There’s a new TV series on CBS called “The Mentalist.” It’s about a guy who used to be a fraudulent TV psychic. He made the mistake of publicly taunting a serial killer, who then murdered his wife and daughter. This led him to throw over the psychic business and become a consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation. He uses the observational tricks he learned in his act to read people’s behavioral clues, and (sometimes) to manipulate them.
I watch the show because it’s on after “Criminal Minds” (a series with some similarities). I like it OK, but it has a number of flaws. The characters, in particular, are all over the map. There’s an Asian cop who was first introduced as a socially-challenged jerk, and then he suddenly wasn’t anymore. It would have been more interesting, it seems to me, if they’d developed that (I do have to give him credit, however, for doing the best imitation of Jack Webb I’ve seen in years). And the hero’s methods seem to me too successful, too pat.
Someone told me they liked the show because it debunks psychics. Well, I’m all for that, but there are hints that that won’t be the final word on the subject. Last week’s episode offered a female psychic who appeared (in the story) to be genuine, and who hinted that the hero has a genuine “gift” as well, one which he’s suppressing. I’ll watch to see how that plot line develops. I’m perfectly willing to dump the show over the issue.
But it occurs to me that what we enjoy in a program like “The Mentalist” (and also in “Criminal Minds” and to some extent in the CSI shows) is not just the puzzles and the puzzle-solving methods, but the fact that they offer us the guilty pleasure of doing something considered indecent in ordinary American life today.
The Mentalist is allowed judge people.
He gets to use stereotypes.
On last night’s show, for instance, he deduced that a guy was a murderer because he ate a lot of butter. He explained that, because the man clearly had no self-control, he obviously must be the one who killed the girl.
And he got away with it.
It seems to me that, in our world (where an old woman who is afraid of gangs of young black men who hang around at her bus stop can be labeled a racist), this kind of blatant, offhand judgmentalism offers considerable prurient pleasure.
Criminal profiling. It’s the new porn.
Good commentary, though I have not seen the show.
In a past show the real killer was introduced as the upright, uptight Civil Air Patrol type, complete with uniform. He spouted upon arrival that the girl was loose. Bingo! He judged her carefree, on-the-edge lifestyle and that meant he was THE ONE.
So, when the suspects are a violent boyfriend, Roger Ramjet, or a creepy trucker who bribes women to be nice to him for cosmetic samples, it’s obviously the CAP guy. All that was missing was a Bible and a cigarette.
If you’re a conservative, none of these shows is very mysterious.
An interesting, double-sided bias–conservatives who judge people are bad, but we dream of judging people ourselves, by more “scientific” methods.
It also occurs to me that the program “Chuck” is another example of the same tendency. Chuck has had a computer drive “uploaded” into his brain, and so is able to look at an object (but most often a person) and immediately know if they belong to the bad guys.