After almost a six month hiatus, a new episode of Lie to Me finally aired Monday night, June 7th on FOX.
Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) was at it again, risking his own life to expose the secrets of a psychopath named Martin, while Loker and Torres dealt with an alleged UFO sighting.
The episode begins with Lightman being a guest speaker at his former mentor’s class. While there, he is challenged to read a student by the name of Martin. To the viewer’s surprise, Lightman reads Martin inaccurately, illustrating that he’s human and sometimes makes mistakes. This point in the show was refreshing, because in actuality, reading people correctly 100% of the time is virtually impossible. In contrast, it is also important to note that concluding that someone is lying or telling the truth from only about 30 seconds of behavior is very unrealistic.
Nonetheless, Lightman spends the rest of the episode attempting to prove that Martin is indeed a psychopath. In the end, after being held at gunpoint and almost being killed, Lightman prevails again. Martin is arrested, but not without the help of FBI Agent Ben Reynolds (played by Mekhi Phifer).
We see very little science in this episode pertaining to microexpressions or the world of nonverbal behavior, except for the few snapshots of Martin being compared to Richard Ramirez, the night stalker, and Ted Bundy. Hopefully in future episodes, more of the science will be revealed.
What did you enjoy about the episode and where do you hope Lie to Me will go in the future?
Here is the complete episode, in case you missed it:
it would be great if someone could coach these actors to produce facial expressions that would support the science… it would make the show much more interactive – allowing the viewer to join in on the hunt for clues…
In the snapshots where the character Martin is compared to Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy, what does their facial expressions mean?
I would also like to know what kind of information the expressions of Bundy and Ramirez portrayed.
I don’t know much about psychopaths but I thought it was interesting how he fooled everyone except Lightman. Was there another reason for this other than just being that charismatic? I didn’t think he would be able to put such a great impression on Torres and Foster and slide past their readings.
The expressions of Bundy and Ramirez could be a “duping delight”- a sense of happiness that they are getting away with someone. Ironically, the pictures that they showed during the show was at their trials, so why would they be happy after being convicted?
Its important to realize that psychopaths and sociopaths portray emotions the same way normal people do, but that their emotions are tied to strange, things or thoughts. Things that would normally disgust people could possibly illicit happiness.
This is why Lightman read Martin wrong at the beginning of the episode- because he was smiling when he was talking about something normal people would be disgusted at and vice versa.