I won’t lie to you
The story follows Dr. Cal Lightman and his company that is often hired by large corporations and the government to help find out if a certain individual is lying. Lightman is so good about detecting the truth/lie that his normal life (outside of work) is filled with the same techniques. Throughout the season he helps to solve murders, rapes and scandals. He uses facial recognition to detect how people are telling their story and translates that into results. Quite simply put, is a human lie detector.
The pros of Lie to Me are interesting. The show sets up really clever stories to incorporate Roth’s Lightman ability. There is an episode where Lightman and crew help to solve a rape on a military base. Lightman discovers that the soldier alleging the rape is lying, but isn’t convinced that the would-be attacker is innocent. Through different methods set-up through Roth’s character, the story arcs into some place else that you wouldn’t expect. Stories like this are such a pleasure to watch because you never see what’s coming; such a thing is what makes this show damn entertaining. Television shows these days tend to drag into a predictable conclusion and rely on devices such as action and weapons to keep an average episode interesting. Here the show creates its own interesting ways to entertain. On top of this, the show also incorporates real-life situations to explain certain ways to detect lies or expressions. When is the last time a primetime show educated you?
Finally, the show sports a very strong cast led by Tim Roth. He plays a great lead character and someone that can certainly keep the show entertaining. His supporting cast doesn’t do half bad either. Kelli Williams plays his sidekick and right-hand woman Dr. Gillian Foster. She adds sub plots to the main story and helps to break the monotony of a possible dragging storyline. It’s a clever way to keep the episode moving and it couldn’t happen without her talents. Brendan Hines helps with the comedy relief as the ever-truthful Eli Loker. Last, but not least, is Monica Raymund who plays the raw, yet talented, Ria Torres who is a trainee under Lightman. Strong characters mean a strong show.
The cons of Lie to Me is when the show goes a bit too far with Lightman’s technique. The producers of 24 should see this happening, but for some reason they don’t stop it. Lightman sometimes becomes highly annoying with his abilities to detect lies and he uses it outside of the main story. For example, he questions a food vendor on the street whether he washed his hands or not (obviously he finds out he didn’t). He does this quite often to characters that don’t deserve it or need it. It’s a waste of time to include it in the story and it seems more like a break for the writers to go off on these ‘witty’ tangents than maybe create something a bit more intelligent to possibly build the characters upon. For goodness sake, we know that Lightman is talented and is incredible; there is no need to continually throw that in our face. It would be like if Superman went around stopping bullets with his chest randomly; we know the guy can do it, so you don’t have to keep showing it.
Feel free to feel blu if you need to lie
The show is brightly lit and there are a lot of blacks/whites in the overall presentation. This only helps the blu-ray when it comes to its HD quality. This is better looking than the Dollhouse and Fringe, so I have no complaints with the visuals. The audio is also quite strong as you get some good music (dramatic and otherwise), so I have no complaints with the audio either.
My real complaint is with the lack of features. You get a featurette and deleted scenes. For a show that is coming back for another season you have to give it more love than this. The featurette and scenes aren’t bad, but commentary would have been much better.