Lie to Me: The "insanity" episode

At some point in every TV shows life, they feel compelled to pull out all the psychological stops on the 'insanity' episode.

SIDEBAR - Okay, NOT every TV. I'm pretty sure 'Friends' never did an insanity episode. We are referring to most dramatic television shows that are not simple procedurals. If the show has any 'inventive' fictional elements to it, then it probably has an 'insanity' episode somewhere. Example: I'm pretty sure Law & Order never did an insanity episode, but I'm not convinced that Law & Order: SVU never did. Please correct if wrong.

"What is the insanity episode?" and "Where can I find this marvelous addition to a TV shows legacy you ask?" (if you DID ask that, then you are merely pandering to me, and I appreciate it!) Simply, the insanity episode is the installment of any television series (usually comes by the 3rd season if the show makes it that far) where the audience is left to ponder if anything we have been privy to these past years has been real, or was it all the dream of an insane mind, and our character/or characters has actually been in the looney bin the whole time. OR a lead character is committed for a short time, usually do to something happening in an episode that we cannot be sure whether or not it actually occurred.

I know what you're thinking; "That's total bull crap, every show doesn't have one of those!" Au contrare...

M*A*S*H: Final episode, "Goodbye, farewell, Amen" Hawkeye gets committed for repressing the memory of a Korean woman who smothered her baby to avoid being caught by the North Korean Army.

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. "Normal Again" from Season 6. Buffy gets hit with some demonic venom which causes her to believe all her Vampire and demon fighting is really the imaginings of a disturbed girl in a mental hospital. Because that would make so much more sense.

The X-Files: (I searched my whole collection for the episode title, but when they're listed with synopsis like "Mulder and Scully investigate a murder" or "Mulder and Scully suspect several people may be being murdered by a dead man" or "Mulder uncovers a conspiracy" it can be hard to pin the actual episode down) - the one with the deadly hallucinogenic fungus, where Mulder and Scully find themselves completing half the episode while buried under the dirt, victim of some uber-deadly magic mind control mushroom.

House: Pretty much the whole end of Season 5 and beginning of season 6, where House hallucinates that Cuddy comes to see him in his hour of need. (note, not to be confused with the end of season 6 and start of season 7 where Cuddy actually DOES come to House in his hour of need)

Star Trek: TOS/TNG/DS9/VGR/ENT - Too many examples to count here, but the most memorable would be TNG's season 5er "Frame of Mind", DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars", VGR's "Projections", you get the idea.

LOST: Hurley spends time in a mental institution, 'nuff said.

You get the idea, examples go on and on and on. Where do these episodes come from? Usually in any dramatic series with a flair for the 'exceptional' there comes a time when the writers want to show just how hip and 'meta' they can be (i've adopted the word 'meta' for the time being, deal with it) they usually try and pull what I call the 'mind fuck' episode, where the audience is supposed to fall for the above stated premise: ie, what IF our character was really crazy all this time, and we just pulled a fast one over on the whole audience? Think when Peg Bundy lost the baby in 'Married, with Children' and they turned it all into one of Al's dreams. (Correction, I should say when Katy Segal lost the baby...) It's meant to show just how creative and 'with it' the writers are.

Personally I find the episodes rather offensive, as they always end the same way: No one was ever really insane in the first place, and its always the result of confusion/alien interference/actual dementia/demonic venom. Yes everything that we saw before actually happened, and now we can proceed knowing that some writer (I'm looking at you Brannon Braga) got to get their rocks off mining their old Psychology classes while filling up another 43 minutes of television.

So with all that being said, it brings us to last nights episode of my current favorite prime time network drama 'Lie to Me'

Lie to Me: "Funhouse"

Written by Jameal Turner

Directed by Daniel Sackheim

Synopsis: Cal investigates a man in a mental hospital who has been kept perpetually demented by muffins poised by his sister and brought to him weekly by his loving daughter. There you go, ruined the whole episode for you.

This episode, while again a B- on the overall scale of what I expect from this show, does something nice by actually bypassing the whole "was it really just dementia?" angle and showing us that Cal actually IS being looney, talking with his long dead mother and all. It follows the tenets of other 'insanity' episodes, ie creative editing where you get confused by where one scene ends and the other begins (much like being insane, I would imagine. You'd almost think those creative muthafuckas planned it that way...), laying cues in the episode long before we suspect there's some intellectual shenanigans going on, so on and so forth. By the end of it all, Cal has the solution (muffins, as said before. A solution he comes to while suffering severe dementia, I might add).

These episodes piss me off. Make angry Steve Angry. It's like Shutter Island. From the previews, I could just tell that Leo DiCaprio was in jail the whole time - sorry again to those who actually haven't seen the movie, but I just saved you 2 hours, + the time it took you to download it. Maybe its the decades of genre television i've absorbed, but the 'insanity' episodes are always so pedestrian and repetitive. Character thinks they are insane, through the course of the show something happens which makes them realize all is not well, and they snap out/are rescued from their delusions. Because if that actually worked, we wouldn't have to fund all the mental health centres that were shut down during the shift to 'societally integrated treatment' the Liberals forced on us in the '90's. (Societally integrated treatment, read: pay for it yo'selves fuckas!)

