TV Review :: Lie to Me - Season 1

Have you ever watched Psych and thought "god, I wish this wasn't funny"?
Or, like me, are you a fan of procedural crime-dramas with hugely exaggerated uses of a "real" science?

Well good news on both counts! Fox has an on-the-bubble series you might want to check out.
Filling the void left by a departing Numb3ers, Lie To Me works roughly around the same premise of taking something scientifically interesting and turning it into a crime-fighting super-power. Tim Roth plays Dr. Cal Lightman, a slightly more humanish House who's the world's leading expert on lie-detection. Lightman and his quirky team take time from their busy schedule of actual research to gallivant around with the always-incompetent FBI, CIA, police, or whoever else pays them to catch baddies when they're fibbing. As is the case in most series, everyone from criminals to law enforcement are predictable, borderline-retarded shmucks that are easily thwarted or manipulated by Lightman and company. Not that that's a problem. If they weren't, there wouldn't be a show.

Everything about Lie to Me is painfully by the numb3rs (ha), but that's never really a reason not to watch. First of all, people like teams comprised of unrealistically dissimilar and unnaturally racially diverse characters. I guess it's what prevents scenes where two white guys in their late 20s talk about how much they both like My Morning Jacket for 45 minutes. Instead we have the grumpy brilliance of Lightman, his second in command, Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams), who's sort of like Marg Helgenberger in CSI with the advantage of not actually being played by Marg Helgenberger, Eli Loker (Brendan Hines) the young hipster of the crew who's only reason for being seems to be for the sake of having someone quirky around, and scrappy latina Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) and who serves as Lightman's unlikely protégé. Then, towards the end of season one, we wind up with FBI Agent Ben Reynolds (Mekhi Phifer) who, through the magic of convoluted plot devices winds up on the Lightman team as well, since Lightman needed someone with a gun and the show needed a black fella. The team gets together to once a week outsmart some sinister dick who's pulling a fast one, with each episode having little-to-no impact on what happens in the next, which again, isn't a problem. If everything was Dexter, then Dexter wouldn't be all that special, would it?


There's one inevitable flaw with science shows in that their lifespans are subject to how many cool tricks you can pull with said science. Just like how there's only so many ways blood splatter can solve a crime, and a limited amount of neat crap you can do with math to predict who's going to rob a bank, there's also only so many times someone can frown for a fraction of a second to break a case before it gets incredibly tiresome.

Not that all procedural science-based shows are doomed form the start. I mean, House has managed to keep compelling regardless of how many times the answer wasn't Lupis. But it's pretty evident within a few episodes that we're not really dealing with House-caliber writing here. The side characters don't offer much, other than to move along the individual stories and let Lightman showcase his charming eccentricity, so by the end of season one, any of them could be eaten by sharks and it wouldn't really bother you all that much. You actually wind up more concerned with Lightman's spunky teenage daughter than any member of the team, which doesn't say much for the show's longevity once it's initial coolness wears off.

Still, we're talking network non-serial drama, which is one of the biggest sinkholes in all of television, so by the standards of the genre, Lie to Me is practically Citizen fucking Kane. I mean we're talking about the same format of show as NBC's Trauma, so comparatively things are still looking good. I mean you have a compelling main character, an interesting pseudo-science hook, some decent writing, and a cast that haven't all played Crack Dealer #2 on Law & Order. You're options are to look for stuff like Lie to Me as bright spots in the network drama universe or just watch every episode of The X-Files until you have them all memorized. Trust me, I've actually done that, and it's not as enriching an experience as you might expect. By the third time I watched the carnival freak town episode I found my own reflection in the screen sexually attractive for a brief moment before I got a nose-bleed and blacked out for four days.

Season one of Lie to Me is 13 episodes and about 4.4 gigs of hard-drive space, so it's not the biggest commitment you'll ever have to make. If you can manage through the wild plot-holes and bland supporting cast, Roth's gives a pretty outstanding performance as Dr. Lightman and manages to carry the rest of his crew on his jumpy British shoulders. And, if nothing else, the heavily fictionalized science is fun while it lasts. Maybe I'm just a sucker for shows like this. They're like... cinematic bang-buddies. It's not the type of deeply connected emotional relationship you get with, say, Fringe, where you find yourself counting down the days until you can see them again. No, when they leave, you don't really think about them much, and when they pop back up, it's a pleasurable enough experience, but not one that really affects you in any way. You like them, but you don't like like them. Still you're grown adults with physical needs, so why not, right? And I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a night than Lie to Me.

Oh, I haven't decided on a rating scale for reviews on this blog yet so, uh, lets call this a 713/1000 or a mild thumbs-up? kay?