Action Review: "Paranormal State"

Short Version: A&E's new show "Paranormal State" is the worst, stupidest, most ridiculous fucking thing I have ever seen in any of the myriad forms of visual media. And I've seen Plan 9 From Outer Space and about 15 minutes of a Dane Cook stand-up special.

Long Version: I pray to the FSM that this show is, as one comma splicing Wikipedian claimed before a recent revision, that the show is, in fact, a Blair Witch style fiction. Beleving that there are people this fucking stupid out there who not only made it to college but then got a TV show all to themselves makes me just a tad homicidal.

The premise (hopefully fictional) is this: Penn State University has the country's "only collegiate paranormal research society," a claim I find completely dubious. Some douchebag (referred to hereafter as "Douchebag," because I can't be bothered to look up his name), the founder of said organization, only wants to help people who are haunted as he was haunted as a child. He is "searching for answers," which, as usual in the "Unknown and unsolved" crowd, means he's already found them.

Let me be completely candid: Douchebag and his buddies make Mario and Luigi from "Ghost Hunters" look like Neils Bohr and Alan Turing. Douchebag is an uber-serious, self-obsessed narcissist, their "methodologies" are more laughable than rods and orbs put together, and, to add insult to injury, they pray and spread around holy symbols like a fucking DnD cleric. See, they have what they call "Dead Time," where they just sit around and ask for ghosts to appear (always opened by a Christian prayer). It happens around 3AM, which is apparently "The height of activity in the supernatural realm," or something equally vacuous and made-up along those lines.

The show is basically Douchebag talking himself and his club up, an "investigation" that's like a gauntlet of biases and fallacies, and some Dead Time before they leave, all interspersed with "Director's Logs," essentially narration by Douchebag run through an audio filter so it sounds like it's coming from and old Victrola. Maybe that's "dramatic" or something.

The first episode I watched tonight involved an 8-year-old boy who was seeing "dark mists" and had an imaginary friend named "Timmy." He was so scared that he couldn't sleep! The child was also suffering from fairly obvious mental problems; he spoke poorly with an odd cadence, displayed a limited vocabulary, and never looked anyone in the eye.

So, rather than (a) buy a nightlight, (b) tell the kid that he's imagining things and if he doesn't go to sleep he can't play with his toys for a week, or (c) take the kid in for a psychological evaluation (the "dark mists" sound like a possible hallucination), the parents call Douchebag and the Undergrad Drool Patrol to find the ghosts and get rid of them. That's sure responsible of them.

Douchebag, remember, just wants to help people who are being haunted, and he sees some of himself in the boy. Factor in, now, the coincidence that "the body of a former resident in the house named Timothy" was found in teh woods behind the property, and you have a wodnerful ghost yarn. So Douchebag tracks down a picture of this former resident, shows it to the haunted child, and the following exchange ensues:

Douchebag: Your friend Timmy is in this picture.
Kid: He is?
Douchebag: Yes. [points to a person in the photo] This one.
Kid: This one?
Douchebag: Yes.
Kid: Yeah! It is him!

And this is taken as reliable testimony. "He recognized his friend, see!?"

Did I mention that the parents have seen no apparitions whatsoever? That they're simply believing the claims of an 8-year-old who seems to have mental problems?

The second episode that played last night involved some random haunted house. The real star of that episode wasn't the house, it was Douchebag and the demon that is haunting him. See, he's been having dreams of this name for the past week, and he's felt an evil presence. Everytime he mentioned "the name", there would be a cut to a rapidfire animation of evil-looking letters switching places in "the name" (it was "Belial;" DnD has taught me a few things) before going back to Douchebag.

After investigating the house, they brought in "One of the world's only real demonologists" to have a look around and spend Dead Time with them. She, a decrepit old woman with an underbite and jowls that frightened my girlfriend, flipped when Douchebag told her about the demon and "the name." She sensed a dark, evil presence. So they, as I said, went around blessing the place with holy water and (Christian) prayers, all the while hanging handwritten holy symbols above doors and hallways and trying to command and control the demon using its True Name (I shit you not). Then they contacted a priest, who apparently came in later and blessed the house. One of the inhabitants felt a "protective energy" after the blessing and attributed survival of a subsequent fire to said "protective energy."

Of course, Douchebag is still being tormented by his demon, and that's where they'll start off next week with Douchebag warning "It's like literally fighting a battle of good against evil."

This show made me want to punch people in the face repeatedly, like Hartigan did to the Yellow Bastard in Sin City. This show was so utterly useless that I'm on the brink of suicide. And you know what the worst part is?

They never even saw or heard anything that they attributed to a ghost!

They just sat around talking about what they "felt" was present for half a damn hour! No orbs, no EVP, nothing that even pretended at being physical evidence. Just talk. Inane, stupid, silly fucking pointless babble.

That'll sure convince us skeptics.

So, in conclusion, "Paranormal State" is a bigger waste of airtime than Celebrity Boxing. It is on the bottommost rung of television quality; it mixes entirely ignorant, utterly credulous paranormal melodrama with irritating Christian presumption.

Wikipedia lists it as a "docu-drama," which gives me hope that it might actually be fictional. Even if it is, though, it is ludicrous and irresponsible of A&E to market it as real. Aren't people stupid enough already without this dreck all over television?

Please, I'm begging you, dear readers, somebody leave a comment telling me truthfully (and with evidence) that this show is not, in fact, real, that it is only actors pretending to be the biggest morons in America. Please? Somebody?