I’m just now watching the first new episode on hulu, so no reactions from me yet.
I watched all of last season but am unlikely to continue. The only reason I would is Tim Roth, whom I like a lot, but the stories are the same procedural crime business with the cookie cutter crew of foils and assistants. That Jennifer Beals might make more regular appearances is promising, but if I watch it, it’s just to keep the TV on between House and Castle.
LOL, so boilerplate procedural crime stories with a cookie cutter crew of foils and assistants is a problem but you watch it between House and Castle? Castle is accurately described by what you just said and House is except change it from crime to medical.
I personally like all three shows though Lie to Me I think has the more interesting cases of all of them.
I really like Lie to Me and I am glad they didn’t play the psychic angle.
Tee Hee. 
House is indeed a medical procedural, and you’ve gotta admit there are almost none of those around (since most med shows are more Grey’s Anatomy soap opera). Plus, Hugh Laurie is my wife’s boyfriend, so I’m partially obliged.
Castle isn’t a procedural at all. It’s a romantic comedy with a police backdrop. Those I don’t mind nearly as much as the wonky-pseudo-science of the CSI/NCIS/L&O clones and variations out there. That’s also why I watch Monk & Psych (but not The Mentalist)–for the fun they’re having, not the Who/WhyDunIt aspect. Plus, Nathan Fillian’s a hoot.
I don’t know. It seems to me that DID is just about as “out there” as psychic visions.
I thought the whole episode tonight was kind of “off.” Torres seemed much more timid that she did last year. Loker barely got any lines. Kelly Williams did rock that pink dress though.
Well if the thread doesn’t take off, then I’ll let it die. But between CSI, CSI, CSI, or Criminal Minds, Lie to Me seems to be the least silly of the lot, even considering the real world questionableness of their lie detection ability.
Well, from a dramatic perspective, I think it’s more engaging because all the revelations are based on character interaction and not just people endlessly looking through microscopes or writing equations on chalkboards.
Don’t get me wrong–I like things about the show, but if there’s something that I would allow to effortlessly slip through my fingers, program-wise, this would probably be it (we’ll see how a few of the new shows this season pan out).
I don’t watch CSI or any of that sort of show. But my wife and I enjoyed LTM last year. Was quite disappointed that they started off the new season with mutiple personalities. Seems to be aut the best vehicle if uyou desired to jump a shark . . .
Yea I wasn’t that thrilled by this episode. I think the terrorist setting off a bomb in the mall was the best episode from last season.
I did like the subplot of the supreme court justice though, and though it was poorly executed I liked that Cal went for the case that most interested him on a psychological basis.
That subplot bothered me as well. Exactly what function was Lightman Ent. supposed to be playing for whom? Are we supposed to believe that private firms conduct such vetting IRL? And the candidate was such a prejudiced asshole, I sure wouldn’t want him sitting on any bench anywhere.
House, pièce bien faite though it obviously is, is good TV. I’d watch it even if I weren’t screwing Lisa Edelstein.
…in my dreams.
Which was also the one where the subject happened to dress like a tramp. 
This show would be absolutely intolerable without Tim Roth.
My wife likes it, so I’m watching it - but I think I may actually opt out and do other stuff while it’s on.
It’s a hard sell for me already, because the premise/formula doesn’t really leave a lot of room for good writing. Okay, he’s infallable and sees right through people. So… what makes it interesting? It’s not like a traditional mystery, where there are clues, and the viewer can try to puzzle it out before the sleuth does. It doesn’t help that the procedure and law is so completely unconnected to reality. (It makes CSI look documentary. Wow.)
The MPD storyline took it a little outside the strict formula of season one, but was so hackneyed that it was actually worse.
The only times I was actually interested during the entire hour was with the subplot about his ex-wife and kid moving to Chicago. I cared a little about what was happening, and I liked the resolution of that. I perked up a bit, too, with the little allusions to his partner’s divorce and her feelings about it.
So, yeah, they had me for the character development and the incidentals for the overal arc of the season that they’re setting up, but both of the episodic elements were utter failures, as it seemed to me. Too ridiculous and banal.
So I’m a bit mixed about it - maybe the later episodes will have less stupid stories, and maybe the overall arc will develop into something. I’m not too optimistic about it, though.
Thank Christ they’ve got Tim Roth to carry all the dead weight. His back is going to be broken pretty soon, though – unless they get someone else in there to pull a little. (I’m lookin’ at you, writers.)
A footprint is “infallible”, but it’s only evidence of a thing. You still have to form a hypothesis for what it implies in terms of the overall case and and figure out how to use that evidence to look for more evidence.
