Am I the only one who thinks this series is fucking ridulous? It was good the first time but seven years and a dozen-odd shows later it’s becoming clear that MSNBC is just desperate for ratings. Now it’s just prime time drama, a hidden camera reality TV show under the guise of investigative reporting. And I for one feel sorry for the guys who get caught.
The whole thing is staged to extract an embarrassing interview from the suspect. The highly annoying Chris Hansen comes out blantantly misrepresenting himself- naturally the perpetrator assume that he’s the girl’s father or some other authority figure- and basically forces the guy to put his foot in his mouth by giving an incredibly lame explanation for his presence at the house. Of course, nobody’s going to admit coming over to BONE someone’s daughter no matter how old the parties involved are, so there is nothing that a dude of any age could possibly say in this situation.
And then comes the big punchline, bringing out the cameras and whipping out the chat transcrips, catching the perpetrator in such an extraordinarily embarrassing situation that he can’t possibly do anything other than fumble around and make a complete fool of himself. And finally, after they finish getting his pathetic, desperate reaction on tape, they throw him to the cops for a big dramatic takedown in the front yard. Great job, fellas!
I am certainly not sympathetic to pedophilia, and I think the operation itself is good. But these predators need to be arrested and dealt with, not ridiculed with superfluous questions on national TV.
I think it would be great if one of the predators responded to Hansen by bringing up the incident a few years ago when it was revealed that DATELINE planted explosives in a GM pickup truck to stage a fuel tank explosion during a low speed accident. That might just prevent his shit from being aired. In any case it all just proves what the producers are really up to.
