Mustang92
What promises to be a very interesting investigation into the way our brains work, and how we perceive reality, ends up being an endeavor of -- I wish I could at least say mediocrity -- but it's far worse.For example, in the episode "Superstition," there's a segment about our beliefs about vampires. Okay, cool. We're going to find out how vampires came to be believed in by some. So we go back to the time of the Bubonic Plague in Bulgaria, when because there were so many people dying, they were getting buried in already existing graves. And as grave diggers dug up the earth for the new burials, they found some people who didn't look decomposed and had blood coming out of their mouths. Then the program's voice over says, "They believed these real vampires... (etc., etc.) and this supported the pre-existing belief that vampires existed." WHAT???The program's voice over says the words "...these real vampires..." NO, they were not real vampires. And they began this segment leading us to believe we'd learn about the genesis of this superstition -- which we never do. Only that an incident in history gave credence to a belief at the time. This segment was HORRIBLY written. As are nearly ALL the segments I've seen now (2 show's worth).In this same show, they have this magician who does a couple tricks. One of them is her predicting what celebrity card you'll choose. But if you follow closely what she does and what the narration says, the explanation for how the magician can "count the numbers down" to arrive at the number you chose makes no sense -- if the celebrity cards are not in the right order. Again, this segment was horrible written and done.One of my pet peeves -- beyond the dreck produced above -- is a show that uses the SAME footage over and over, from one episode to another. This show does that in spades. I lost count the number of clips/footage in this show, from the one I watched before this. Is this show so cheaply produced, or on such a tight budget, that they have to use the same shots over & over again?? (Apparently so.)The first show I watched of this series was not AS bad as "Superstition," but still really weak. For example, they show people on the street the famous Tiananmen Square image from 1989, where the guy stops a tank. But they doctor this image up, with crowds of people behind barricade, and then ask people to recall what they know about this scene. So everyone they interview make up all this stuff about crowds of people supporting this guy in front of the tank (because they see the crowd of people) -- all done to show how our memories are malleable and influenced by what we see. OK. Valid point. But why not show at least one person who isn't fooled by that image? Why not show at least one person who can recall what the face of a penny looks like, when presented with 9 options? (Another segment.)They say, "No one recalled the real image of Tiananmen Square," or "No one could recall what the face of a penny looks like, even though they see it everyday." That's BS. As soon as I saw the Tiananmen Square image, I knew it had been doctored with a crowd of people. As soon as I saw the 9 options for the penny, I knew which one was the real one. My memory is not brilliant by any means, and I know lots of people watching this show would have been like me. So why have the narration be so black & white to prove their point? That is simply not needed. Not everyone on this planet is so severely memory-impaired to the point of ludicrousness.Who knows, maybe the budget for this show is so small (I'm guessing so) that interviewing 5 street people is their max, and when they say "No one could recall..." -- it sounds like a lot but is really too small of a sample to make such grandiose claims.This show could be a great show. But the producers/writers have produced crap. What a shame.
