Well, do you?

Discrediting Americana has become something of a favorite theme in reality TV, or at least the supposedly highbrow ones like Antiques Roadshow. I haven't watched it much, but I understand the chief attraction is watching some middle-aged housewife get her cherished beliefs about the history of some well-guarded trinket dashed to pieces.

It's not that I don't enjoy this kind of thing (though I found I really didn't in that case), but that this kind of crap sat its fat ass on the timeslots once occupied by awesome specials where people flew helicopters over erupting volcanoes or showed all kinds of funky stuff through micro- or tele- scopes. In the end they're just different flavors of infotainment, but I really doubt the Roadshow has inspired many kids to become scientists and engineers.Those 'making of' specials about certain space fantasy epics were the very first place I learned about the very company I'm working for now. If appraisals of porcelain trinkets is the alternative to Yu-Gi-Oh these days, it's no wonder kids are getting less and less interested in educational entertainment or any of the things it inspires.

No, they're not Italian. And note the absence of red and green overalls.

Sci-Fi Channel's "100% Real"(1) Ghost Hunters series fits into all of this in that it mixes that crackpot-humiliation element with IR and false-color thermography footage of crap like I've absolutely never seen. blee turned me onto the show over a dinner conversation in which at least one pair of eyeballs rolled, but I sat rapt.

The reality show follows a pair of plumbers who, after (or often, instead of) fulfilling the obligations of work and family, run The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), a paranormal investigations group. Taking calls from homeowners, innkeepers, and civil service officers in states ranging from bemused to concerned (rarely panicked), the pair spends one to two weekend nights free of charge at the site of said hauntings with some fairly sophisticated equipment and a team of wide-eyed cohorts.

At this point the show totally splits off from all of those ridiculous Halloween-time specials in which ambiguity is not so much considered as it is tapped and forcibly siphoned out of grainy footage and photography that would in all other cases prompt the reasonable person to consider better equipment rather than the influence of the supernatural. The pair, Jason and Grant, ask the things anybody should when they see some of this stuff and to their credit, in most of the shows they really do find zilch, or have to disappoint that wide-eyed cohort that got really excited over some lens flare or odd dust hit that they just found after sifting through several hours of footage.

The reveal of this utter lack of evidence to the homeowner or innkeeper very invested, sometimes financially, in their site's hauntings makes for that roadshow component. Particularly irritating are those old ladies that insist they or some family member has some sixth sense and throughout the investigation tries to spook people out by saying they feel like they're being watched or exclaiming "it's here!" or "what's that???" while gesturing off camera. Also the leaders of fraternal chapters to TAPS that by all appearances have taken time out from their busy action-figure collection circuits to freak out over some dust glint whose irregular shape they are convinced is the face and headdress of some Victorian-era bride tragically murdered on that site.

But, oh, that 20%. Provided they are indeed true to their word that they aren't and hate dicking around with evidence, you will quite likely be keeping a few more lights on around the house the evening after you watch an episode. True to their transparency, much of this footage they keep on their website and invite skepticism as Jason and Grant are themselves doggedly skeptical to the last in the majority of the cases.

Apparently they've built up enough of a following or encounter clients sufficiently invested in their would-be haunting that forgery comes up on occasion, and they do indeed catch it, as you'd discover in one of their deleted scenes. In one case a 'black shadow' literally looks like some guy zipping by in a dark cape, though there was enough skepticism of the skepticism that they felt it was worth presenting.

Ghosts and extreme, sudden changes in velocity are the two major fears of childhood I now crave. With ghosts I'm skeptical, but I like the idea of a universe with these kinds of things, even if in the distant future they turn out to be some quirk of quantum physics or what have you. Whatever it is, having some ambiguity and mystery in the universe keeps it interesting, and any show that deals with it without totally insulting my intelligence will sustain my attention. Finally having a non-seasonal show on the subject without some throaty voiceover intoning "... or is it???" at the end of each episode is very refreshing.


(1) The DVD packaging says as much.