Author: latepaul

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lesamy

Lesamy Week 9 – Now At Last The Truth Can be Told

So the observant amongst you will have noticed something about yesterday’s blog update. No, I’m not referring to the fact that I promised a non-Lesamy post and didn’t deliver[1], I’m referring to the fact that I slipped in an extra little bit of info, almost without comment. I gave my current weight[2]

Well aside from the fact, as M. pointed out that with my references to 10% and how much I’d lost you could work it out anyway, I just felt that maybe it was time to own up. I wanted to use this blog to track my progress, but my vanity/embarrassment was such that I didn’t want you to know how fat I actually am until I was a lot nearer my target weight. It’s easier to admit to having been 22 1/2 stone from the vantage point of say, 16, than it is to say this is what I am now.

Anyway, that and the fact that I was re-reading Lesamy posts, and that it’s monday and I need some words to go alongside my figures for this week, made me decide to take a look back at Lesamy so far and review against my original goals:

I’m doing a few minutes worth of exercise morning and evening. I intend to start slow and build up, so maybe in 3-4 weeks I’ll increase the number/duration of that.

Exercise is one area where I’ve made the biggest changes. I started off walking up and down the stairs 5 times, morning and evening. I did that because I was embarrassed to do anything outside and I had no equipment or anything. I expanded to doing walks into town, then around the park, then longer walks. At a certain point – after a fall actually – I gave up the stair walking and I added in 10 press-ups and 10 sit-ups every morning. These days I average 60-70mins of walking a day.

I’m cutting out snacks and having just the two meals a day that I theoretically already have – lunch and evening meal. I plan to add breakfast in at some point but it’s never been a major meal for me and I don’t want to change too much all in one go so I’m leaving that one until later.

I have stuck to this. I added in breakfast fairly early on when I discovered that the sit-ups were easier after I’d had something to eat and drink. I’m also eating better now, eating more fruit and veg and cooking properly some rather than none of the time.

I’ll aim for ~1800 calories a day most days with the occasional (no more than weekly) cheat day of 2300.

I aim for exactly 1800 calories a day. I will avoid going over by even a few[3] but do my best to use up as many of my calorie ‘budget’ as I can. Usually I’m within 10. I haven’t had any cheat days per se, though I’ve been out for a couple of meals when I go ‘off the clock’ (though with a vague eye on portions).

I’ll expect the progress to be slow, aiming at no more than about 1-2lbs or 1kg loss a week.

I’ve averaged 1.9kg or 4.2lbs a week. My lowest loss was 0.6kg and my highest 3.2kg. I am starting to drift downwards to that mythical 1kg/week figure.

I’ll only weigh myself once a week (and more and you get discouraged with progress or frustrated by fluctuations)

I’ve only weighed myself on one day a week, but sometimes more than once on that day and then taken the best reading. But I’m sort of over that now. I’ve found the best time to weigh myself (after my evening walk but before eating) and I’ll stick to that.

I’ll expect the occasional set back but won’t be phased, will carry on, and will seek support and encouragement.

I haven’t had any real set-backs. The week after my weekend away when I’d apparently lost nothing was a bit of a shock but mostly I’ve lost more than expected each week. Support and encouragement has been mixed. Here and on the Ship I initially received affirming comments but I think people got bored with me. But knowing I’m going to post every week means something to me. The other source of encouragement has been M. who asks me how it’s going and is always pleased when I’m doing well.

My goal initially will be a 10% reduction. Doing this by Christmas is achievable.

I hit 10% (130kg) around the end of October. My next milestone was 127kg because that brings me beneath 20stone. I hit that today (yay!). By Christmas? Well it depends on how much I slow down but I think I’ll be under 19stone and possibly nearer 18 than 19 by then. We’ll see.

It’s been both different to how I expected and in some ways not so different, easy in ways I thought it wouldn’t and harder in ones I didn’t think of. But I know I can and will keep going. I’m in a rhythm now and it’s working.

So, as I said above, I’m now 127kg or 279lbs i.e. 19st 13lbs. That’s a loss this week of 1.5kg or 4.2lbs and a total loss since I started of 17.1kg or 37.7lbs.

