Psychic Investigators

[sistermagpie]

I was watching the show The Inside this week, and thinking about it, and it made me think about how

A friend of mine watches Medium, a show I had little interest in, but I tried to watch it once. This is one of those shows where the main character is a psychic who solves crime. It’s not that I have a problem with psychic characters across the board, and while I’ve never seen The Dead Zone, I didn’t mind that conceit in the book, probably because Johnny’s power was so clearly defined, and also because it more gave him a mystery to solve rather than solved a mystery.
Medium is no such show, based on what I saw. It’s just that typical “I have a vision now” thing, which annoys me for a few reasons. First, this show as billed as being based on a “real” psychic detective. Afaik, psychic detectives have a track record of zero when it comes to actually solving crimes, so I really don’t like seeing it suggested that how it works on the show is real. To me they seem a lot like any other phony medium-they profit from other peoples’ pain. Because when your loved one’s been killed or abducted it’s hard to say no to any offer of help, so psychics get an opportunity to grab attention for themselves with their powers. Their visions work on TV because they're fictional.

Secondly, just from a suspension of disbelief standpoint, if you can talk to the ghost of the murdered guy why doesn’t he just friggin’ tell you who killed him and how and be done with it? Why the random visions just obscure enough that you can go off in the wrong direction?

Thirdly, fictionally speaking, it seems like such a cheat. Instead of having the mystery follow logical steps we viewers can follow, you get to the next point by sticking in a new vision that you made up.

For me, this kind of thing is just so much less satisfying than the many shows on the air that don’t cheat, like CSI and Numb3rs, where even if I don’t understand everything it’s explained to me so I can follow the concept. I sometimes wonder if I’ve gotten less patient with the psychic stuff because I’m currently living in a country where so many people seem to consider logic a dirty word, where people are honestly voting that their public school should teach nonsense next to scientific fact and call it a “fair” way of letting students “decide what they want to believe.” Because, apparently, truth always depends simply on what you decide to believe-there’s no such thing as a fact, certainly not as the basis for any scientific idea. Unless you’re talking about God, of course. God is true and if you don’t believe in him you’re lying or you hate him.

That’s what I think of when these shows invariably dumb down the people trying to solve the case scientifically while having them pooh-pooh the psychic’s ideas, only to be proved wrong in the end. Everybody's just helpless waiting for the messages from beyond. I remember in the episode I watched, for instance, Patricia Arquette goes into this whole monologue about the crime from looking at a crime photo while all the other agents gape, open-mouthed, and insist it looks like it happened a completely different way. I’m thinking, okay, I’ve watched many episodes of CSI and I think those guys would have been able to come up with all this stuff without Patricia Arquette. Why aren't there any where the psychic's completely wrong and the other guys solve it? This is supposed to be the real world, after all.

So that leads me to The Inside…a friend of mine really likes the main character of this show, but I have a hard time with her (the main character, not my friend). She was abducted as a kid and held prisoner for however long before escaping. Unfortunately it seems like this has then given her magical powers to solve crime. She doesn’t literally have magical powers, it’s just it always seems like she comes to her conclusions because she’s special. The serial killers all know it; they all find out she was abducted as a kid. She’s supposed to be a profiler but the subtext, imo, is always just that she has this awesome ability because of her experience, like a magical gift. The other agents are just there to be other agents, and either agree with her or be wrong. Whichever they do, it's clear that so far she's more important...which is probably why she's so often abducted and has to be saved. That and that she's pretty.

For instance, in the most recent ep the killer was a young girl, and for some reason this chick was the only one to figure that out. (Ironically, this exact story was done on Law & Order years ago and the police and lawyers did not need any special intuition to figure it out.) She said when she looks into the girls eyes she “sees the man who abducted me.” There were some logical reasons for not suspecting the handyman, but iirc, she had to come up with those too, after already thinking it was the girl. It's just all about that inner evil detector.

Because she’s special, she naturally therefore winds up going her own way a lot of the time. Like in this ep she stupidly decides to confront the girl on her own, in a treehouse. Yes, a treehouse-anybody shocked somebody wound up falling out of it? She tells the girl she knows she did it, and the girl flings herself out and accuses the agent of pushing her. It’s very hard for me as a viewer feeling this was just a stupid thing for her to do-isn’t it smarter to not tell her you suspect her as opposed to say, giving her a heads-up and time to hide evidence? Are you really supposed to do stuff like that on your own?

