The most shocking part of “Brainwashed,” some would argue, is making a TV show out of an experiment designed to determine whether an otherwise law-abiding person can be convinced through mind-control techniques to murder a complete stranger.
But that’s what the producers of this latest episode in Discovery's “Curiosity” series aim to do.
The result, for better or worse, is not as disturbing as the premise might lead us to fear.
The mind control comes from hypnotist Tom Silver, who starts with 185 applicants and gives them increasingly more difficult tests to determine who is most susceptible to his suggestions.
In one scene he takes 11 subjects to a restaurant and tells them under hypnosis to strip to their underwear. By their responses, he gauges which of the 11 will most readily abandon social norms.
As that scene suggests, the show walks a line between academic test-subject procedures and reality show melodrama.
Silver eventually gets to the shooting part — where, without spoiling the punch line, it turns out his command falls into more of a moral gray area.
The resolution definitely gets your attention. But many viewers may also come away from “Brainwashed” feeling like the patrons who are lured into a sideshow tent at the circus.
The extra quarter rarely buys fruit as shocking and forbidden as the pitchman’s spiel promised.
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
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