[1]or did I? Actually I wrote the update but haven’t posted it yet. I’m trying this new thing where I treat reviews like proper writing and so that means editting which means I don’t just through it up straight away.

[2]Except of course that since it was yesterday, it was really the weight on my previous weight day. I didn’t lose 4lbs in sleep last night.

[3]I allowed myself to go over by 36 calories today as a treat for hitting my target milestone. That allowed me to mop up the gravy from my yummy beef-in-ale casserole with an extra slice of brown bread.

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lesamy

Lesamy Week 8 – Motorway Driving

Firstly apologies for not writing sooner. Weighing day is Monday and so it’s almost Lesamy week 9. There are reasons for missing the first couple of days (celebrating M’s birthday and wanting to get a competition story in on time) but after that I just got lazy.

Secondly apologies for not writing any non-Lesamy in such a long time. I do plan (famous last words) to do a review later today.

Motorway Driving

I managed to make it to my mid-twenties before starting to learn to drive. It took two years and four tests to pass and then, because I decided that a computer was a better waste of money than a car, I didn’t drive again for six years. At that time I’d just got a new job and was about to move ‘down south’ and I figured I’d need a car. So I got one and took a couple of refresher lessons. Fortunately it all came back pretty easily.

However on the day I was due to actually move I got up at 6am. Why? Because I wanted to make it out of the city before the traffic got too bad, and also to get as far as I could before the motorway traffic got too hectic. I remember joining the motorway for the first time, it was deeply scary. Everyone was going so fast and there were huge lorries everywhere. But I eventually calmed down and got used to it. After a while I was zipping along, moving in and out of lanes as needed. Motorway driving it turns out is easy.

And on my regular trips back up north I experience a small version of that first experience. The first few minutes are a shock to my system (the rest of the time I pootle around town and make runs to the supermarket but not much more) but after that it becomes easy again. In fact it becomes boring. It’s usually a trip of at least four hours and ninety minutes in you can guarantee I’ll be thinking, ok I’m bored with this now, I just want to be at my destination. To keep myself busy I’ll mentally calculate my average speed and my expected arrival time based on that.

And this – I know you were wondering – is where it is like Lesamy. Initially I had some fears and some issues – look back at my first post about results and how I agonized that I was going to miss comfort eating – but then it sort of became easy. I got into a routine, I was exercising and enjoying it, I was getting to recognise that feeling ‘full’ was not the same as feeling so stuffed like you couldn’t eat another thing. But, it’s a bit boring. I can walk down the supermarket aisles and not worry that I’ll falter with all the things that are nice but that I can’t really afford (calorie-wise), but there is a sense that I’m just faithfully carrying on, day after day, focussed on targets, constantly re-calculating expected dates of reaching such-and-such a weight, or expected weight at Christmas.

Many Miles to Go

I’m sure part of this is the same as with the driving. I’ve still got a long way to go before I get there. Getting there, means something different with Lesamy anyway as I’ll then be faced with the challenge of maintaining, which while I’m not quite sure what it’ll look like yet, will I’m sure still involve some walking past nice food a lot of the time. Another thing is that whilst I cherish my spreadsheet there’s a lack of visible progress. At least to me. I have lost more than 10% of my bodyweight, had to go down a few of belt-notches and abandon at least one pair of trousers, but I look in the mirror and I don’t see much difference. M. says she does, and that should mean something because she doesn’t see me every day.

I’d love, though, for someone who doesn’t know I’m doing this to stop me and ask “have you lost weight?” Hasn’t happened yet but I think it will. It’ll probably happen when I start to have to seriously down-size my wardrobe.

But lest I seem too pessimistic I know I can do this. It’s just a question of keeping going, not giving up. I have given up on a lot of things in my life, but I never once turned around, left the motorway and came home.

This week I lost 1.1kg, 2.4lbs. Total loss so far 15.6kg, 2st 6lbs. Current weight 128.5kg, 20st 3lbs.

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lesamy

Lesamy Week 7 – now with extra week 6!

