My name is greyl, and I watched The Mentalist. (CBS)

[greyl]

I gotta admit, the commercials for it excited me. A guy that used to be a pro-psychic and is now admitting it's bullshit? It's nice to see that getting some exposure. It was a fairly entertaining show with some juicy little mini-debates that mirror some of the things seen on this board.

Anybody else care to fess up to occasionally watching commercial TV? :)

[Orrex]

1. Don't feel bad

A few months back I posted an effusive review of a show called something like "Psychic Secrets Finally Revealed," an hour-long program entirely dedicated to debunking several of the most common tactics used by frauds against the desperate and grieving. I was truly remarkable, primarily because the show offered no disclaimer to let certain "psychics" off the hook; I would have expected something like "although we can demonstrate how certain psychic abilities might be faked, we can't prove that all so-called psychics are frauds," but no! The show matter-of-factly destroyed their techniques in clear and simple language. I was utterly amazed.

Turns out that the show had originally aired at least a year prior to my viewing, but at least one (semi-local) network thought it worthwhile to air again.

[onager]

3. "We can't prove that all so-called psychics are frauds..."

That's one of the things that baffles me about the whole psychic rigamarole: why should they worry about proving ALL of them are frauds?

I guess because (again) it is the complete reverse of the way things work in the real world. If a person goes to a store and gets cheated, they usually don't go back. But in Psychic World, the suckers just KEEP coming back, in hopes that the next psychic will be the "real thing" and not a cheat.

Incredible. And the basics of the scam haven't changed since the Delphic Oracle opened for business: mutter vague generalities, claim a hit when any prediction is remotely close, and blame the signs/skeptics/whatever for any embarassing failures.

[Orrex]

4. It's a zany pathology, that's for sure

To be clear, though--the program did not make any disclaimers; it was a clear and straightforward debunking of the most popular methods of "psychic" fraud.

One part that was particularly good was a "psychic" who gave "readings" to four different people, each of whom gushed about how personally accurate the reading was. The problem? She gave the exact same reading to all four people--the program even cut from one reading to the next to show the scam. Marvelous!

[cosmik debris]

2. I watched much of it

And I was not impressed.

I was glad to see the protagonist say "there are no psychics" and to smack down the pro-god character. But I also thought the dialog was poorly written and the acting was less than stellar. But then, that's television.