Lie to Me “Beat the Devil” Recap & Review

Photo from Fox

Lie To Me (Fox) returned for a new season with the same cast and interesting cases – one involving a UFO, the other, a serial killer. It made for a very enjoyable episode, with Tim Roth doing an excellent job as the human lie detector, Dr. Cal Lightman.

Lightman lectures for a college class at the request of one of his own teachers, Helen Dezekis (Rowena King), who Cal also had a relationship with when he was her student. During the lecture, one of the current students - Martin Walker (Jason Dohring) poses a question to Lightman, disagreeing with his methods. Lightman essentially challenges him to a dual of sorts – saying he can spot when Walker is lying. When Lightman loses his bet, he realizes that Walker is a psychopath. Lightman makes his concerns known to the school, saying that he bets they have at least one missing student case – they do - and Lightman works to pin it on Walker. Lightman’s trusty sidekick, Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams) doesn’t spot the warning signs with Walker, thinking Lightman is just rattled because he once had a relationship with Dezekis and knows that Walker is currently having a relationship with her as well.

Meanwhile, back at the offices of the Lightman Group, Eli Locker (Brendan Hines) and Ria Torres (Monica Raymond) are working to clear the reputation of a science teacher, Sam Hendricks (Howard Hesseman) who insists he saw a UFO. This case isn’t quite as compelling – frankly I find Torres annoying - but they both work the case and manage to clear the teacher, obtaining an acceptable answer from the military on what Hendricks saw (and that one of his student had captured video) in order to save Hendricks' job. But the acceptable answer is really a lie – it was crafted well enough to be believable for the teacher’s school, and allowed the military to keep their secret about whatever the UFO really was (if they even knew what it was).

Lightman continues to play cat-and-mouse with Walker posting photos of him around the campus and even trying to get personal information about him from his mother. Walker seems unflappable even when Lightman has him under the glare of the lights in the interview room at the Lightman Group. They also find that Walker had a sister who drowned at a young age, and Lightman thinks that it was at Walker’s hands. When Dezekis tells Walker their relationship is over – an action planned by Lightman – Walker doesn’t take it well and it seems they believe that Walker will go after Dezekis. They have Walker wired and under surveillance, but it’s Lightman who gets captured by Walker, who tortures Lightman by waterboarding. Later, when Walker has Lightman digging his own grave, Lightman gets him to admit he killed his sister and that bodies of other girls are nearby, and the police pounce. Clearly Walker didn't realize that Lightman planned for Walker to go after him, and Lightman was under surveillance.

Afterwards, when Lightman asks Foster out for a bite to eat, she blows him off in order to do paperwork. These two have the strangest relationship, with Foster being the one who seems to blow flaming hot one week and icy cold the next. If there is any big flaw with “Lie to Me” it’s the relationship between these two. I don’t see any chemistry and I don’t have any interest in them getting together in any shape or form. Besides, it’s a plot device that gets overused and I’d rather they’d either put them in a relationship, or just call it quits with the two of them. I don’t want to go through an on-again, off-again thing with these two every week, when I’m not interested in them being together to begin with.

”Lie To Me” is just different enough than other crime-drama type shows that it makes for an interesting hour. Tim Roth grows on me every week – although sometimes I still can’t understand every word he is saying. Still, he is perfect for this role and he creates an interesting character that viewers want to know more about. I’m glad the show is back for the summer.


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Lie to Me “Grievous Bodily Harm” Too Predictable

Photo from Fox

Lie To Me (Fox) is one of those shows I watch that I am not quite sure why I watch it. After seeing last night’s episode “Grievous Bodily Harm” I decided to look in to the reasons why I keep watching this show despite the fact that something is just off about it.

In “Grievous Bodily Harm”, the show opens with Cal being shot, and then we quickly move back about a day earlier in time. An old fried of Dr. Cal Lightman’s (Tim Roth) comes for a visit and needs Cal’s human lie detector abilities in order to help him get out from under a gambling debt. It seems that Terry (Lennie James) got in over his head with a gambling debt and needs Cal to help him win it back in a poker game. But this leads to Cal being forced into helping Terry’s gambling associate to verifying the quality of counterfeit money. It was a little too obvious that when Cal got shot at the beginning of the show that it was either some kind of ruse or that he would survive. There was really no suspense there – a show doesn’t kill off his lead character especially when they still have several more episodes to go in the season. It was also obvious that once Cal got involved with Terry that it wouldn’t end with the poker game. Either the show is too predictable or I am also an expert in reading a person’s body language and behavior, but it was obvious that the security guy was some sort of plant for the Feds, especially when it seemed that Cal’s presence at the illegal poker game was well known to Agent Ben Reynolds (Mekhi Phifer).

