What are you watching?

Unaired pilot episode of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Unaired pilot episode of The Beverly Hillbillies.

That original pilot was much funnier than the show itself, at least as my fuzzy memories of watching it as a child when it was in syndication go.

That original pilot was much funnier than the show itself, at least as my fuzzy memories of watching it as a child when it was in syndication go.

I agree. I watched episode #1 which I found on youtube after I watched the pilot.

One show comes to mind, that I was watching a couple of months ago. This was the "Hollywood medium" Tyler Henry. He has extraordinary numbers of "hits" in his readings, and the minor TV celebrity sitters are invariably very impressed and emotional, sometimes changing from skeptics to believers. It is claimed that Henry never knows the identity of his client ahead of time (so he can't just google information on him). Unfortunately something tells me this guy is just too good to be true. I think some TV psychic mediums are genuine, like John Edward, but I have a lot of doubts about Henry. 

There is a lot of scathing debunking of this show on the Internet.  Of course any TV psychic medium will attract a bunch of fanatical materialist "skeptics". 

But what would really be required to fake the Hollywood Medium shows seems a little too contrived and unreasonable to me:

Of course there would have to be extensive editing to remove most of his errors (this part is reasonable and to be expected of any TV show), and the claim that Henry never knows ahead of time who he is going to read could be a lie (this seems reasonable). Tyler does seem to do a certain amount of cold reading, but usually his impressive "hits" are obviously not the result of cold reading and leading his client on with questions.

It seems that the clients would have to be heavily in on it to the extent that they must be very good actors - falsely portraying convincingly real emotions in response to the apparent communications, their performance faking the whole thing. This especially would have to include the cases where the clients say the communicated information was known only to themselves and not in any biography or document that could be accessed on the Internet or otherwise. 

Basically, the shows would seem to have to entirely be concocted as pure fictional entertainment. The shows would have to be entirely scripted and rehearsed. For one thing, this would be kind of expensive, even though the minor TV stars are probably paid mostly by their getting a good PR exposure through the show. 

I find this scenario somewhat unlikely. So it's a question remaining in my mind. It seems Tyler Henry may be genuine, despite my doubts.

So, are there other techniques that are also practical and affordable that I haven't considered, that can fake readings like Tyler Henry's, that appear convincingly genuine and uncanny to both the TV audience and to the clients themselves? The client's often very emotional reactions are convincingly genuine. Isn't it the case that to fake those reactions so well the clients would have to be fine actors? But a lot of the clients aren't even minor TV actors - they are often just entertainers of some sort, so this doesn't seem reasonable.

Watched this excellent horror/thriller last night. Only 80 minutes too :)   I'm totally off trailers at the moment but here it is for those who like them. 

Watched this excellent horror/thriller last night. Only 80 minutes too   I'm totally off trailers at the moment but here it is for those who like them.

Is there a tl;dw for those who don't like trailers? I like horror-thrillers, and I despise trailers that give everything away!

Maybe you could give a "mini-review" or something?

RT gets it about right:

An artist and his family think they've moved into the house of their dreams, but when he is possessed by a mysterious dark force the family must fight to save their souls.


Critics Consensus: The Devil's Candy playfully subverts horror tropes while serving up more than enough stylish thrills to satisfy genre enthusiasts.

Is there a tl;dw for those who don't like trailers? I like horror-thrillers, and I despise trailers that give everything away!

Maybe you could give a "mini-review" or something?

Actually... just watched the trailer, and it's rather good