And while this episode isn't a prime example, these installments usually reek of lazy writing. If the character is insane, and everything is in their heads, that means there's no consequences to their actions. If there's no consequences to their actions, then there's no drama as there is no tension. As the audience we are supposed to be oh-so-confused by all the strange happening's a goin' on, but the truth is we're all pretty smart by now, that's why we're watching these clever shows, after all.

In fact, the only show ever to pull this effect off with any real suspense was 'House', and that's because, as this show often does, it inverted the elements. House actually WAS seeing things (through most of the season, actually) and he did think his actions didn't have consequences, when in the end they really did. Then House spent a few episodes in the nutter cage, and eventually everything worked out. But it took several EPISODES to get us there, it wasn't resolved in the span of a commercial break. So props to them for knowing what to do when you decide to make a character insane. (in all fairness, off the top of my head House is the only character on TV you could do this with legitimately. He's already fucked up enough as it is, it's pretty easy to push him over the edge...)

So yes, 'Lie to Me' has reached the 'insanity episode' benchmark. The 'flashback' and 'TV episode within a TV episode' episodes can't be far off.

V is back! Let the disappointment reign!

Thaaaaaaaaat's right folks, that embarrassing hour of mediocrity you forgot debuted on TV last season is back in the all classic, super respectable Winter replacement timeslot! V!

V, right? You all remember, right? Right? Elizabeth Mitchell? Scott Wolf? Morena Baccarin? She was the ultra hot Companion from 'Firefly'? Was gonna be Wonder Woman for a while before the studios did what they do best and kicked Joss Whedon off the project? No. Oh, okay. Well...

V is that show about the aliens who come to Earth ('V' for Visitors, see how clever they are?) in giant spaceships which float over all of our major cities (Vancouver stands in for New York here, are they saying that Vancouver isn't major enough to attract a six square kilometer alien space ship? Toronto may agree, but fuck them, they're Toronto.) Now I know what you're thinking, "Wait a minute, giant alien spaceships hovering over our cities, here to conquer us. Wasn't that 'Independence Day'?" Well, yes it was. But you see, 'Independence Day' was inspired by A) 50's B-movie invasion movies and B) This miniseries called 'V' from 1983. Now I watched the original -

- SIDEBAR - I would LOVE to say that I watched the original when it aired on TV, to be just that hip, but that means I would've watched a primetime miniseries when I was 2. As awesome as that would've been, it would've meant my parents were pretty irresponsible, so NO, I actually watched 'V' when I learned about the inspirations for 'ID4' before the movie debuted -

- And found it to be an excellent treatise on contemporary sci-fi and late cold war paranoia (yes, I could understand the importance of commentary on paranoia during the waning days of the cold war, I was a damn clever kid smarty pants) So when I heard they were making a modern remake I thought:

Wow, what a great idea. We live in the age where we're scared to ride the bus or train (well I am, at least) in case that backpack left under the next seat is filled with C4 (PS, if you DO see a random discarded backpack, please tell someone - police wise - about it. They'll shut down the train, send in the robot to blow it up only to find it's full of gym clothes, but you'll feel better about it) so a show about aliens who come to Earth, look like us and profess peace while insinuating themselves into our everyday lives would be a smash hit; full of intrigue, veiled commentary on our modern paranoia about our neighbours and speaking to how readily (or steadfastly opposed to) we integrate foreign cultures into our own.

And then I discovered the show would be on ABC. EPIC FAIL.

What's wrong with ABC you ask? Well nothing, really. I mean, they're no CBS (by the way, SUCK IT CBS!!!) But aside from a few shining lights (and their comedy line up, tre' excellent) ABC hasn't lately been able to field a decent drama. The problem - they're still so damned 'family friendly'. I've talked about this before with 'Castle', which I love, but ABC has this requirement (culturally, or self imposed, I'm not sure) to make sure their primetime shows are watchable by the whole family. Sure they try to sex it up with, well, sex and some blood, but it keeps them from REALLY attacking the material with the same gusto that Fox, or say, Syfy (BSG anyone?) does.

But wait Angry Steve, didn't ABC make that wicked cool mind bender 'Lost' that you loved so much. Yes. Yes they did, and that is the exception that proves the rule. We will examine:

V: "Red Rain"

Written by Scott Rosenbaum & Gregg Hurwitz

Directed by Bryan Spicer

We open with bodies littering the streets of faux New York under a 'blood red sky' to borrow from U2. Already, a more poetic scene than I've encountered before in this show. It reminds me of some of the final images from 'Watchmen' (the book, not the movie - not to knock the movie, as it was awesome) so there was actually some wicked thought put into this composition. SURE we cheap out by making it a dream, but whatever, it was still nice, more reminiscent of what we saw in the original show 27 years ago. Then we get a nice CG glimpse of Ryan's half Human, half V baby in the tank on the spaceship (our first real glimpse of a V in any form) and that was pretty cool too. Alright, now we're getting somewhere. Things are gonna puck up this season!