While this is going on, the rest of Cal’s team works on a video threat received by a school that threatens a homicide. Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams) misreads the body signals of one of the students involved and thinks that the student is the one guilty of the homicidal threats, instead, the girl was talking suicide, and she attempts suicide in the Lightman Group restroom. While Torres (Monica Raymond) and Locker (Brendan Hines) continue to work the case with Foster, they collectively figure out that it was one of the instructors who seemed to be fueling the conflict between students and fostering the student’s negative feelings to the girl who had later attempted suicide. In my opinion, it was obvious the minute the teacher became involved in observing the inquiry that he was someone the one who initiated the whole mess. I think I am getting too good at reading body language.

Besides it being almost to easy to figure out the outcome of each story arc, I realized that Tim Roth bounces and sways a lot when he walks and it seems too comical. I am not sure if that is how Roth walks or if that is how Cal Lightman walks, but either way, it is somewhat distracting, as his body movements seem to monopolize the whole scene when he is on screen. He also seems to quickly move to get into people’s spaces, which I think is probably a method that Lightman uses to get people off guard so he can read them better. Another problem is Roth’s accent when speaking, which at times makes it hard to understand what he is saying. I think as I watch more of the show I become more accustomed to it, but in last night’s episode with Cal’s accent and Terry’s accent, I was having a spot of trouble understanding them.

The other issue is the chemistry with the cast. There is something just not right and I can’t quite figure out what – or who – it is. Tim Roth seems fine as Lightman, but the rest of the cast seems flat. In the first season of “Lie to Me” I was initially intrigued by Dr. Foster, but after watching the series for a while, she seems to be rather one dimensional and I don’t think the writers have done as good of a job in developing her character as they have with Lightman. Likewise Loker and Torres are becoming too repetitive in their behaviors and there doesn’t seem to be anything compelling going on with either of them. Making matters worse, while the main characters still remain underdeveloped, they’ve added the new character of Agent Reynolds who seems to be the stereotypical FBI agent who mistrusts everyone and just gets in everyone’s way.

I still watch “Lie to Me” because I have hopes that someday everything will begin to click, but I won’t wait forever. Right now the show is fortunate to run on Monday night right after “House”, but if the show moves to another day and time without the strong lead in, I am not sure if the show has enough going for it in order to survive for very long. I am afraid that without more character development, and without some more compelling cases for the Lightman Group, this may be the series last season. And that’s no lie.



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Lie To Me: “Depraved Heart” Lightman’s Family Secret

All photos Fox

Lie To Me (Fox) is one of those shows that can grab you and get deep into your head when you least expect it. Last night’s episode, “Depraved Heart” showed an inner pain that Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) has been carrying around for a long time. His own inner pain is the backdrop for a group of suicides that law enforcement seems to want to write off, but Lightman just can’t let go of it. He sees a mystery in this group of suicides, which seem to involve Indian women.

While he investigates the case, he seems to be preoccupied with watching an old home movie of a woman who seems to be talking about how happy she is and how well she is, and it’s obvious that things were not what they seemed. When Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) tries to dig into why Lightman seems so driven by understanding the suicides and why he seems obsessed with this home movie, Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams) tells her to back off and leave it alone. She does tell Torres that Lightman has watched the movie for thousand hours over the years, and it also helped him to discover how to read a person’s micro-expression. But, like Lightman, Torres isn’t one to let things go, and she tries to push the issue with Lightman, thinking that the woman was once a patient of his that he failed to diagnose properly.

In tandem with this case, Foster (Kelli Williams) and Eli Loker (Brendan Hines) are working on a case where a man stole millions of dollars from investors, in a Bernie Madoff-like scheme. It seems that every show has to get in their Madoff-inspired storyline these days. While Foster wants to get the man and his daughter to help tell where the money is hidden so it can be recovered for the investors, Loker shows clear contempt for the man, to the point that Foster dismisses him from some of the interviews. When Foster realizes that it’s the man’s daughter who embezzled the money, and the man, who is dying from cancer, is taking the fall for her, she wants to try to work a deal with him to recover the case without implicating the daughter. This plan goes bad when someone leaks this information to law enforcement, and they move in on going after the daughter. Foster is livid, and turns her suspicions on Loker, who flat out denies he was the one who leaked the information. She reads his expressions that he’s not lying, but somehow she does not believe him. Afterwards, Loker pulls Torres aside and admits to her that he took a tranquilizer to calm his facial expressions so he could fool Foster – and he really was the leak. He had to tell someone, so he told Torres. She tells him that he’d better admit it to Lightman because Lightman WILL find out the truth.

