Lockdown, Lowdown… Ringside Report Looks Back at the TV Show Perception

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

Daniel Pierce. Schizophrenic and professor of neuropsychology.

And consultant for the FBI.

If unique insight is called for, then he is more than capable of providing it. Created by Kenneth Biller and Mike Sussman, this police procedural, had at its heart unique forms of procedure and new ways of thinking throughout. Over an uneven 39 episodes corralled into 3 seasons, we had some great solutions to tricky puzzles thanks to Pierce and his hallucinations. Originally airing on TNT, this ABC produced program hit the UK, thanks to SKY but is now firmly in the Disney plus cannon.

As Pierce, Eric McCormack, was all ticks and habits which ran for the whole time on air, meaning he could analyze from an area of perception not open to others. His relationship with FBI agent and former student, Kate Moretti, played by Rachel Leigh Cook, made complex viewing especially when her former husband, Assistant US Attorney, Donald “Donnie” Ryan played by Scott Wolf, arrived on the scene. As is always the case with two protagonists we had wondered about their romantic entanglement – Moretti was a former student who had a crush on Pierce at University. Added to the support network for Pierce are his boss at the University, Paul Haley played by LeVar Burton, his assistant the long-suffering Max Lewicki, played by Arjay Smith and his best friend Natalie Vincent, played by Kelly Rowan – Natalie is a hallucination, the rest are real…

In fact, Pierce believes that Natalie was real until he meets the physical “Natalie” who he encountered at a college party – Dr. Caroline Newsome – and realizes that he has been hallucinating her surrogate all these years.

Initially set in Chicago, this worked best thanks to a very secure structure for an insecure hero. We would begin with Pierce giving a lecture to students, usually about the neuropsychology we were about to be taken through. We would then have the case presented by Kate asking for his help. Lewicki and Haley would support from a distance as Pierce’s lack of trust in the government, his conspiracy theories and his eccentricities were indulged until he comes up with the solution. Along the way, Natalie would appear to support and keep him close enough to sanity to make a difference but would also be joined by a specific hallucination – oftentimes the murder victim – to support his theorizing and thinking, always out the box, more often than not out the body too. By the end we would be back with Pierce philosophizing, this time as a voiceover as the action began to descend into the time-honored fashion of being where we started but a little wiser!

The twists in the plots were not always subtle and given our need now to recognize the neuro diversity of casting, even though this aired to 2015, it is hard to see how this could pass the first few hurdles today for a pilot. There was a significant amount of investment – rightly so – in the area of psychology to support the playing of such a character and McCormack, I believe, did a fantastic job. However, some of the scenarios and the comedy feel dated at best. Was this ahead of its time or out of synch with modern portrayals of neurodiversity? There was a neuropsychology professor attached to the series throughout and I enjoyed the puzzles, the solutions and the way in which the guy who was a pariah of modern society was the brightest and most perceptive in the room.

But McCormack does convince. Having begun in Chicago, the move he makes at the end of season 2 from the fictional University in the windy city to Paris is not just believable, you almost jump on the plane to follow him!

It simply did not disappoint in terms of the genre and on that it can be based very positively. As for the portrayal of a mental challenge, it did so with some respect to it. I just enjoyed the program for what it was as well as the message so was sorry a 4th season was not on the horizon. Perhaps the question arises that whilst it had a sound premise and respect for what it was portraying, was there not an audience ready to take it on as a piece of commentary on the world?

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television, you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant. And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programs made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…

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