A new TV series on TNT, Perception revolves around Doctor Daniel Pierce (Eric McCormick), an eccentric neuroscience professor with paranoid schizophrenia. He’s recruited by the FBI to help solve crimes. The show also stars Rachael Leigh Cook, Arjay Smith, Kelly Rowan, and LeVar Burton.
During last night’s premiere, McCormick visited Jimmy, a young man with Aphasia — a disorder that causes someone to lose the ability to comprehend spoken language. To compensate, many Aphasiacs become highly tuned to subtle speech inflections. They are heightened when someone lies and, to people with this condition, lies seem funny. In short, they are human lie detectors.
To demonstrate the young man’s abilities to his former student (Cook), Pierce first shows Jimmy a video of President George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, when he said that Saddam Hussein amassing materials to build weapons of mass destruction. The young man laughed, inferring that Bush was lying.
The scene lasted a minute or so and wasn’t the focus of the episode but many people have expressed upset over it and have vowed to never watch the show again. (Despite the fact that Jimmy was later seen laughing over President Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman.” speech.)
What do you think? Was this a poor choice? Will the Bush scene influence your decision to watch the Perception series again? Is the show too political?
The scene did not make a whole lot of sense to me really … you don’t need any special abilities to know when Bush was lying … if his lips were moving, he was lying, easy peasy. Of course I should point out this only applies if he is indeed speaking with/to others … his lips moved when he was reading the Captain Crunch cereal box at breakfast but that was just him trying to sound out the words. I should also point out he ate Captain Crunch because he thought he was supporting the troops by eating a military… Read more »
If someone is truly obsessing over this small clip and thinking that it implies that the show is too political has NO LIFE. Geesh how much thought was wasted in going there like that over the fact that it is a slam on Bush and the Republican view. Doesn’t seem that Democrats got all bent out of shape about the sane scenario regarding Clinton. I think “someone doth protest too much”, LOL. I wonder how hard the right leaning commenters had to think about this to come up with a complaint. Poor lost souls with so little to do or… Read more »
[…] Question: Is Perception too political? […]
Perception was great new show. I hope it returns.
Will it come back?
Since most every one knew Bush and Clinton both lied, as do so many polititions, I thought it was great. Wish I could borrow Jimmy for a day!
I am not suprised but disappointed. I wonder if everyone would have thought it was stupid or “get over it”, if their beloved golden child Obama was the subject of the “human lie detector”. God knows there is enough “recent” lies going on in politics. Why did they have to have a President as the subject anyway? I wonder if they will have a subject on the crappyacademia at UC mental health follow up on their buddy Holmes. The left so bad wants to paint out the “crazies” to be the gun toting conservatives when they only need to look… Read more »
All I’ve heard about “Perception”, from the reviews I’ve read to the words of a few coworkers, is about how bad of a choice that scene was to include; that’s definitely starting the show off on the wrong foot! I think it’s fine to include a bit of political commentary, but it’s risky to do that, especially on the pilot episode! I’m sure it cost them a ton of viewers. At the same time, they may have gained some audience, since it certainly has captured my attention!
It was funny, get over it.
Must everything be an argument? There weren’t any WMDs in Iraq and the war was nonsensical. I think we’ve all come to agreement on that, right? The show is not meant to be political. That was just an example of misinformation going out to the public and lie detection. No need to get all sensitive about it. It’s just television. Watch it a little stronger. Show that TV you’ve got some strength left in ya!
I will never watch this show again. To project the falsehood that Bush lied when they certainly could have shown the previous president in a known lie is devious. After watching Rizzoli and Aisles (sp) try to take down fracking as if it were the ultimate evil and then seeing this, I am very wary of anything TNT shows. I will continue watching The Closer unless it becomes equally biased.
Too (NOT “to”) political?? get real. 1 or 2 minutes of a single show ruins the entire show?
I think we all now know that both Bush & Clinton were lying.
Overall, the show touched several topics, informing us while entertaining us.
I’ll be watching it, looks like it will be good.
Yup to political – but when I watch TV and for that matter, Movies, I expect left coast liberals to think the rest of us are so unenlightened they need to spoon feed us their ‘truth”…I’ll watch the show a few more times and if the “stupids” continue down this road I’ll watch something else…the way I look at it is that show needs me to watch it – I don’t need it ~~~
I did not like the Bush scene, especially when he wasn’t lying. I’m definitely turned off and the Clinton scene did not appease me. The two things were not the same.
I think it is a good show and why should anyone get upset over the fact that it has been proven there were NO weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Don’t people watch the news? Did they miss Colin Powel’s speech re: the conclusion was NO WMD’s were ever discovered?
Well once again there can’t have a tv show with out bringing political issues in the show. It seems to me and offends me when they did the Bush clip. I will not be watching the show again and I didn’t even finish the first episode. My friends have the same opinion.