Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files Reviewed!


Wahoo! New season and, yes, new tank top shots. Answer is still the same--fact!

I have been waiting for this season to start forever! It moved back with GH, probably to save the old show's sagging ratings. So long as they keep it on, I'll watch it when I can get it. I have always said the premise for this show is fantastic, and I hoped that between season 1 and 2, we might see an evolution into something more endearing. Endearing? Well, we fell for Jason and Grant and their Skipper and Gilligan relationship and we fell for Josh Gates and his eccentric bunch of team members. Though I readily admit a monster crush on Ben Hansen (his brains and his looks, people!), I would like to see something that makes me come back week to week. A well-matched team could study a Triscuit cracker for a full hour and we'd be entertained to hear them speculate how they make it so airy and yet so weighty, so woven and yet so fragile. The truth is, they are likely to run into nothing terribly extraordinary, but it is our hope that they run into more scary X-Files like cases and no more mermaid stories or anything like leprechauns and the such.

So, now that their first episode of the new season aired last night, what is your review? I like to have these reviews driven by the readers who watch the show. I very very much want your feedback because the powers that be actually do read blogs and contemplate what the viewers desire. What are the show's strengths? Weaknesses? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? Did they handle the right topics last night in the right manner?

Thanks for your input ahead of time. I will voice my own review in the comments with you.

Comments

  1. FACT: I LOVE the tank top shots! :)

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  2. I tivo'd it, watching tonight. Didn't read the post, just in case there are spoilers.

    But wooo! Tank top!

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  3. stopped by to say hi, but still meh on the f or f.

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  4. You guys are not helping the review process. Hee hee. Eric, why am I suspicious it isn't the tank top you like so much, but just in case, I should lay it on the floor and photograph it for next week's review.
    LW; No TV, huh? You're smarter than all of us put together.
    L.I.I.; Write when you see it and let us know. It'll give you another chance to see the tank top shot, you distracted child.
    M.M.; Hello buddy. I will forgive you for not seeing FoF but the addition of Devin was a huge help to the show.

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  5. Pics of the tank top all by itself? Woo-hoo! I can hardly wait!

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  6. Maybe I can pose the tank top on a hanger too, huh? Exciting, huh?

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  7. I'm throwing in my 2 cents. Devin was a huge hit! The addition of him was like buying the family a puppy dog for Christmas. Everyone seemed to come to life. I really like this guy! Enthusiasm and smarts--I totally get that.

    I like to hear the thought process on these experiments because it parallels life and gives people the life skills I'm always trying to impart on here, how to come up with ways to make things work, speculate, theorize, experiment. There's more than one way to skin a cat and more than one way to prove something isn't genuine.

    So, for smart factor and for the new puppy Devin who makes people get excited like kids and explains his knowledge, I give it a double thumbs up.

    On coming to conclusions, I fear the first episode looked like they were running for political office, too afraid to commit to any answer in the end.

    I am excited to see what comes next and honestly just to see the puppy Devin be the smart and sweet guy he is, I am devoted. Of course, seeing Ben's beautiful eyes and boyish smile doesn't hurt the appeal either. His position as team leader seems less vague now. I can see everyone looking to him for the final solution and that has given him the cajones he needs to run the show like Josh on DT.

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  8. I agree about the conclusions.

    To be fair, I only caught the second half.

    I recall thinking Jael looked less like a manikin this time around, which is a positive.

    They did a decent job with the white suited ghost bit and the raccoons. However, I was less than impressed with the EVP and how little effort they made to explain that such a short sound burst could have been anything in that giant tin can.

    The parts I saw certainly weren't as hinky as the first season, so I have hope they improve this season.

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  9. Pangs;
    Great observations, buddy. They did an outstanding job thinking of everything with the battle of LA and just seeing Devin get excited about shooting the guns made me smile. I will join them on any trek if they seem to be enjoying their adventure. I'm all about adventures and they should enhance your overall disposition. Jael had less of a stick up her butt, but I don't look for her to ever have a personality. Both women are pretty flat in affect.

