Up through season four, "Barnaby Jones" was a top-notch detective series. However, during subsequent seasons, the show began to show signs that it had seen better days. First, they brought in Jedediah Jones...who could have been a good character but who was generally underwritten and one-dimensional. Second, the show in seasons six onward, the show just got lazy. Instead of the usual string of clients, shows mostly began to be cases involving Betty and Jedediah's personal lives. While there were a few such cases in previous seasons, in season six and seven, MOST cases seemed to somehow involve the two...making it seem that both were 'black widows' as folks started dying or being threatened simply because they were their friends!! And so, when I began watching "Memory of a Nightmare", I almost screamed. Why? Because it was yet another case where Betty is directly involved. It has gotten so bad you wonder why Barnaby even bothers getting clients any more and just concentrates on cleaning up the messes around Betty and Jedediah!
In this case, Betty and a friend are driving home late at night. They are run off the road deliberately. Her male passenger is killed and the driver of the other car is about to kill Betty when folks pass by and scare the killer off. Now, following the accident and Betty's head injury, she has little recollection of that night...and so they try using hypnotherapy to recover her memory.
Fortunately, the hypnotherapy is portrayed realistically in that it's not magical and doesn't offer Betty that much insight. I say fortunately because hypnosis is often shown to be ridiculously and unrealistically in films or on TV...but not here. As far as the rest of the show goes, it's pretty good. In fact my only big complaint is the Betty angle...a well to which the writers simply went to too often...so often that it eventually seemed almost comical.
In this case, Betty and a friend are driving home late at night. They are run off the road deliberately. Her male passenger is killed and the driver of the other car is about to kill Betty when folks pass by and scare the killer off. Now, following the accident and Betty's head injury, she has little recollection of that night...and so they try using hypnotherapy to recover her memory.
Fortunately, the hypnotherapy is portrayed realistically in that it's not magical and doesn't offer Betty that much insight. I say fortunately because hypnosis is often shown to be ridiculously and unrealistically in films or on TV...but not here. As far as the rest of the show goes, it's pretty good. In fact my only big complaint is the Betty angle...a well to which the writers simply went to too often...so often that it eventually seemed almost comical.
