade, but any horse will gallop away from the barn into the great unknown given half a chance.