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  10. I have to admit, I'm a little sad that I missed gunfire. I'll have to try to catch that part.

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  11. They used grenade launchers and everything. They usually reshow the last episode the next week before the GH, so see if they put it on. I bet they do.

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  12. Well I did get a chance to see it, but I was pretty disappointed with both investigations (sorry).

    I don't think there is any way they could have "replicated" a WW2 era anti-aircraft sortie with any accuracy. BUT, I do know that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese carrier Akagi started steaming for the West Coast under orders from the Japanese brass to begin the bombing of California and Washington State. The orders changed when they decided to focus more on Wake Island and the British forces in the lower Solomons. Who knows how far they got before turning around. It could have been a Japanese reconnaissance blimp launched by the Akagi that was seen and subsequently fired upon....but I can't say with any accuracy.

    If I were on the Fact or Faked team, I would have at least LOOKED at that possibility, but it never even came up in the episode.

    As far as the Queen Mary investigation, I think they did a better job but didn't spend enough time on it. But then again, that is a ginormous area to investigate in a single night, and I'm sure the museum management doesn't just allow it for free. Someone needs to spend a couple of weeks on that thing....

    I do like the show (not just for that delicious Colombiana, Jael de Pardo either) but it doesn't seem like they've "tightened" anything from last season. We'll see...

    On a different note, great tank top shot! You are definitely one of the more fetching members of this here blogosphere!

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  13. Hey Aaron;
    I love your honesty. A little look into some records about what the military said was in the area might have helped. My dad was in the Asiatic Fleet in WWII and he was always saying that we put everything we had out there along the Pacific, so it could be. Seems hard to believe that the military would make a big hoopla in front of citizens and get all spastic, but then look at us freaking out when folks leave a purse on a bench in a subway post 9-11. I get the Jael eye candy thing, but jesus, that woman just adds nothing to the show and she's kind of in her head and has no personality at all. I adore the new addition of Devin. He is what was missing. I wish Bill would play the grumpy old man on the team who is jaded and grumbles a lot. They need a Scooby doo mix. They have the cheerleader and the football player, they now have the brains, but they need a stoner and a really scared dog... Thanks for the tank top compliment. It's a custom that Ben sort of offhandedly started when he talked about FoF t-shirts and girls wearing them. I take boys up on dares, so I immediately made one and started taking pics in it. It's been part of the routine ever since.

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  14. I liked Devin, but there still needs to be more of a GH chemistry to the show. It feels like Marky Mark without a Funky Bunch. I still liked the episode, but wasn't in love with it.

    And distracted child? Hmph. Google some "HNT" blogs if you want distracted. =P

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  15. L.I.I.;
    Yeah, they need to drop both the chicks. They need women with passion and facial expressions. These two look like they have the sad tired look of women who stood too long at a shoe sale and are discouraged. I'd like a scruffy lovable bunch and I just want to mess them up because they're too cute and self conscious. I want varied points of view and ages too. J&G and Adam and Jaime from Ghost Hunters and Mythbusters are lovable for experience and age. You can't get that in a youth. You just get pretty and vacant. I also think--screw letting them pick which case to work on, let Ben assign them by experience and Ben should do all the UFO ones because he's more knowledgeable there and Austin should have been shooting guns and Devin should have been on the Queen Mary. Well, that's just my take. They have plenty more episodes to intrigue me. I want more dark stuff, creepy X-files shit.

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  16. I am totally defenseless when I see tank top's like that! God Bless the USA! This is why us guy's just love Summer!

    Les

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  17. Hey Les;
    Haha. I had no clue the camera was looking down my shirt. Looks like the view a 6'5" man might see. Yes, these tank top shots will be up every Thursday after FoF show airs a new episode. And, it is in the 70s here.

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