Yes so you’ll’ve noticed I didn’t post anything for week 6. That was partly due to the fact that I lost nothing last week. In I thought about doing a post just entitled “me” (i.e no “less-o-“)

At least, when I first stood on the scales they read exactly the same as they had the week before. I’m not sure what it was – probably a delayed reaction to eating more at the end of week 5. I then did the usual things, went to the loo and re-weighed myself after my daily walk. Leading to an “official figure” of 0.6kg loss. That really doesn’t amount to much more than a full bladder.

So I worried about that, calculated how many calories I must have over-eaten and so on. But at the end of the day it just made me more determined to carry on.

Which I did and I’m happy to report that I’m back on track. My final figure for week 7 are:

this week’s loss: 1.9kg (4.2lb)

culmulative loss: 14.5kg, 32lb or 2st 4lb.

So, just because I can I’m adding a poll. I promise to strictly ignore the results and do what I would’ve done anyway [polldaddy poll=1072598]

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Buffy Rewatch Season 1

Buffy re-watch: 1.12 Prophecy Girl

Giles, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.

So I finally get to the end of season 1. I guess in some ways I’ve been putting this off and I’m not sure why. I think I wanted to give it my full attention as it’s a good episode and deserves it. Also I have been busy with writing, exercise and DIY (yes really!). Anyway I got around to it.

I always think of Prophecy Girl as the best ep of season 1 and the start of a step up in quality that carried on into the next season or two. Now that I re-watch it I’m not so sure. It is still one of my favourites but what strikes me is how much it really is a climax to all the themes and story lines of season 1. Particularly the Buffy-Angel-Xander-Willow quadrilateral.

It’s not hard to see why I would like this episode. It’s got that four-way love mismatch played out to its consequences (Xander is rebuffed and takes refuge in country music). It’s also got a couple of those “moments” that I mentioned about The Pack. There’s a beautifully acted angsty one between Buffy and Giles where she finds out she’s going to die. There’s a cheesy-but-it-still-works one where she power-walks to her show-down with the Master to the tune of the theme song, not breaking her stride to deal with a vampire (“Oh look, a bad guy!” cool). Then there’s the running gag about Buffy’s dress. Xander going to get Angel to help. (“You’re in love with her/Aren’t you?”) and that heart-breaking moment when Willow describes how it “wasn’t our world any more, they made it theirs”. And that bloody hand on the TV still feels creepy and wrong.

Of course there are also things that don’t quite work and never did. Less than a minute after telling Xander, between panting, that Buffy is dead, Angel informs him that he has no breath. That’s ok, I’m very forgiving of such things. It irks me more that the “prophecy” concerning the Anointed One turns out to be that he’s able to lead Buffy to the Master because Buffy knows that’s what the prophecy says and decides she wants to face the Master anyway. Doing what some text says you will do because you read it is not a prophecy it’s a to-do list. But I guess that’s the nature of prophecy in the Buffyverse – tricky as the Master points out.

Those are things that I’ve always known about. What was new to this viewing, was the degree to which the special effects and CGI really were quite poor. That rubber tentacled monster? Did that ever seem state of the art? Perhaps the effect of 11 years of continuously improving special effects has caused me to forget what was normal back then. Or perhaps I had my fan-goggles on and was concentrating on characters and story – which are now so familiar that I’m forced to consider the wallpaper again, as it were. A bit of both probably.

Anyway to sum up. It holds up as a good episode, still probably the best of season 1. I’m not sure it’s as good as what we’re about to see in season 2 though (unless that’s faded with age too). However it has some pleasing interaction between the characters, some unrequited and requited love, a cool fight, some jokes and Buffy dies. Buffy dies and it really matters. OK she’s resussitated two minutes later and much much later she’ll sing about having “died twice” with a glibness that doesn’t fit the impact here – and that’s all fine, but it doesn’t take away from the power of having her die.

8/10

Which means that season 1 has an average of 7.5 – pretty decent. Let’s see how that holds up against coming seasons.

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lesamy

Lesamy Week 5 – Weekend Away

Firstly apologies because I know I’m a day late with this post. All I can say is I was busy.

Secondly apologies because I know I need to post some reviews or some other non-Lesamy stuff for those of you who just-don’t-care-about-the-diet. I’ll get to that, I really will.

