Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
I love true crime programs, but they can be emotionally exhausting. Are they guilty? Are they innocent? Will justice be served? Did I take a sketch-writing class with the actress portraying a paramedic in that reenactment? Guilt and innocence is the “will they/won’t they” of the true crime genre, and sometimes it’s all just a little bit too much. Most true crime documentaries like Making a Murderer, Amanda Knox, and The Jinx thrive on the ambiguity of the question of whodunit, but not the crime-fighting stalwarts over at Forensic Files.
Debuting back in 1996, Forensic Files, which is available to stream on both Netflix and Hulu, utilizes my old high school nemesis science in order to solve a myriad of interesting crimes. Instead of hooking viewers with a serialized story, Forensic Files introduces a mystery, heightens the enigma with a slew of potential suspects, and then (almost) always solves the crime with an assist from forensic science, all in a tidy twenty-two minutes! I feel as though I’ve seen about 500 of the 400 episodes produced, and almost every mystery has a definitive conclusion.
Forensic Files is true crime Xanax. It’s the perfect mystery program for those who are queasy about the unknown … and also for people who are just plain bored. While it sounds like a misnomer, the series is the closest thing we have to a comforting true-crime documentary. When I pop on a late night episode of Forensic Files, I can drift off to sleep mid-episode confident that my beaker-loving buds will help catch whatever homicidal maniac was off doing homicidal maniac things back in 2006. It’s replaced the nostalgic allure of the disreputable street-smart private eye with the ordinary heroics of book-smart scientists. Instead of hidden cameras and covert recording devices, crimes are solved with microscopes and … a second science thing.
The series is also a phenomenal deterrent to criminal behavior.
Most people don’t need a deterrent to murder, and that’s aces, but if you do, you should really stream an episode of FF. The investigators on the show are often able to apprehend the lowlife du jour due to a single hair follicle or muddy footprint. Science has made it quite difficult to succeed as a professional criminal. But be careful. After watching a couple hundred episodes, the series begins to have the opposite effect. Your ego gives you a nudge as if to say, “If you really wanted to, you could pull off a white-collar art heist. You’ve seen so many episodes of Forensic Files that you can defeat Forensic Files.”
But that is pure claptrap, friend. It can’t be done. Nobody tangles with the science of Forensic Files and lives to sing their song outside the big house.
I love Forensic Files more than any rational person should love a television show about murder, but it’s just so much turn-your-brain off fun. Whereas ’90s true-crime favorite Unsolved Mysteries asked us to help them solve mysteries — which in retrospect was quite reckless because I was eight-years-old — Forensic Files pats us on the head and says, “Let the professionals take it from here, champ.”
Condescending? A little. Entertaining? A lot. The only mystery the crack team of scientists over at Forensic Files can’t solve is the conundrum of how to stop watching Forensic Files.
