This episode is as fun to watch for the people watching as for the prank. If you're not familiar with the shows format, they stage elaborate pranks where everyone involved are actors except for the two marks who start at different places but wind up together as the prank reaches its climax. The idea is that with two people brought together seemingly by chance they will help sell the fake reality to each other with their genuine reactions. This prank involves one person being hired by a guy I'll call Mr. Important, a businessman who is taking his team to meet the inventor of a new product. The other prank victim is a guy who's been hired by the inventor of the new product, a machine that reads people's minds.
During the ride over Mr. Important pompously grills everyone in the vehicle about what the most important business aspects of the product are (which they know nothing about yet). No matter what the mark says, which includes such gems as 'what does it cost', Mr. Important agrees and flatters the mark while putting down the others and eventually kicking one of his team to the curb. What's amazing is watching how fast this goes to the mark's head; after just a few minutes of this flattery he picks up a distinct whiff of arrogance in his mannerisms. Meanwhile, the other mark, after seeing a few "demonstrations" of the mind reading machine, including one where it's supposed to be transmitting the scientist's thoughts to his brain but where the machine still has to audibly provide him with the answer (to what he's supposed to be thinking!), opens up after very little prompting to supply that he believes in Astral projection and telekinesis.
The thing is, as funny as it is to watch, these guys are not really that unusual. It's human nature for us to want to believe we're special; we want to be deceived about his, so no matter how ridiculous and obvious it is while watching as an observer many of us would fall for the same flattery trap. And likewise, many of us have beliefs that are completely nuts. Logically, we know they're nuts and so we keep those thoughts to ourselves, but again, in an environment where we're encouraged to speak up without fear of rejection we're only to happy to indulge ourselves because hey, who knows, maybe aliens really did build the pyramids, right?
So eventually, after Mr. Important's team leaves him in the vehicle to make sure there are comfortable chairs and spring water an NO CATS, it's time for the presentation. Both marks participate in the demonstration, never questioning the glaringly obvious ways this could be faked, before the scientist reveals a surprise additional capability of the machine straight out of the mad scientists big book of projects. Things escalate from there, but I don't want to go into details so I'll just say it's pretty funny.
During the ride over Mr. Important pompously grills everyone in the vehicle about what the most important business aspects of the product are (which they know nothing about yet). No matter what the mark says, which includes such gems as 'what does it cost', Mr. Important agrees and flatters the mark while putting down the others and eventually kicking one of his team to the curb. What's amazing is watching how fast this goes to the mark's head; after just a few minutes of this flattery he picks up a distinct whiff of arrogance in his mannerisms. Meanwhile, the other mark, after seeing a few "demonstrations" of the mind reading machine, including one where it's supposed to be transmitting the scientist's thoughts to his brain but where the machine still has to audibly provide him with the answer (to what he's supposed to be thinking!), opens up after very little prompting to supply that he believes in Astral projection and telekinesis.
The thing is, as funny as it is to watch, these guys are not really that unusual. It's human nature for us to want to believe we're special; we want to be deceived about his, so no matter how ridiculous and obvious it is while watching as an observer many of us would fall for the same flattery trap. And likewise, many of us have beliefs that are completely nuts. Logically, we know they're nuts and so we keep those thoughts to ourselves, but again, in an environment where we're encouraged to speak up without fear of rejection we're only to happy to indulge ourselves because hey, who knows, maybe aliens really did build the pyramids, right?
So eventually, after Mr. Important's team leaves him in the vehicle to make sure there are comfortable chairs and spring water an NO CATS, it's time for the presentation. Both marks participate in the demonstration, never questioning the glaringly obvious ways this could be faked, before the scientist reveals a surprise additional capability of the machine straight out of the mad scientists big book of projects. Things escalate from there, but I don't want to go into details so I'll just say it's pretty funny.