The Land of Temptation

So I spent the weekend at M.’s place. Something I do about once every six weeks, two months, or so. But this was the first time since I started the diet. On the one hand I was determined not to let my diet affect her so I wanted to eat normally (or close to it) whilst I was there. By which I meant I would not count calories just keep an eye on portion size. On the other I knew this would still be more than my usual amount and set my expectations low as a result. Back on the first hand again, when I started this adventure I decided I could have a 2300 calorie pig-out day once a week and so far I’ve had none. So this could be five weeks of treats in one weekend.

How Did I Do?

Well the good news is that I pretty much stuck to the eat normally part. The keep an eye on portion size part went out the window and I was back to the old me portion wise. But I did avoid eating between meals. Mostly.

Friday we had a takeaway, Saturday a home-cooked meal and Sunday a meal out (I had starter and main). In between I had toast and sandwiches and water. We did a fair amount of walking around.

A Gift that Counts

Whilst I was there M. bought me a pedometer which was cool. It’s my new favourite toy. Now my spreadsheet has all sorts of extra info on it. I’ve discovered my normal walk in the park is 3 miles and that I expend ~500 calories doing it (fewer than I thought). I’m using it to make sure my weekend walks, which are non-park and can be a bit random, are roughly equivalent.

I Can Eat What I Want?

Anyway, once I got back from a great, if indulgent, weekend I weighed myself and here’s the shock: not only had I lost weight (I’d’ve been happy breaking even) I lost exactly the same as last week. I lost the average amount I’ve been losing these past 5 weeks. Weird huh?

So that means I lost 2.4kg, 5.3lbs and in total have lost 12kg, 26.5lbs or almost 2st. It means I’m a few pounds away from my 10% reduction milestone. I’d originally planned on hitting that by Christmas.

Time to Slow Down?

This raises the big question of whether I should slow down. I’m still averaging over 5lbs a week, more than twice the recommended amount. And what’s interesting is that my extra exercise probably only accounts for about a pound of that per week. So am I going to slow down, do less, eat more? Probably not. I am starting from a high base and I’m sure the rate will slow. I haven’t done the maths but I suspect that my old diet was something like 3,500 calories a day, or higher and so dropping to 1800 is a bigger change than it might have been. I’m inclined to take advantage of this rate of loss whilst I can. I’m in this for the long haul anyway and it’ll still be next year before I’m at my ideal weight and I’ll be consciously maintaining it for the next year or two. (hopefully after that I’ll have learnt enough good habits to not put it all back on).

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lesamy

Lesamy Week 4 – Exercise

So week 4 was a week when I was back at work. This presented an interesting challenge – when to fit in my daily exercise walk. At first I tried in the morning before work. This was a 40min walk rather than the 2x30mins I did when I was off work. I did it for a couple of days but it was hard going. Then I tried after work, but walking around the park as the sun is going down is not ideal. In a couple of weeks when DST ends I’d be walking in the dark, don’t fancy that. Thursday I did a special expeditionary walk. Work is moving to a new build a mile or two down the road sometime before the end of the year and so I thought I’d go take a look at it. That made 2x16mins. Friday I decided what the heck and did a walk into town and back (2x22mins).

So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a shock but after only a week of less (not no) exercise when I went back to my 2x30mins park walk on Saturday I found it tough going. I found it even tougher yesterday. It was foggy when I got up and so I went out wearing my coat. Ten minutes into my walk and the sun came out. I think it was that as much as anything that caused it to be tough. Oh and I painted my bathroom yesterday, which turned out to be more exercise than I thought.

Too Fat to get Fit

In the midst of all this I thought about buying some kind of walking machine, a treadmill or cross-trainer. You can get a cheap one for under £100. I could do as long or as little as I liked and watch TV whilst I was doing so. I saw one they had in Tesco and despite my normal on-a-whim purchasing habits I decided to see what else was available online. I’m glad I did.

It turns out that these machines go from £70-80 to £3000+. It also turns out that the cheaper ones have a weight limit that I’m over. In fact I’d still be over it when I hit my 10% reduction target. I guess it makes sense, cheaper materials means less sturdy means weight limit. As you go up the price scale you get machines that can take more weight but I had to go to £800 to find one that I could be confident of not breaking.

