NBC
(Season 2, Episode 4)
“Because I am about three seconds from deciding that I just do not like you.” – Crews to uncooperative frat boy
I would never want to get Charlie Crews mad at me. When Charlie gets mad, he really gets mad. We’re not talking Andy Sipowicz knock-em-around mad, though there’s some of that, too. We’re talking steely-eyes-burning-holes-through-your-head mad. Crews is in serious danger of imploding, and so are you.
Are the “prison experiments” in this episode commonplace these days? Because they seem a little sadistically sick. Throw a bunch of kids into a prison-like environment, make some of them inmates and some of them guards, and see how it all shakes out? It’s a cat-and-mouse psych game that would definitely bring out the best and worst in people, that’s for sure.
And now for my Top Crews Moments of the night:
The Ewww Factor: Crews picks something off a cop’s shirt and tastes it. Just…ewwww. It turns out to be this food engineered to have no flavor, which I guess they use in the prison system, but … ewww.
The Awww Factor: Crews sitting down next to the kid facing prison and saying, “The first three years will be the hardest, but just because you’re in there, you don’t have to be there. You can go somewhere else.”
The Ahhh Factor: Crews apologizes to his ex for asking her husband if they can have sex. But really, what did he expect him to say? Sure, go ahead! She seems to be softening to Crews, and who wouldn’t? Those steely eyes can just as easily turn soft and loving. But I’m not so sure he shouldn’t move on to someone who will really appreciate him.
The Hmmm Factor: Crews deciphering the wire-tap recording, and “it could just as easily be four.” So it appears that someone was threatening Jack Reese … hmmm…
Clacked by Jane Boursaw 
on Oct 11, 2008 @ 11:39 EST5EDT
Hi there! Love CliqueClack and I always love your posts Jane.
The experiment from the episode was done, to my knowledge, once in 1971. No personal files were released and no one was murdered. But, otherwise it was fairly accurately portrayed. Everyone was shocked by how completely and quickly the students in the study fell into their roles. At that time, it was revelatory. The researcher, Phil Zimbardo, is now famous even outside psych. (I’m gauging famous not by his best selling book of course, but by his appearances on both the Daily Show and Colbert Report.) The study and Zimbardo were mentioned a lot when discussing the Abu Ghraib scandal because the study basically predicted what happened at Abu Ghraib (even some of the photos are scary similar).
In psychology, the Zimbardo study is discussed as much for its ethics as it is for its findings. I’m a psych prof and, honestly, I now cringe every time it gets used as a plot device… Invariably the professor ends up looking like a sadistic freak. I’m all the more embarrassed in this episode of “Life” because they correctly labeled the professor a social psychologist. Way to be specific about exactly who to hate. For the record – I’ve never shocked or incarcerated anyone in my research studies!!
Gotta admit, though, I loved the episode. Love, love the show itself. Okay, all is forgiven. :)
If you are interested in the real study (which is interesting and plenty controversial) the original researcher, Phil Zimbardo, has a website which details the whole thing.
Yeah the Zimbardo experiments were done in the 70s and are pretty famous, and because of them nothing like that would ever be allowed these days. For that reason I groaned when I saw this episode and found it really unbelievable.
I enjoyed the episode and the use of the Zimbardo knock off was a great plot device to show Charlie confronting some of this demons (with Ted no less). I knew that the guy in the car was threatening Reese but I thought it was because of the cop that died last season that was one of the Seibolt(sp?) investigators. I thought he was the 6th before “there is 5″ and I thought the reference to “go(ing) way back” referred to the group of officers responsible for that bank heist. The plot thickens.
Life is an exceptionally good show in the cop-procedural genre, I think. (Even more surprising: it’s on NBC *laugh*) I wish they would do more with Detective Reese (give her a lot more depth please). The addition of the new Captain has been excellent.
It was also nice that they brought back the “old” Captain, they did mention her before and that she got demoted but I liked that we got to see her and that she still exists within the precinct.
I ran off to TVTropes.org after the episode to see if they had a specific trope for “they keep doing the Stanford Prison Experiment on television” (on Veronica Mars too) “even though NOBODY does it for real now.” As it turns out, not exactly.
That said, it was a pretty cool episode anyway watching Charlie use his prison knowledge, Ted’s convict/hero remark, Charlie being pissed off at college boys, etc. And yeah, “the first three years are the hardest” and the tone of his voice there…wow.
actually, the BBC did a variation on the experiment for a reality TV show a few years ago, so it’s not exactly true to say that NOBODY does it anymore.
there were some major differences between the real experiment and this one in order to create the mystery — there were no blackout periods, for example — they make no sense in an experimental sense, as the point of the experiment is to monitor and record everything that happens.
what most interested me was how the social psychologist tried to include Crewes in his experiment once he recognized him.