MovieChat Forums > Houdini and Doyle (2016) Discussion > Faith healer cliches

Faith healer cliches

posted 9 years ago by addeisdead
2 replies | jump to latest

Am I the only one tired of this old trope where the detectives have to investigate a suspicious faith healer? The X-Files did it in the first season. Supernatural did it in the first season. Grimm did it too. It's been done in shows from House to the Mentalist to Friday the 13th the series to kids shows like Gravity Falls. There are plenty of classic shows from the 70s and 80s that did it back when real life faith healers were really popular. Now it only took Houdini and Doyle three episodes to do one. It's been done to death.

[–] larosat 9 years ago

It's always great to feature the truly ignorant. The best one was True Detective S1 where Cohle after witnessing how stupid most of these people that attend these things are says to his partner " Nobody here is going to be splitting the atom anytime soon ". Amen.

[–] BrainGirl78 9 years ago

The thing is that Houdini and Doyle both did this to expose these charlatans. They both had loved ones whom they hoped to be able to speak to after their death and we're trying to find if it was a legitimate thing. They also wanted to discredit fakes to the public, to stop the masses from wasting their money on these hucksters. During this period in history, Queen Victoria was into mysticism, due to this, the upper-class fell into the fad, in trying to emulate their queen. The middle and lower classes could be bilked out of nearly everything they owned, so it was important at the time, to show that these people were simply preying on them.