the bbc sherlock series by the dr who 'bloke' and starring tim from the office

Ah my bad, sorry.

No trick, he was just riding his luck.

Nevertheless, real-life perfomers use these techniques to predict choices people make with fairly good accuracy

Hmmmm.

Real-life mentalists can use all sort of more or less subtle tricks to make a seemingly random choice less so. Here's one crude example of such a trick, but the cabbie probably has refined better techniques to make the victim more likely to choose the poisoned pill. He supposedly only makes "one move" (pushing one of the bottles towards the victim), which is very flashy, but no doubt that flashiness works to hide the other, more subtle gestures/suggestions that he uses to make the seemingly random choice work in his favour. Of course he (like any real-life mentalist) still has a percentage of failure, but since he's about to die anyway, he's willing to take that risk.

Also, since we learn he doesn't even own a real gun but a fake one, the "one move" is very useful in pushing the victim towards accepting his game. If he were to present the two bottles equally, so that the victims would think they have an even 50/50 chance of picking the wrong one, some of them might rather take their chances in trying to fight the guy than to choose a pill, in which case they'd find out the gun isn't real, and the cabbie would be exposed. But since he makes his "one move", this makes the choice not-random, and the victims would think they can second-guess the (seemingly simple-minded) cabbie's intentions, and choose the pill he didn't want them to choose. So they're more likely to play the game, thinking they have a better than a 50% chance to win.

That's still pretty nonsensical...

xp they also use cheap (physical) magic tricks in the guise of mentalism but i suppose there's no reason the cabbie couldn't have done that too. still prefer my theory though.

Guys, it is sherlock holmes, in one of the original stories a man was killed by a trained snake, relax, it is not hard realism

Yeah, James, that's kinda my point :) I enjoy the show, I just don't think the descent into nonsensicalness has been so steep as others do.

Indeed. Also, pretty obviously the writers didn't explicitly explain how the cabbie did so viewers could construct their own theories, just like they did later on when they didn't reveal the exact details of how Sherlock faked his suicide.

(xpost)

I don't agree: there still think there's a marked difference between the cabbie's methods and Eurus' mass hypnosis. The former can explained in a way that works within it the shows level of relative realism. The latter can't be, it breaks the suspension of disbelief in a way the cabbie doesn't.

From the Washington demo yesterday:

http://i.imgur.com/tNfX2LP.jpg

god I just remembered the bit about the dog and the friend that got thrown down the well by the sister and hated this show so hard

congress: grab him by the emoluments & tax returns

it was actually a plot device down the well and not a dog iirc