New TV Review: Lie to Me

This show isn’t a brand new show – in fact, it was canceled in its third season. I’d been wanting to watch Lie to Me for a while, but there was always another show that I was watching. I’m currently in the middle of the third season, but I feel like I’ve seen enough to give a fair review.

For those who don’t know what Lie to Me is about, the show revolves around Cal Lightman and his company, The Lightman Group. The Lightman Group reads people using applied psychology, particularly through microexpressions that almost everyone universally shows. Lightman has an interesting team, made up of his shrink partner, Foster, his radically honest head of the lab, Loker, and his progeny, Torres. The company contracts with a variety of people, but eventually is contracted solely with the FBI in the second season. They investigate some interesting cases through some very unique methods. Lightman in particular doesn’t like to do things the standard way, or sometimes even the legal way. Occasionally he’ll do things that you just know he would never get away with, but for the most part, the viewers can buy that he gets away with the things he does because, really, cover-ups happen all the time in the name of getting a bigger job done.

Lie to Me started off as a quality show and then tapered off in the third and final season. The one thing that irritated me was their seeming aversion to sexual violence. They showed only two episodes that even dealt with the issue of rape, and in both, the victims ended up lying. Let me be very clear – in actuality, the chances of that happening are about 0.5%. Was it seriously that hard to depict some truth? That definitely bothered me. Beyond that, though, the first two seasons were decent. It’s pretty obvious to me why the show was canceled in the third season. Seasons 1 and 2 had some great episodes (beyond the rape crap) and a fairly clear direction. Season 3 veered off in an entirely different, darker direction. I usually love darker shows, but not when it’s a sudden change from a good thing. When I was sick a couple of weeks ago, I watched episode after episode of Lie to Me. Now I zone in and out when watching the rest of the third season. Like as I’m writing this blog. Good job, me. To be fair, I’ve somehow seen this episode before. I told you I was writing a fair review. Overall, I give Lie to Me 3 1/2 out of 5 stars, because as Carrie Bradshaw says, sometimes a girl just needs a half.