The fake lie detector TV meme strikes again! But did it actually happen? What does David Simon know that Snopes doesn't?

The show: ABC's new wacky-detectives series "The Unusuals." The scene: Two dicks grilling a guy about a series of cats being killed in the area. The suspect is made to put his hand on a glass surface. He's asked questions; after each one a button is pressed and a sheet dispensed with the words "TRUE" or "LIE" over it. Rigged, of course, in advance.

You may have recognized this scene from "The Wire." Extra credit if you remembered, which I didn't, that it also popped up in "Homicide: Life on the Street," with different demented cops and perps. When I asked if anyone else on the Twitscape had noticed the resemblances, the replies came flying back: yes, yes, and yes.

But now for double extra credit: Can anyone prove that this ever actually happened?

The scene first appeared on TV thanks to David Simon, who was responsible for both "The Wire" and "Homicide." Why lift it wholesale for "The Unusuals"? Well, why not? Apart from its entertainment value, the fake-lie-detector scene practically tells the viewer: This is what kind of show this is. In interviews, the creator of "The Unusuals," Noah Hawley, distinguishes a "cop show" from a "procedural": one's about the case, the other's about people.

But back to David Simon. As Patrick Brown pointed out in the comments when I posted an earlier version of this piece, Simon's 1991 book on which the NBC series "Homicide" was based discusses the lie-detection scam as though it was actually used in police departments in Detroit and Baltimore. But Snopes and Jan Harold Brunvand have classified it as a hoax, a never-proven urban legend dating back to the pre-copier era, when it involved a colander with wires placed on the suspect's head.

In his book, The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends, Brunvand details how he tried to confirm the fake-detector story, using the same accounts Simon mentions in his book. All for naught. Brunvand's conclusion? "I think various police officers with their 'slightly skewed' sense of humor have told the apocryphal colander story to newspaper reporters as a joke, and it was accepted by some of them as truth."

Which is it, then?

Comments

[Patrick Brown]

To take it all the way back to the beginning, David Simon wrote about the fake lie detector trick actually being used by real cops in his book "Homicide", which of course begat the TV show by the same name and eventually "The Wire". Of course I know you were a big "Homicide" fan, since I've been reading your blog since that show was on the air!

[Thanks, Patrick, for the book's URL, which opened Pandora's box!--AB]

[Ryan]

Thanks for your blog about this, I noticed it too.

As for why "The Unusuals" shouldn't have done the scene -- it's repetitive for people who have seen it before.

I wanted something new for a series debut. Should I invest time in a show that is going to that well in its pilot?

The scene was the only scene I saw from last night's premiere and it turned me off. It was the fourth time I had seen or read about the polygraph-by-photocopier. My mind went back to the characters from "Homicide" and "The Wire," and I wasn't ready to embrace these new "unusual" characters.

I may tune in again to see how the show develops, but there is a lot of other TV shows for me to catch up on.

[Thomas Allen Heald, Esquire]

I liked the "Skittles reduction. Sorry, I ran outta fruit," but not a lot else with the pilot ...

[JimBo]

The Unusuals seemed anything but. Like Southland -- both use characters and circumstances seen dozens of times before on TV cop shows. Neither seem interesting enough, new enough or -- and especially -- unusual enough to deserve viewing a second episode.
But the real question is -- as is so often the case -- how did these shows even make it onto the TV schedule? Not by virtue of their boring pilot episodes.
Sure Southland has John Wells' name attached, which appears to be the only reason it got on. But The Unusuals? Wow... that's the only real mystery about this show.

[Peter Brown]

Whether the copier trick is myth or history, anyone writing a cop show in 2009 has to know that the gimmick was used in the two Simon shows H:LOTS and The Wire. To use it again is not an homage but cheesy. If they didn't know, then they're not educated enough about their medium or genre to be allowed to write a cop show in 2009.