Sunday, March 10, 2024

Perception: A TV series

 


Friday, August 25, 2023

'PERCEPTION' : There is a neuroscientist in your soup.....




This engrossing 3 season 2014 serial is available with freevee app.

A neuroscientist college professor, Daniel Pierce (DP) , and his partner FBI agent Ms. Morretti collaborate to solve many crimes. The series would have been another CSI except for the fact that DP digs deeper into the reason/s the victim committed the crime. As an example, in the very first episode a lady victim is accused of killing her husband and the FBI is quick to assume that she committed the murder to get his insurance money! When DP interviews her, he discovers that the victim is a mental patient and is innocent. He explains to the FBI, that she belongs in a psychiatric hospital and not in jail because she suffers from a syndrome that makes her mind strongly susceptible to external suggestions. This episode, which is a Pilot, becomes more and more complicated before DP solves the crime; the suspicion shifts to a new person every few minutes - there is a drug company cover-up, cheating spouses and even sexual harassment by a student all within this one episode!

 Almost every episode begins with DP explaining neurological parts of the brain and how they function in somewhat flamboyant and interesting manner to his class! The viewers might learn something from these one -minute lessons. DP is usually interrupted by FBI agent Morretti  or one of his other acquaintances in the middle of his lecture!

 We soon learn that DP is himself suffers from paranoid schizophrenia!! Therefore, as the series progresses, he is visited by many ‘people’ from the past including his dead mother, Sigmond Freud, JFK like politician, Joan of arc, a baseball player and even his own younger self! These hallucinations help him solve many crimes by dropping clues at the appropriate moments when DP displays abnormal amount of nervousness. This changes the series into a science fiction bonanza. But right at the beginning, DP explains to his students, the same set of neurons fire whether you are having an experience while you are awake or asleep and dreaming about it!!

As DP frequently loses touch with his surroundings and starts having conversations with his hallucinatory friends, he needs the help of his very loyal live-in aide young Lewicki to tell him whether the person he is having conversation with is really there!! We sometimes see DP sitting on the sofa having conversation with his psychiatrist and a look alike friend simultaneously and only one is real! 

One might feel that the neuroscientist DP takes a lot of professional liberty in some episodes when he creates psychiatric terms to explain behavior of the ‘accused’ who might just be lying! Then there is leftover romance between agent Morretti and her ex-husband which gives us soap opera like moments…..

  

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