Billing the people in the show as truth detectors is really incorrect and simplistic. All they read is emotions. From there they still have to interpret what all possible things might have caused a person to have that emotive reaction right at that moment. With that list of possibilities, they then have to go and investigate each one so as to discover which is accurate.
It’s really no different from other procedural detective shows. There’s any number of times where they go down the wrong path; for instance, the episode with the people stuck in the mining shaft or whatever it was, they went through a good dozen separate theories for who the guilty party was and why. That the people around them thought that they were infallible ended up screwing things up further. While as in reality, they had simply voiced their newest hypothesis before going to try and confirm it.
This was not a particularly good episode. Didn’t really explore the ramifications of a person with MPD and their line of business. Strayed way too far from it. E.g., the setup near the end with the girl and the manager. That has nothing to do with their skills. Whispering into a earplug? Why was Lightman even part of that? (And therefore why was that such a key scene?)
The judge storyline was done wrong. The new girl should have been given a case more suitable for her. E.g., where she was trying to figure out a case with someone knocking over a store while his girlfriend waited outside. That would have been an interesting tie in and would have shown that Lightman was The Man.
And then there was the ex-wife moving storyline.
Too much thrown together so nothing was done right.
Once the Multiple Personality Disorder appeared in the story, my first guess was that the girl would end up being an actress trying to fool Lightman, a la Edward Norton in Primal Fear.
Oh well. I still like my idea better.
Now that we’re in the second season, can we assume that viewers are not idiots? There’s far too much of Loker and Torres explaining what they see to Lightman, who presumably already knows what they’re going to say, purely for the benefit of the audience.
They really need to develop a shorthand. That, or they need to take on an intern who isn’t a natural, so they have someone to explain things to.
Like FBI Guy?
This was a great disappointment. Roth is great, and I actually sort of liked the first season.
I dislike that:
- It is such a cliche crime show. Writers of all of these need to watch The Wire, and learn from that.
- The main characters are always right, and rarely unsure. It’s more interesting with more doubt, and where they need to be more inventive in solving the case than just looking. (For instance “now tell it backwards”, was a bit I liked.) Also it’s just annoyingly unrealistic. “Exhale marks the spot.” Ok, maybe there’s a tendency, but why the utter certainty.
- The multiple personality disorder, and the big shot judge. There is no need for such big cases, and especially not stupid ones like the former. And why are they so much like they know what they are doing with the MPD girl?
- I hate the way they get the knowledge about lying to the viewer. When they tell each other is the most silly. Always teling the accused person about it seems odd. And when they need to take some outside guy and make him overly dense and skeptical, that’s annoying too. I like the pictures they show though.
I notice in episode three they’re experimenting with solving the awkward exposition problem by just using superimposed nonsense figures (as those in the title sequence) over people’s expressions, and not talking about it at all. I’m not sure if this is better or worse.
Funny thing about this episode - I’ve accepted that the Lie to Me universe has no similarity to the real world. Fantasy “science,” legal, government, and law enforcement procedures that are patently ridiculous pass without comment or consequence, etc. Okay, think about it like a comic book, don’t criticize it as though it were intended to be taken seriously and there’s a better chance of deriving some enjoyment from it. This episode was too over-the-top even for my wife, though.
She interjected with objections of the sort that I consciously avoid making, in the interest of not spoiling her show for her. “What? How does the embassy even know where to find him? Why would they approach him on vacation, even if they did know he was there? That makes no sense!” “But this would be a huge diplomatic incident, there’s no way the Mexican cops could suppress this story!” “Why did he immediately jump from 0 to ‘Here’s $200 to drive us back to the hotel,’ and wouldn’t that tactic more likely result in them being beaten and robbed?” Finally, “That’s just stupid.”
Funny thing is, my brain is already disengaged for this show, I’m not about to evaluate it on those terms. I think on some level she still expects it to be a little realistic, and it’s starting to sink in just how much of a fantasy it is.
This is not an unforgiveable flaw for me. I do find it hard to stay interested with Lightman as the infallible “deception expert,” though. It’s just too removed from the rules of good mystery writing. It’s not much different from old episodes of Dragnet, where Friday would interview x number of witnesses, and each one only exists to point the way to the next, until the chain ends with the culprit getting the cuffs slapped on them. It doesn’t engage.
What I find myself enjoying about this show is more and more limited to Tim Roth’s character, period. I am really impressed with the walk that he developed for the character. It’s a fascinating walk.
You take what you can get.