Calgary Skeptic’s Society Blog

I’m sure many people have heard of, if not seen, the new show The Mentalist, which premiered this September on CBS. To give a quick synopsis of the show, it stars Simon Baker as Thomas Jane, a man who used to present himself as a psychic, doing cold readings and talking to people “on the other side”. After a tragedy in his personal life which was related to his fraudulent career, he turns a new leaf and admits he was faking it. He gets a job with the California Board of Investigation as a homicide detective. He has an exceptional talent in “reading” people – he uses their subtle body language and inadvertent hints in  conversation to narrow down his suspect list.

First, a quick review: I really like this show. It’s a solid drama, with the obligatory funny bits and a good-looking lead actor. The supporting cast is also excellent, especially Robin Tunney, playing Thomas Jane’s boss Lisbon. The show follows the one crime per episode style, typical of all crime dramas, and each episode includes a small bit about Jane’s personal life and history. The writing is decent, not brilliant by any means, but it kept me interested. The crimes are always interesting, and each episode has the plot twist we’ve all come to expect in hour-long programs. Though the structure is nothing new, the characters, storylines, and concepts are fresh material. Overall, I’d give it 4 stars out of 5.

Now the skeptical part. Thomas Jane openly declares that not only was he simply pretending to be a psychic for all those years, but that all psychics are fake. In the pilot episode, he gets into a debate with Grace, one of his fellow investigators. She asks “when you get together with a real psychic, do they know that you’re just faking?” to which Jane responds “there’s no such thing as a real psychic” - point one for the skeptic! I was a little worried in this part about a cop-out – that Thomas wouldn’t defend his skepticism in order to respect Grace’s beliefs. He gives a quick cold reading about Grace, stating that he knows her father is a football coach, that it’s obvious by her whole demeanor.

Later in the episode, she says, “I think you are a real psychic, you just won’t admit it” - the classic defense of many true believers. Thomas just laughs.

The one major let-down in the show is its rather constant talk of hypnotism. Thomas Jane hypnotizes one witness, instructing her to tell him the truth about what she knows about a victim. In another episode, Jane suggests hypnotism in order to remember little details that your conscious mind may have forgotten, but your subconscious mind can recall. In this case he doesn’t actually hypnotize the witnesses, just pretends to – I’ll let you watch the episode to see why. However, his talk of hypnotism is quite unskeptical, since to date no evidence has been found to confirm the idea that hypnotism can help an individual recall memories – think of the “repressed memory” hypnotists of the 1990s, who got themselves in quite a lot of trouble by implanting memories in a patient as opposed to helping the patient recall their real memories. See the Skepdic article on hypnosis for more information.

Hopefully the talk of hypnotism will subside in future episodes. Right now, I give the show an A- for a skeptical rating – it uses humour and logic to poke fun at psychics and show that they’re frauds. Let’s hope the audience will take this thought to heart. So far IMDB doesn’t have many ratings or reviews, and the ones I’ve found elsewhere were mostly positive, though not glowingly so. I’ll follow up when more people have reacted to the show.

I believe mainstream media is the best way to educate people on critical thinking and skepticism – up to now, it hasn’t been doing its job. Hopefully we’ll see more prime time shows such as The Mentalist that encourage people to think for themselves, demand evidence, and reject pseudoscience.