A bit of a depressing irony to find I’m to fat (and poor) to get fit. Actually after checking out ebay I found I could probably get a treadmill for £250ish that would do, but by now I’d completely gone off the idea. Walking into town as exercise may be a bit odd but it’s free.

A Nice Surprise

So after all that lesser exercise I was fully braced for a smaller loss this week. Instead I found I’ve lost 2.4kg (5.3lbs) a total loss so far of 9.6kg (21lbs). I’m down a half a belt notch – by which I mean I can fasten it one notch down but it’s more comfortable at the original one.

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lesamy

Lesamy Week 3

Another good week. Points of interest:

  • I’ve added home-cooked pasta to my list of meals. This means that I’m progressing slightly more to my eventual goal of not only eating less but eating better. Again this was something I did because it allowed me to make a filling meal with less calories than I’d’ve managed otherwise. (Thus freeing up enough in my daily allowance for some chocolate!)
  • I’ve gone down an extra couple of belt notches – making three in all. I was thinking to myself how this was a great way to follow my progress when I realised that a lot of people use a similar method – it’s called a tape measure! D’oh!
  • I’ve noticed a difference in how much and how well I can cope with exercise. I’m now up to an hour’s brisk walking per day (actually 2 x 30mins) as my main exercise regime. This is gratifying although whilst it still must be burning calories it’s no longer significantly raising my heart rate, so in terms of overall fitness it’s less effective. However the main goal is weight loss. When I’m a little lighter on my feet (literally) I’ll consider some more aggressive forms of exercise.
  • I can now do sit-ups! All my agonizing about “Am I losing it too fast?” is really about “Will I end up with lots of loose skin?” So one of the things I’ve been wanting to do is exercise that will build muscle where I’ll be losing flab – in my case my stomach. However a couple of weeks ago I tried to do a sit-up. First, due to my present centre of gravity, there was the the rather comical sight of my legs going up until I could rock myself forward and then bring my upper body down in something approaching the correct fashion. So then I tried with my feet under the bed. That held my legs down and I did a couple of sit-ups but I soon felt a tightness as if I was in danger of rupturing something. I left it, but then tried again the other day and found that I can now do sit-ups without feeling like I might literally split in half. So a few (very few at this stage) sit-ups have been added to my daily round.

All this has led to this week’s result of another 1.9 kg (4.2lbs) lost. So my new running total is 7.2kg, 15.9lbs or (in English money) 1st 2lbs. I’ve lost more than a stone!

So I’m now halfway to where I’d thought I’d be by Christmas. And my awful confession is that after three weeks of worrying if it’s coming off too fast I looked at the scales this morning and was a teeny tiny bit disappointed that the rate has actually started to slow. I know, I know, you can’t win with me. I whinge when it’s too much and whinge when it’s too little.

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writing

Hold That Thought

I’m a bit backed up with blog posts, which is odd considering I’m off work right now and (theoretically) have oodles of free time. I should be reviewing either Merlin ep 2 (more of the same as ep 1 really), the Chuck season 2 opener (spent too long re-establishing the premise) or The Man in the High Castle (what the hell was that about?). Also I watched The Island on TV the other night and felt like blogging (i.e. whinging) about how if they hadn’t tried to make a big dumb action movie they’d have made an only slightly dumb, if derivative, Sci Fi flick. Oh and there’s always Buffy Re-watch to get back to.

But instead of all that I’m going to talk about writing and my on-going love/hate relationship with it.

I’ve just signed up for two big writing commitments. The first is Slingink’s “Eurofiction” competition, which is a short story is due every two weeks for twenty weeks. Points are awarded and whoever has the highest total score at the end wins a prize (and much glory and bragging rights obviously). I actually entered a similar competition that’s just finishing – The Write Idea’s “Whitaker Prize” – however after I failed to enter in round 3 and 4 I just bailed on that.

Second commitment is NaNoWriMo. As you may have noticed I’ve changed my blog theme again, apologies for that I’ll try to stick with this one for a while. This is partly because I wanted one where I could add tabs across the top and have NaNoWriMo with links to my profile and progress etc.

