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newnumber6Major Spoilers for tonight's episode of Numb3rs behind the cut.
(The title of this post is not a spoiler beyond the fact that John Glover appears in the episode - it was simply my first thought upon seeing him, as it always is, because of his numerous evil roles, including as THE DEVIL in a series called Brimstone).
Anyway, finished watching it a few minutes ago.
The episode dealt with a psychic leading investigators to a triple murder. Naturally Charlie is a strong skeptic of psychic abilities. John Glover (THE DEVIL) plays the psychic.
Now, generally there are three basic approaches when a non-psychic show, particularly a crime show, has an episode with a psychic.
1) Woo, spooky, psychic powers may be real after all, there's no way he could have known that!
2) The psychic in question is a deliberate fraud (or, more particularly in crime shows, THE KILLER)
3) Whether he's a psychic or not isn't entirely clear, while he might have been insightful, nothing he's done is outside the realm of probability or logical deduction to explain, and didn't really help all that much at all.
In my experience #1 tends to be, by far, the most common. #2 shows up now and again, and I can only recall a handful of good examples of #3.
Unfortunately, the episode took path 1, more or less. Sure, they tried to cast doubt on some of the stuff he did but by the end of the episode there was still stuff (particularly the initial discovery of the murders) that would have been just too unlikely to have happened by chance.
I say unfortunately, because I was really looking forward to option #2 or (particularly) #3 with a Numb3rs-esque (and btw I hate typing the 3 instead of the e I wish they would have just called it Numbers) examination of how things like cold reading work (since a lot of it is giving vague statements that, by probability, are true or can be made true of most people), the logic of improbable-sounding guesses, etc. There was a little of it, but far too little.
I'm generally of a skeptical mindset. I don't entirely discount the possibility of some kind of 'psychic' abilities, but I haven't been convinced they exist. I certainly don't have a problem with it being defined as 'true' in fiction in general, I just wanted _this_ show to take a more skeptical approach to it rather than making it a 'Charlie is wrong sometimes too' episode (which is how it played to me, with his refusal to accept other possibilities and everyone else becoming some level of believer) and having it come down pretty heavy on the side of psychic abilities.
Really, the only way I'd want this particular show go with a 'the psychic is right' type ending is if it was a Numb3rs/Dead Zone crossover (and seriously, that would be cool).
They also mention the Stargate program in passing, but not the one on TV, sadly (though it would also be cool in a weird, cracky way to have him called in to consult on some Stargate SG1 project).
Ah well, rant over. John Glover remains the devil, even if not in this particular episode, I'm sure he'll turn out to be the devil if he ever appears in the show again.
(For those wondering, these last few weeks, in Toronto, it airs at 8pm as well as its normal time)
(The title of this post is not a spoiler beyond the fact that John Glover appears in the episode - it was simply my first thought upon seeing him, as it always is, because of his numerous evil roles, including as THE DEVIL in a series called Brimstone).
Anyway, finished watching it a few minutes ago.
The episode dealt with a psychic leading investigators to a triple murder. Naturally Charlie is a strong skeptic of psychic abilities. John Glover (THE DEVIL) plays the psychic.
Now, generally there are three basic approaches when a non-psychic show, particularly a crime show, has an episode with a psychic.
1) Woo, spooky, psychic powers may be real after all, there's no way he could have known that!
2) The psychic in question is a deliberate fraud (or, more particularly in crime shows, THE KILLER)
3) Whether he's a psychic or not isn't entirely clear, while he might have been insightful, nothing he's done is outside the realm of probability or logical deduction to explain, and didn't really help all that much at all.
In my experience #1 tends to be, by far, the most common. #2 shows up now and again, and I can only recall a handful of good examples of #3.
Unfortunately, the episode took path 1, more or less. Sure, they tried to cast doubt on some of the stuff he did but by the end of the episode there was still stuff (particularly the initial discovery of the murders) that would have been just too unlikely to have happened by chance.
I say unfortunately, because I was really looking forward to option #2 or (particularly) #3 with a Numb3rs-esque (and btw I hate typing the 3 instead of the e I wish they would have just called it Numbers) examination of how things like cold reading work (since a lot of it is giving vague statements that, by probability, are true or can be made true of most people), the logic of improbable-sounding guesses, etc. There was a little of it, but far too little.
I'm generally of a skeptical mindset. I don't entirely discount the possibility of some kind of 'psychic' abilities, but I haven't been convinced they exist. I certainly don't have a problem with it being defined as 'true' in fiction in general, I just wanted _this_ show to take a more skeptical approach to it rather than making it a 'Charlie is wrong sometimes too' episode (which is how it played to me, with his refusal to accept other possibilities and everyone else becoming some level of believer) and having it come down pretty heavy on the side of psychic abilities.
Really, the only way I'd want this particular show go with a 'the psychic is right' type ending is if it was a Numb3rs/Dead Zone crossover (and seriously, that would be cool).
They also mention the Stargate program in passing, but not the one on TV, sadly (though it would also be cool in a weird, cracky way to have him called in to consult on some Stargate SG1 project).
Ah well, rant over. John Glover remains the devil, even if not in this particular episode, I'm sure he'll turn out to be the devil if he ever appears in the show again.
(For those wondering, these last few weeks, in Toronto, it airs at 8pm as well as its normal time)
