I love bowling.  I used to bowl all the time back in junior high when in the summertime Chaparral Lanes offered unlimited bowling on the weekdays from noon to 4pm for $40 bucks.  That summer was one of the best summers I had back in school.  We’d bowl for a few hours, walk to I’m Comics, play some Street Fighter II, and bowl some more.  So I know a little bit about bowling.  Maybe more than a little bit.

So I’m catching up on CSI from this season and they have this bowling episode.  The problem, it seems, is that it doesn’t look any of the editors know anything about bowling from the screenshot and score below.

Now some of you may notice a discrepancy in the score.  Probably a lot of you won’t, so I’ll explain.  The score itself tells you a lot about what has yet to happen.

From the screenshot, Cigs is bowling, and he has a double (well a Turkey, but that first strike has already been counted in his score) going into the 10th frame.  (For a more in-depth look into how scoring works, check the wikipedia page)  The score Cigs currently has is not possible.  In this situation, there should be no score in the 9th frame.  In fact the 8th frame should not have a score as well, since the strike counts the next two balls into the score.  We can see from the 7th to 8th frame, he gets 28 pins.  We know his first ball knocks down 8 pins.

Of course in order to try to build suspense, the writers of CSI have Cigs getting a 7-10 split.

Oh know.  One of the hardest splits to pick up, and he has to pick it up if he wants to win.  Well, we already know what happens since that score in the 9th frame that shouldn’t be there, is there.  He picks it up, and thus pretty much sealing the match (unless he gutters on the last ball).  I haven’t seen what actually happens after this since before Cigs can throw his second ball, a head comes out of the return.

What I do know is that he picked up the split.  I’ll have to finish the episode and update this post if that doesn’t happen.

Now this analysis may be lengthy and kind of convoluted.  Who has the time to analyze a bowling score on a TV show.  Well, remember I know a little bit about bowling.  This only took seconds for me to notice the score was wrong and know what was about to happen.  I’m such a nerd.

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