Last night I watched 3 episodes of Paranormal State on A&E. Why? Well, I heard about it, it was on, the remote was too far out of reach from my comfy corner of the couch and after it started, I could not stop watching. Call it rubbernecking, call it having a penchant for utter and complete intellectual train wrecks, call it masochism. Get off my back, will ya? I watched it, and now I am compelled to share. Or vent. Or maybe a bit of both.
Anyway, for those of you who have never seen this new gold standard in woo-ish tripe, I'll describe the first episode I saw since it was the silliest and should give you a good idea of what to expect when you tune in.
The intro for the show sets off all kinds of alarm bells. A young and distinctly snake-oil-salesman-looking guy explains how the show came to be: it all started with the "paranormal events" in his "youth" (to me, he looks to be about 12 now, but maybe that's just me getting old), he decided to found something called the Paranormal Research Society at a random university (I assume they snuck in at night and wrote the charter in the cafeteria). This society consists of a few decidedly intern-looking clowns. Of course, they suffer from the "we can't pay you so here's an impressive title" syndrome, like "Tech Expert" (hooks up video cameras and carries laptop), "Occult Expert" (has nose ring and demon zits, lights candles) and -- whoa -- an intern (kicks whatever's supposed to be haunted "by accident" at 3AM to produce at least one freaky highlight... every single episode). He also mentions how they are sometimes "warriors". Right. I see.
I almost forgot. The voice-overs are done by the director/founder/lead clown himself. Pretentious in content, they are actually called Director's Log. I kid you not. Taking a page from Star Trek, he fashions himself Captain of the USS Inanity and Boldly Goes Where No Tool Has Gone Before. To provide that true authentic feeling, during these they show a little B-footage of him walking around with a little voice recorder, and they actually take the time distort his voice to get that pinched, authentic sound. And it gets worse: at the end of each episode, there is a Final Director's Log (as the titles roll on the Director standing on the scene) that manages to combine the very worst of the Star Trek title Captain's Logs (you know, the Supplemental Ones where the Enterprise Continues Its Original Boring Courier Mission To Starbase 73), Jerry Springer's Final Thoughts and all this in that Trent Reznor-like my-your-cell-phone-is-crappy sea of noise. It truly is a giant bucket of lame with spicy brain damage berries on top.
Anyhoo, this merry band of incompetence follows up on tips about paranormal activity. And for this, my inaugural Paranormal State episode, it was the Case Of The Haunted Piano. Did I mention they actually roll graphics to that effect, and even make up Case Numbers? That always start with 2007, and always end in F (which I assume, until proven otherwise, stands for Fucktard?)
Very well, Haunted Piano it is. A couple who dabble in antiques get a piano, move it into the house, freak out, shove it onto the porch after a day and call the credulous dipshit squad Paranormal Research Society. The Society arrives and meets the couple, who at first blush seem quite normal.
Until they start talking.
The lady of the house explains that as soon as the piano was moved into the house she felt its aura, its bad, bad aura. The man tells of the instant mouse infestation, and his continuous anxiety ever since the piano came in.
Wait a minute... did she just talk about the piano having an aura?
Woo. Woo. WOO!
See, they should've known something was wrong with this piano. They got it on craigslist.com for free. Everyone nods and agrees that this is very suspicious, and somehow this is left in in editing despite the fact that the piano expert they bring in not five ever-loving mother-humping minutes later to help them track the origins of the piano values the thing at "pay me to take it to the dump". But that would mess with the back story, and you need the expert to look like you did at least some research, so I am assuming that the editing decision was based on the fact that the average viewer of this show had a Twinkie in his or her ears for at least one of these segments.
Time for a 3AM séance Dead Time, where the Society members set up cameras and try to authenticate what is going on. In this case, it means that the Intern and Nose Ring sit outside in the snow on the porch talking to the piano (picture Ouija-board conversation here) while Roadie and Director sit in the basement monitoring the action. Oh, and there's candles. Lots of candles. On the piano, around the piano, the team's holding 'em, candles left, right, everywhere. Come to think of it, there's candles all the damned time in this show. For no good reason whatsoever. Must be product placement... note to self: is there a candle mafia?
Not a whole lot of anything, let alone anything Paranormal goes on (shocker), unless you count the sound effects which of course go completely Emeril during these segments. So the next day, the Director finds this is a "serious case" which needs "further investigation" and calls in a bat-shit crazy bug-eyed old charlatan nice old psychic lady to help out. And this is a heavy hitter, too: she once was the Chief Investigator (you can just hear the caps) in the Amityville Horror case. Wow. Can't argue with those credentials. Of course, I find out later by watching other episodes that on this show, every single damned case is a "serious case" which needs "further investigation" by the same damned Amityville Horror Chief Investigator lady, and that you can pinpoint the moment in the show where they call her with eerie accuracy (midway through the third segment, with a sample size of 3, MOE +/- 0 minutes).
Spectacularly unsurprisingly, there is something very wrong with the piano and they need to get it out of there. But to make sure that the spirit thingamajig stays in the piano, there needs to be a "binding ceremony" to prevent it from jumping out into the house, or into the couple, or into the mailbox, I guess. This ceremony seems to consist of everyone standing around the piano and asking Jesus to keep it in. Like a prayer straitjacket or something. I wish I was making this up. Suddenly it occurs to me that if I were to peek outside and see my neighbors perform such a ceremony, I would be sorely tempted to grab AR-15 and put the entire sorry lot out of everyone's misery -- and improving the gene pool in the process. But I digress.
Since the most exciting footage so far is from snow melting on the piano, the society has decided to try another Dead Time session, this time in the warehouse. Of course, not a damned thing happens this time either, but it does allow the intern to kick the piano "by accident" and then "apologize" for it -- since the dumb-ass forgot to do it the first time, and they do need something juicy for the previews. Then again, that might be the cynic in me.
After this, a perfectly serious Log entry follows, explaining that it would be too risky to burn the piano since the ghosty thingy could get out. No matter that there's absolutely nothing indicating any activity of any kind -- the Amityville Horror Chief Investigator said so, and now it's time for serious measures.
They smash the piano to pieces.
They bury the pieces.
They consecrate the ground. This seems to again involve standing around praying, but this time they up the ante with some holy water and burying St. Somebody medallions. I seem to recall that most churches frown upon doing this, as in two-hundred-years-ago-we'd-burn-you-for-this frowning. Not in this show; it's all perfectly integrated woo. As for the medallions, in other episodes they hand these suckers out as "future protection" against the demons. I hate to repeat myself, but I shit you not. They actually mean it.
And that is that. Another case solved. Or something.
The other episodes involved such gems as a medium channeling a dog (I swear, you have not lived until you've seen a middle-aged flamer acting like a dog, pretending not to speak any English but understanding such questions as "Is the presence human" quite nicely), non-decomposing dog corpses and a lady addicted to listening for demon voices on a little voice recorder (high-point of that episode was the medium telling this obviously disturbed woman that she was "not crazy at all", but rather "a beautiful person", and that she would need to "get out more"). This may sound mean-spirited, but with the level of loopiness the lady demonstrated, I sincerely disagree.
All in all, I am just in awe of this show. The heaping helpings of blithering stupidity combined with such unrelenting lameness in every aspect ensure that there would be no way, no way whatsoever to parody this. And that is quite a feat.