Leaving aside the fact that it’s a little troubling the way her abduction often seems like a combination lucky career break and proof of her innate specialness, it just makes her less interesting to me. It could be cool seeing how her experience makes her who she is and effects her if she was just a regular profiler and investigator (it could also be the source of endless hand-writing, of course). Fox Mulder, for instance, did not have any special powers. His sister’s abduction made him look at things differently, but he was still just a person good at his job, not a psychic. He really needed the sceptic.

So I guess in the end that’s the thing that keeps me, personally, from really liking this show, beyond maybe that it’s just not all that great. I just don’t look forward to watching her get the right answer the way I like watching, say, Charlie get an idea and explain it to Don, while Larry and Alan give intelligent advice. I guess part of it for me is that while I'm fine with stories where there are no answers, if there are answers I'd rather have them arrived at in some way that doesn't rely on someone's psychic gift. Sure math might seem like magic to me, but I know it's not. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Charlie spends more time learning all the things his skills *can't* control than what they can. Give me William Peterson looking into a microscope or David Krumholtz frowning at a blackboard over Patricia Arquette or Rachel Nichols staring at the camera any day.

Comments

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

That does sound like a pretty ooky premise. Of course, the idea that the cops might just have a really strong feeling about who is guilty and then proceed to look for their evidence based on that is pretty scary - because too often, that part isn't fiction, but there ain't no magical powers giving them visions.

Plus yeah, the pretty female character with an ass-kicking job title who has amazing powers but not the kind of powers that keep her from needing to be rescued all the time annoys the hell out of me.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel like with these kinds of shows it just encourages that whole "go with your instinct" or "think with your heart" kind of thing, and when you're talking about a crime, do you really want to trust your instinct? Even if you start with instinct it's nice to show it proven wrong sometimes.

Plus yeah, the pretty female character with an ass-kicking job title who has amazing powers but not the kind of powers that keep her from needing to be rescued all the time annoys the hell out of me.

This just so rarely happens to men or older women. It's amazing.

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel like with these kinds of shows it just encourages that whole "go with your instinct" or "think with your heart" kind of thing, and when you're talking about a crime, do you really want to trust your instinct? Even if you start with instinct it's nice to show it proven wrong sometimes.

And that's why I rather watch CSI than any of these psy-chick shows (it's always a pretty woman, isn't it?), where they make mistakes and learn through trial and error. And sometimes they don't solve the crime at all like in The Execution of Cathrine Willows.

It just gets annoying when one person is always correct and always solves the case alone. Like it always irked me in Matlock or Perry Mason how all their clients would always be innocent. How likely is that?

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Honestly, Homicide ruined cop shows* for me. I can't even watch CSI regularly, because the policework strikes me as false (or, well, it did on CSI:NY; I watch the original CSI occasionally but can never remember when the hell it's on; CSI:Miami has that annoying David Caruso, so I wouldn't watch it anyway), though I'm sure the science has basis in fact. The only cop show I watch now is The Wire, which happens to be by a lot of the same folks, and also exceptionally realistic for a tv show.


*I can watch L&O, but without any real emotional involvement.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, L&O is definitely not an emotional involvement show. I don't know about CSI (I never liked the second two so I don't watch those)--with the first one I mostly concentrate on the little scientific stuff. I don't think it is realistic. I seem to remember somebody talking about what the CSI team does and doesn't do--oh yes, on the show they interrogate people and talk to prisoners, which I think is completely untrue. Why would they?

However, my vote for a new show that looks even more ridiculous is David Boreantz's "Bones." The one with the anthropologist. Oh dear.

[balfrog.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, my good beta freda and I only get one channel (as we don't pay for tv)- and so I was roped into watching The Inside with her.

Well, okay, the completely inexpressive face and slight shows of workaholic tendencies, sure, the childhood abduction, etc.

There's been a spate of these "special powers" crime shows, now? I don't have tv, but it immediately brought up "The Profiler" - so they're linking what seems to be a liking for the "supernatural" element with the crime show. Personally, the main character's speech annoys me a bit - obvious, cringingly emotional at times, very judgemental, trying to be profound, but doens't have the charisma to pull it off. So yeah, young blond chic with super powers and inner strength- we were sucked in by the Buffy potential, and think, eh, not even close, but eh, when you have nothing...

But her boss is interesting. The other woman might be more interesting, but the pretty boy (=bland, boring) set up as "the conscience" is well, bland and boring.

But, hahah, one program, the only one we get, so, damn, stuck with it.
:D

*hey! I got to talk TV!* wheee!!!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

All right! I got a show you watch!