So I am officially getting back on the writing horse and shouting “giddyup” in a nervous and slightly excited way.

Which brings me to my main topic. A new twist on the perennial “do I really hate writing and does that mean I’m destined not to be a writer?” question. As I sat at the keyboard last night, not typing, remembering how much I truly hate this part, the beginning part, the part where you think that every shred of imagination or trickle of inspiration has fled far far away – as I thought on this I was reminded of something I wrote in a forum at the beginning of this year:

What actually happened was that I started 10 minutes late, stared at the
challenge requirement for 10 minutes before coming up with the germ of
an idea. I then wrote for about an hour, producing 850 words of pure
drivel. That idea, that cute little, perfectly formed concept of my
imagination had become this crap on the page because I lack the skill to
put it into words, apparently.

I received some comforting words about turning a deaf ear to my inner critic, who to be fair is pretty fierce, but I think I’m developing a theory about the way I write. When I look at the most successful, and by that I mean the most well-received, pieces that I’ve written, they are either flashes or stories where I took the time to re-work them significantly after the initial draft. I recall I had to write a story-within-a-story piece for a challenge and I went through 3 versions of the inner story before I finally committed. I found it painful and difficult. Real work in fact.

Secondly almost always the first draft is complete crap. Not only that but my inner critic will scream at me that it’s not even worth finishing and I should just ditch it and start on something new. Sometimes I listen to this. I have a limited amount of time to give to writing and I’m not a fast writer. I wish I could sit down with an idea, toss off 1,000 words quickly and treat it as an experiment. I can do that but the 1,000 words may take a couple of days.

You see there are ways to overcome that initial block, that blankness of mind and page. I find simply writing what I’m thinking (complete with negative commentary) works for me. Each time I start anew I have the fresh fear that this time nothing really will come but it usually does. An idea, a bright shining little spark, lighting the way to the story as a whole. And for a brief moment I’m excited and engaged, if it’s a good idea, or at least charmed with the possibility enough to want to give it a try.

But I find that spark is usually a single flash. A moment’s illumination during which I need to memorize as much details as possible because once it’s gone I’ll be groping along in the dark relying solely on my recall of the features around me. And it’s at this point that the fear and doubt kick in. I wish I could simply get that first draft down on the computer whilst the light is still fading and the after images burned clearly on my retinas. If I could only do that then I would have something, a draft, something I can tweak, edit, re-write, even rip the guts out of and re-work structurally – but a place to start. But often I can’t get that far because the light of inspiration has long since died and I’ve allowed all the criticisms of the idea to come in. “It’s not that original/plausible/interesting/clever.”

So I think, for me, a major skill I need to learn is to holding on to the initial thought, that idea that got me started, for the duration of the task of writing, at least the first draft. Since my attention span seems to have a radioactive half-life that’s not particularly easy but it’s something I want to develop. Half the battle is turning off, drowning out, the inner critic but that is only half the battle. The other half is holding on to the idea. I think that’s why I’ve had more success with 250-word flashes where I can write the thing in an evening. I’ve also had some success with longer stories but where I was prepared to really work at maintaining the vision. I had to keep reminding myself what the story was about, even if I secretly doubted that that “what” was worth doing. I haven’t written a novel (yet) but I imagine that holding the thought for weeks and months will be one of the biggest challenges involved.

So anyway that’s what I’ve been thinking about. And it’s why I think NaNoWriMo will be very very good for me.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy – Week 2

Here we are again, monday is weigh-in day.

So what I learnt this week is that even if all you decide to do is limit your calories you end up changing what you eat anyway. It just makes more sense for example to eat an apple instead of one of those low-calorie yoghurt biscuits that I like. The apple is more filling and the biscuits come in packs of two and so even though it’s roughly the same on its own, in terms of what you end up eating it’s two apples’ worth of calories. Similar logic leads me to buy lower fat yoghurts which I can have as part of my lunch rather the thick and creamy ones that would have to be my lunch. And so on.

So even though I started this regime with the idea of not changing too much too soon, I have drifted towards a more healthy and varied diet anyway.

