Mysteries Decoded

I've only seen a couple of episodes but so far I am very impressed with this show hosted by Jennifer Marshall. What an impressive resume. A true renaissance woman. Anyway, I appreciate the level-headed approach to the sometimes whackadoodle conspiracy theories and histrionic speculation that plague most of these programs. She uncovers the true story behind the urban myths that gullible birdbrains cling to. It was a pleasure to see some burst bubbles of those whose whole reason for being centers on the existence of Bigfoot, for example. But she is kind and polite, if no-nonsense. I will definitely be looking at more episodes. I hope she keeps up the good work. Would love to see her partner up with Josh Gates.

Not only jumped it, rocketed over the cattle-mutilated mystery shark-shaped apparition in a top secret military paranormal ghost time-traveling alien spacecraft.

Season one was an intelligent revisit to the kinds of "mysteries" that have kept Ancient Aliens on the air for eighteen seasons. The host would visit these "mysteries" and debunk them through a combination of common sense and logical reasoning. It was intelligent.

Intelligence is in short supply these days and this show used up its allotment, so late in Season one and now in Season two the show started treating the audience with contempt by presenting as fact the standard "mystery" tripe: baseless claims, wishful thinking, honest mistakes, and the usual gang of say-anything-for-a-buck pseudo-experts with made up qualifications the producers of these kinds of shows have on speed dial.

Eight stars for season one up until the final few episodes where they started pairing the once credible Jennifer with a deluded believer in whatever they were investigating. No stars for season two, which is an embarrassingly forced cartoony rehash of Ancient Alien Skinwalker Ranch Ghost Adventure Scooby Doo. The average is four stars, so, four stars.

I was hoping this series would provide new information, with facts and science behind each episode, otherwise, there really is no point to dredging up the same stories we've seen and read about for years. I don't really expect them to "solve" each mystery, or that would be a headline. However, the episode on the Salem witches had me disappointed. There was some history that was never dealt with, namely Cotton Mather. He was a prominent figure and had great influence on the Salem trials and yet, there was no mention of him at all. This now leads me to bring every episode into question as to how carefully or in depth is the provided information.

I'm often frustrated with these types of shows as they dramatically enhance events to make good TV, but this host is a bit different and she wants to understand the science behind things and is somewhat sceptical which I like. She tries to give a view from both sides.

Ugh, nothing new to see here, folks. Two thirds of the show is re-stating history and stories and one third is the detective with some rando sensitive person that rarely does anything to further the investigation and usually just slows it down. She is good about not jumping onto seeming connections and conspiracy theories, but it is just not enough with a sea of these shows out there. There are youtube series that are more informative than this and offer some sort of new information most of the time.