The boss is my favorite too--and the red-headed girl. Unfortunately they seem to have stuck her in the role of supporting, less pretty sidekick. That's maybe okay if they're both secretaries but they're FBI Agents. Should she really get shoved aside that way for the Barbie doll?

Personally, the main character's speech annoys me a bit - obvious, cringingly emotional at times, very judgemental, trying to be profound, but doens't have the charisma to pull it off.

Oh god, you've perfectly summed it up. I hate all her emotional, judgmental speeches trying to be profound. That's already gotten old. Just go into another career already.

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

None of this is convincing me to get a tv!

I'll just keep up my netflix subscription. Only 274 to go....

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Come on, you know you want the TV for Big Brother alone!

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

I possess a dim clue as to what this is about that is just sufficiently bright enough to convince me to run away!

It happens that I am watching a British cop show, Touching Evil (its main themes are angst and exotic murders). It also has a psychic in it, as well as a tough female cop as a major character (not the same person!).

The contrast is pretty striking. The psychic here is a minor character (male, not cute, and not with a great grasp of social niceties) and treated as something of a nuisance by the cops who know of him. He does hand out clues, which are so obscure as to be thoroughly useless until after the fact (and the case is solved), when you can say, oh, that's what he meant. Mostly (and much more interestingly) he acts as a means to reveal the character and past of the main character, whom he knew before the events of the show.

And the female cop? Tough, competent, principled, but not a miracle worker.

[paceus.livejournal.com]

Reading this, I couldn't help but notice all those psychic investigators are women - in The Inside as well as in Medium and Profiler. It reminds me of a discussion a long time ago on someone's LJ: how tv series were under the pressure to have "strong female characters," which I guess means female characters that aren't victims of crimes or otherwise in stereotypical feminine roles. That, however, led to other stereotype - a powerful, emotionless, uninteresting female character (according to the discussion, anyway), who was the one and only woman in the show, save the victims of crimes etc. These psychic abilities sound just like it. Someone decides to have a woman as a leading character, but what would an interesting, strong, female leading character be like? Of course, she should be special; she should have something anyone else doesn't have; she needs to be pretty, so lets not make her incredibly strong physically; how about a character who has visions and helps to solve very difficult crimes, practically unsolvable, with her special powers? Everyone else would be dependent on her. It's like a woman couldn't have a leading role if she isn't extraordinary.

Although I think in Profiler I don't think her abilities were meant to be very psychic, they were just instinct and she saw what she felt as images. It's been a long time since I watched that show, so I could be wrong. In Anne Holt's crime novels, the main character says she feels crimes have certain natures, that when you go to see a crime scene it can feel like a crime of passion, or something else. There's nothing psychic about the police work in those novels, but on the other hand, there's a fine line between instinct and psychic abilities.

I saw The Girl with a Pearl Earring last weekend and read what you had to say about it, and it links to this interestingly: the movie is about an intelligent but uneducated person instantly realizing or feeling what something is about, getting, in this example, painting. In the movie, it was shown to the viewer as Griet put her hand above the paint, blocking the curtain, the table or the chair from view. I thought the painting without the other chair looked more balanced, she said with the chair the woman behind it looked trapped. Some detective series on tv or in books have this kind of feeling or seeing what things look like, for example, in Profiler Sam could investigate a crime and they'd show her "vision" of the victim in a glass cube full of water. Later, Sam would say she felt the motive of the crime was to tame the victim, or something like that. The woman looked trapped.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch Profiler, but I remember thinking exactly that with the commercials, that they made it seem like it was a special power rather than just having it be rattled off as a scientific thing. Frank Black is the one person I'd say who was a man who had that kind of power (on Millenium) and he, too, would say, "I see what the killer sees" and yet try to pass it off as not being psychic. And in The Dead Zone it is about somebody with psychic powers, though I haven't watched the series.

But when it's a woman I do feel like there's something else to it...I find myself demanding to know why she has to have intuition that seems almost spiritual. There is a male counterpart to this, I think, in the man who gets so far into the killers head he starts to identify with him--but that doesn't seem to happen to these female characters. I feel like there is some sort of purity thing going on there somehow, that the pretty girl who understands the killer has to be receiving some sort of spiritual wisdom or have a special gift that's important because it clashes with who she is (young, pretty, soft), while the man can get in there and *be* the killer with a dangerous attraction. When the male character gets sucked in to this soft of thing he's identifying with the killer. The female is always put in the role of the victim. In fact, The Inside even began with Rebecca taking the place of a woman agent who had literally killed herself the way the serial killer was killing others in order to make a statement.