I’ve been off work this week and so instead of my inside exercises I’ve been taking brisk walks in the part every day (2-3miles). This is quite pleasant, I strap on my ipod and head off, and the weather’s been quite nice, although the one day it rained was actually welcome as it cooled me down.

I’m telling you this as it may go some way to explain this surprise:

Weight loss this week:   3.2kg (7lbs)

Total loss so far:  5.3kg (11.7lbs)

I’m still waiting for this to settle down – I really don’t want to lose the weight too quickly – but I can’t deny being happy.

Categories
reviews

The Mentalist

Imagine Derrin Brown as a detective.

If, like me, you’re enough of a pedant to sigh whenever someone uses “beg the question” when they really mean “prompt the question”, then you may get a slight measure of satisfaction when a word is used properly. So the first thing I noticed about The Mentalist that it’s not about someone with a learning disability. OK, of course if that were really the subject of this show they’d never call it that, but they could have called it “Cop-Psychic”[1] or simply “Jane”, so  I take it as a small indication of the producers sensibility that they got this part right.

The Mentalist is about a John Edward style TV psychic who after a personal tragedy gives it up to become a police officer. As a medium he was a fake, using cold reading techniques to gather enough information to give a convincing performance. He now uses the same techniques to solve crimes. A simple and yet interesting concept.

Being the Smartest Guy in the House

The show reminded me a lot of House, and let’s face it medical shows are just cop shows where the criminal is a disease, the cop is the doctor and the symptoms are the evidence. (In fact I’m pretty sure House used that metaphor explicitly in dialogue early on.) They both feature arrogant central figures who are impossibly brilliant at what they do and know it. At one point Patrick Jane, our psychic-turned-cop, says that he doesn’t like seeing doctors because “they always want to feel like they’re the smartest guy in the room, when obviously that’s me.” They even both share a disdain for belief. When one of his colleagues states she has a cousin who is a real psychic, Jane says “he’s either deluded or dishonest or both.”

I think that where they differ is that Gregory House is a startlingly misanthropic figure where Patrick Jane is merely annoying. Also, it’s really unfair on the evidence of one show but I think Hugh Laurie beats Simon Baker in both acting ability and screen presence generally.

Suspect Device

Anyway, what separates this show from a thousand other cop/medic/lawyer shows is its gimmick, its device, so how well does it use it? Quite well I think. One potential problem is that whilst it’s enough for a TV psychic to get a few details in the right ballpark to let the person feel like they’re having a real contact with the “other side”, the police ultimately have to prove what they think they know. However they tackle this head-on and within the first five minutes one character has shot another on the basis of Jane’s, let’s face it, educated guesses. Later in the episode he uses his techniques to get the murderer to incriminate himself, a pattern I suspect we’ll see again.

It’s also interesting that after the initial scene where we’re shown what little pieces of information he uses to construct his guesses, that after that we only hear his (always correct) insights. And of course they use his talents for comic relief, allowing him to embarrass his colleagues.

I do foresee a trap here, that the writers might just get lazy and have him know things he couldn’t possibly know, simply by establishing a pattern of credibility with the audience. However I hope they don’t do that, or not straight away. The fresh thing this show has to offer is its device and so they should keep it to the fore. Like Derrin Brown, show us the trick and then, at least some of the time, show us how it’s done. The formula works because it includes us the audience in on the “clever” side of the transaction, and so we’re flattered and will love you for it.

A good example is near the end when the criminal says,

“I knew it might be a trick but I had to be sure.”

“Yes. That’s how the trick works.”

And The Trick Worked

I definitely enjoyed The Mentalist and if you enjoy police procedurals then this looks like it will be a good one. I haven’t spoken much about the fact that this is a pilot and therefore needs to set up the concept, establish the characters and introduce an on-going story element. I haven’t done that because it does all that well enough for it not to be distracting.

I have too much TV where I need to keep up week to week so that I’m not sure if I’ll become a regular Mentalist viewer, but it’s enough of a new twist on the genre, with enough intelligence in the writing to be highly enjoyable when I do catch the odd episode.  8/10

[1]Yeah ok, that’s a terrible title but you get my point.