And then they give us scenes of rioting in faux NY. I love watching actors pretend to riot in my home town. It's heartwarming.

But then we get back to Anna's (alien queen, for those who don't watch) 'evil machinations' for the sad people below. I often compare this show to 'Lost' as I feel that's the show it's most trying to emulate. Sure, they come from the same network/studio, both have characters who's allegiances are in question, both have an ongoing serialized plot and both have intrigue and good guys behaving as bad guys. But whereas 'Lost' weaves these elements deftly like a concert violinist, V uses them like a blind man driving a Buick. Anna releases Ryan (one of her children) back to the freedom fighters he came from so she can use his daughter against him later? You bet she says that flat out, so there's no real intrigue. If you were having dinner with someone, stepped up to use the loo, and while you were gone they said out loud 'Now I will use him to have my plans put into action' that isn't all that crafty now is it?

Anyways, at the end of last season, the V's turned the sky blood red, our "5th column" freedom fighters were gearing up for a war and Anna was pissed off in general at Humanity, so when season 2 started, I was ready for some progress, some change, ready for the story to blow wide open.

The title of this episode should've been "GET READY FOR EVERYTHING to stay the same." There's no attack on the V motherships. By the end of the episode the sky is blue again, and Anna is back to 'biding her time' while the wheels in her plan turn. Anybody remember that show 'Earth: Final Conflict"? You shouldn't, it's terrible. But that was another 'aliens invade Earth, very slowly' story line. I think things picked up around season 16 or so.

The show has good 'Lost' characters: Scott Wolf as 'Chad' the reporter who may or may not be interested in helping the freedom fighters. 'Hobbs' the mercenary who is just so bad ass he doesn't NEED to kill someone each episode, those types. It even has Elizabeth Mitchell as Erica, the protagonist, essentially playing Juliette over again but without the subtext. And it has good 'twists' as they were. We discover what the V's really look like when Anna kills one for... sport I guess, when she finds out that some of her followers are worried she's being poisoned by the Human skin she's wearing. (you'd think the big reveal of the appearance of the aliens would be a cliff hanger moment - we've had glimpses before but never a good look - but here we use it at a commercial break. Tells how confident the writers/producers were with the 'impact' of this reveal) We encounter a new, younger guy who's done research on some alien skeleton found in a mass grave in Mexico (that's yet to be explained, really) A guy who, by the way, our ultra secret freedom fighters seem to trust pretty quickly. We also learn of some crazy V plot to cross breed with Humans, which is another element borrowed from that exemplary paranoia granddaddy 'The X-Files' -

- Okay, yes, for all the X-Philes out there, I know the alien plan there was to create Human/alien hybrids that would survive the apocalypse of the killer bees who would sting us all, infect us with the alien black oil and make us all carriers for their reproduction, thus leaving a slave race AND providing a vaccine for the richest Humans so they could work hand in hand with the aliens, but I digress -

But this reveal in V DID give us what could be the first REAL juicy moment in the show, Tyler, Erica's son, might be half V, which is actually pretty decent for a twist. Tyler is also the kid who gets to 'get it on' as it were with one of the blonde alien hotties. If only nailing hot alien chicks was as easy as TV and Captain Kirk made it out to be...

So Angry Steve, why do you keep watching this show? Easy. Underneath the mediocrity of the program 'telling' us everything instead of 'showing' us (a cardinal sin in screenwriting for those not in the know) it has POTENTIAL. Potential that I can see will not be realized with the start of the second season, but that's okay. The V I watch in my head is way better than the one on Tuesdays. It behaves as an episodic show, where we wind up right back where we started at the beginning of each episode and you COULD watch any episode out of order and not miss much, but it wants SO BADLY to be a taught serial the way 'Lost' was. But 'Lost' had it's dedicated fans who came back week after week, season after season to find out if Jack would actually save young Benjamin's life, or what was in that Hatch, or will Kate's reappearance break up the love-in between Sawyer and Juliette. This show does not have that kind of power, character, or draw. The whole thing is bathed in the same neutral lighting (probably to make it easy for all the green-screening they do to recreate alien space ships on a tight budget and make sure no Canadiana makes it into a show filmed *gasp* in Canada) but any first year lighting apprentice can tell you that neutral lighting kills emotion on film (and essentially replaces the cinematographer with a light meter) -

- But it has ALIENS, and SPACESHIPS, and Elizabeth Mitchell is kinda hot, and so is Morena Baccarin and Laura Vandervoort (more hot), and sometimes they shoot at each other, and every once in a while there's some psuedo par-kour chase and it gets exciting up to the commercial break.

I don't watch 'Mad Men', and yet I watch this. Is something wrong with me, or am I just too dedicated to sci-fi? It just seems that spaceships will win out over suits any day.

So yeah, in conclusion, this was meant to pump the show to people, but instead it tore it down. But you bet my PVR will have it recorded next week, and you bet I will watch it. Isn't that endorsement enough?