[ljash.livejournal.com]

Funny, I have a bunch of problems with the show (like her frequent abductions and that fairly brainless interrogation of the girl in her treehouse) but I wasn't that bothered by her abilities. If it continues to be that she's Never Wrong and Is The Only Voice Of Truth then it might get on my nerves, but it struck me a little different from that. Not sure why.

I never thought of her as psychic, just a very good profiler. Some of the others make intuitive leaps that seem just as hard to do. And, it seems to me that they do a good job of showing how she sees this different way and no other way at all. She does nothing but this.

I guess it's that she spent 18 months with this guy and sees his mind and nothing else. She doesn't get other people. That's how she sees the world, and when she finds what she recognises, it's like coming home, it's like that's the one thing in the world she does recognise and understand. I don't know--I have a low-grade version of this and so I guess I find it easier to believe in a more extreme version.

But the show is flawed in the way it's written and her frequent almost-victimization stuff is annoying. Also, in the last episode I found most of the story good but every time the show or characters tried to reflect on things in a meta way it was just baaaad. Yet that's a nit-pick. She picked out the girl as a liar because she was the only one still watching the screen and saw the girl stop crying and start whistling and swinging her feet. It's a leap to say the girl is the psychopath and the killer, but for some reason I'll grant her that jump.

Going to see the girl in the treehouse was just plain stupid but the previous one, going by herself to see the S&M guy, seemed not like a stupid detective move but a compelling sick move on the part of someone who was more than a little screwed up. Things like that, and the fact that Webb seems to understand her mind better than she does herself, make her more interesting to me. She's not just magical girl solving crime. She's a tool and she doesn't really get what's going on, herself, all the time.

I have only seen Medium once and it wasn't enough to get how the episodes usually go as it was kind of a strange one that was mostly about her being on trial to see whether she should have her job. Or something like that. But while I could probably find the stories interesting (I kind of like psychics and bits like that) I wouldn't think of them in the same category at all as things like CSI or Lay & Order or all those. I guess I wouldn't attempt to compare them, but if you did, I can see how the psychics come out lacking. Especially if they're constantly trumping the logical, reasonable ones.

Yet I still find the stories interesing--funny, that. There's something that appeals to me (I'm talking the Medium, Dead Zone kind of things, not The Inside, which I find also different from CSI but different from psychics) about the psychic finding out what really happened. I guess because I believe the truth gets covered up most of the time and people just get away with things most of the time. I like CSI and such but it doesn't add to my faith that people get caught. Not sure why. There's something appealing to me about undoing someone's plans by simply knowing what happened and making it impossible to cover up. Not realistic. But appealing.

I have to go. I think I was done. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I don't think she's psychic. I think she's supposed to be a good profiler and that it's just being shown the way it was on Profiler and Millennium, where they were such good profilers it was almost like they were psychic. I just prefer shows where I feel more brought into that. For instance, on Numb3rs Charlie is a genius at math, which is something I can't follow at all, but the show tries explain the math principles to people who don't get that. That's harder to do with someone who just sees it and can't explain it to others, and I find myself wanting more of an explanation. And in some cases, why would she be the only one to see it? Like, why would everyone else turn away from the tape? It seems like that would be naturally something you'd continue to watch. It's hard to put someone in a roomful of experts and have her be the only one to peg the killer, you know? Especially if this relates to something as broad as sadistic serial killers (which is their speciality), because it seems like it will have to happen to often.

But I do think you're correct in what the center of the show is, which is her boss' understanding of her and using her as a tool, which has the potential to be interesting--and maybe I get distracted from that because she's so obviously pretty and young. I look forward to the idea that's been suggested that he does this with all the people who work for him, like the woman she replaced and the others.

[mediumajaxwench.livejournal.com]

I'm jumping in a few days late here but I have to say that I enjoyed this. The thing that irritates me the most about psychic shows is that the psychic has this ability that is completely outside of the law, but god forbid that anyone should mention that or demand more proof than someone 'seeing' something...especially when as you said in the real world most psychics are complete frauds. Anyone who raises what would be logical objections in the real world is either evil or mean or stupid and immediately proven wrong. I also had this problem with Eyes, just because the writers can contrive the plot to make a blind cop workable doesn't mean that in the real world he wouldn't be a liability.