Luckily Memory Is NEVER Absolute
UNFORGETTABLE — SEASONS 1–4–2011–2015
It is an interesting series but quite repetitive because it all holds on a trick, someone with perfect memory, as if it existed, apart from in books about hypnosis. Our brain may register everything but to retrieve something from there is quite difficult because most of what we see, hear, even say or read is not conscious enough to be remembered. It is nothing but a set or cluster of sensations actually processed by the brain into perceptions, but not conscious at all and thus difficult to bring out of this black box our unconscious memory is.
It is a trick that enables each episode to be built around a detail or a couple of details that change the perspective of the case and designate X or Y as the culprit. It is in no way any police investigative procedure. It is only a trick. The end of the series was slightly hard to reach since the memory policewoman is working hand in hand with a partner of hers. So, two further tricks are used.
Carrie Wells, the memory policewoman, is kidnapped in a way or another (no details are provided) and worked upon by some mad doctor who pretends that he can implant,; with a little bit of help from some chemicals, fake memories in her mind, and the minds of a few other people, and that fake memory is hypnotic, so that when he calls her on her phone and tells her a certain message she loses control of herself and just does what she has been programmed to do, which is kill someone.
But of course, this does not work because her partner believes in her, trusts her and brings her back to her real self, her real memory. She remembers the kidnapping and the memory-implanting. This is only conceivable if we consider this implanting is nothing but hypnotic. We know that under hypnosis someone can do things he or she would never do in full consciousness. We know that someone can get into such a hypnotic trance when a certain message that can be oral, linguistic, visual, auditory or whatever is presented to her or him. But to get out of it a certain keyword, action, or whatever is needed too. Between the call and the closure of this hypnotic period, the subject will be totally unconscious.
So, it sounds highly improbable Carrie Wells would be brought out of her trance without the secret password. But then love is the big winner and Al Burns declares his love to Carrie Wells. Then the series could become eternal. Impossible. We had reached the end of it, the end of the fascination of this memory trick. Time to move on, and true enough quite a few of the main characters had already moved on, I mean of course the actors and actresses. So, second terminating trick.
Coming from nowhere, with no reason or explanation, Al Burns is shot dead in front of Carrie Wells. She cannot work with her trick without her partner. Curtain down. We have reached the end of the trail.
So, what is left after these four seasons? The fact that crime is probably the most constant activity in a city like New York, and even humanity, and when crime is not high enough, then humanity can decide to go on a war for fun and to clean up the very dirty stables of some of our politicians, like Trump who cannot admit he is no longer number one in the world and has to share his old position with China, Russia, and Europe, and soon enough Africa or Latin America, not to mention India and some others.
And this series, if I remember well the four seasons, does not have one case of mass slaughter in a church, a school, a mosque, a synagogue, or simply in a supermarket, a shopping mall or a train station. Why not an airport? You have a point there, why not? So, it remains the standard daily crimes that the police investigate day and night, not the domestic terrorism of these mass shootings. Other forms of terrorism are marginal in the various episodes.
But you may find it entertaining, and that’s probably the only real interest in these crime stories, they are quite funny at times.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