Lightman is able to crack the suicides, and with it, a baby surrogacy “mill” where women were brought in from India and impregnated, and being held in horrible conditions until their babies were born. After the births, they were released, with no money to call their own, despite being promised thousands, and the shame drove them to suicide. Lightman was able to find that one of the women phoned the man running this baby mill right before she killed herself, and they charge him with a “depraved heart” murder, much to his shock.

Lightman’s daughter Emily (Hayley McFarland) also makes an appearance, and she sees her father studying the home movie and also the suicides. She brings him food and tells him to eat, clearly trying to show her concern for her father’s immersion in the case. We find that the mysterious woman in the home movie had killed herself after getting a weekend pass from a mental facility as the doctors felt she was well enough, and she killed herself that weekend. We also find this woman is not just any patient, it was Lightman’s mother. At the end of the episode, he has decided to explain the story to Emily.


Cal Lightman always seems to be a rather secretive person to a point, and in this episode, he seemed to draw himself inside even further in order to solve a case that had personal meaning. That meaning wasn’t with the women who had killed themselves, it seemed that Lightman may feel that he needed to understand their deaths so the things he learned from the death of his own mother would not go to waste. It is as if he wanted someone to speak for people that have inner pain that society does not let them show, and which is so hard to deal with that the person sees no reason to live. It also showed that Lightman, when he is focused, can be rude and even cruel to others. He’s a different character than Dr. Greg House (House -Fox) - House is more calculating in his meanness, where Lightman is just brutally honest and sometimes rude because he can’t understand why people , including his colleagues, aren’t as focused and enlightened as he.

It also seemed that tensions were running high with everyone in this episode, Loker was angry at the embezzler. Foster was angry at Loker’s behavior. Torres is constantly trying to dissect things and Foster and Lightman seem slightly annoyed at her for that. Lightman seems to be put out that Foster isn’t right there when he snaps his fingers. It’s a more realistic work environment, where despite the fact that we have very talented people on the job, they still get annoyed at each other and let it show. I suppose when someone can tell just by looking at you if you are lying or not, it doesn’t make any sense to hide your feelings. And I won’t hide me feelings either – “Lie to Me” is a very interesting show and compelling to watch!



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"Lie to Me” Is Great – Honestly!

Image from Fox

l to r: Monica Raymund, Brendan Hines, Tim Roth, Kelli Williams

Just when you think there can’t possibly be another twist on the everyday crime show, someone comes along and proves that there is. This is the case with Fox’s new show “Lie to Me,” which is about Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) and his team of “deception experts” who are human lie detectors. It seems they can read body language and facial expressions in order to determine whether a person is lying or telling the truth. It can also help them to determine why a person may be hiding the truth.

I missed the pilot episode (I haven’t had a chance as yet to watch it on the show’s web site), but so far I really like what I see. Tim Roth is very believable as Dr. Lightman, who seems as blunt as Dr. Greg House, without the nasty streak. Lightman, like any completely honest person would be, is open and direct himself – he tells it like it is. That is, unless not saying anything gets him more information. I have to admit that in the few times I have watched the show, I find myself thinking about how I may look to other people when I am talking to them. Not that I would lie, mind you, just that I wouldn’t want to LOOK like I’m lying.

The rest of Lightman’s staff seems to be very well balanced. Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams) who is a psychologist, Will Loker (Brendan Hines), the lead researcher, and Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) seem to “play nice” together. But Torres is the new kid on the block who wasn’t educated in school to hone her talent – she’s considered a “natural”. Because she hasn’t been formally trained in the field, her ability to read people sometimes puts a new light on the case. It may also be causing some mild tension between her and Lightman, since Torres’ talent is a gift, while Lightman had to undertake extensive study to gain his.

There is light humor peppered throughout the show, which seems to soften Lightman’s sometimes clinical approach. But what I enjoy the most is that I feel like I am learning something while I am watching. After watching crime shows for years, I feel like I could work on a forensics team, or be an attorney, and after watching years of medical shows I learned so much about diseases, treatments, and medications. But body language and facial expressions seems like new, uncharted territory for me. Even though at one point in my own career while managing large groups of people we were taught very rudimentary body language, this show is taking it much farther than what I had learned before. (A side note, we were told that when people cross their arms when talking to you that they were being closed minded or guarded. But our offices were so cold that when everyone had their arms crossed all the time just to keep warm, body language sometimes only told you the person was freezing cold!)

“Lie to Me” looks like a winner – I can be entertained AND learn something at the same time. It’s now on my “must watch” list for this season.



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