This episode begins with a bang, literally, when a suspicious man in a denim jacket is arrested for an assassination attempt that goes wrong and kills an innocent woman.
The very beginning of the episode shows that learning how to detect dangerous faces, especially in a crowd, is an extremely useful and beneficial tool to have. Although Lightman states that there is no such face as an “assassin’s face”, Dr. Matsumoto and his team have collected data from various law enforcement agencies around the world to determine that there are faces the are consistent with pre-meditated assault and a loss of impulse control. However, in addition to these 2 faces of deadly intent, there may be additional dangerous faces that are not known. Therefore, Dr. Matsumoto and his team are constantly conducting research in this area.
Loker, Torres and Reynolds go to the jail where the suspect in the shooting is being held. After reading him for a few moments, Torres concludes that he’s telling the truth when he says he didn’t try to kill the governor. This plot twist then leads to Lightman and Foster questioning the governor’s campaign manager whom they deem suspicious.
As the plot thickens, Torres sees a subtle sign of surprise in the suspected gunman after showing him the murder weapon. Although it was great that she caught this subtle expression, Torres shouldn’t have automatically assumed that he was surprised because he didn’t know the weapon. He could have been surprised for a number of different reasons. The most important point about seeing a micro or subtle expression is that you don’t jump to a conclusion right away, but ask more questions because there’s more to the story than being told.
Lightman and Torres begin to dig a little deeper, questioning the governor’s wife. The campaign manager turns up dead and Emily, Lightman’s daughter, seems to have some feelings for Loker. By the end of the episode, Lightman and his crew find out that the governor’s wife was behind all the murders and he apologizes to Loker for punching him.
Overall not a bad episode but be careful of interpreting any micro or subtle expressions as an automatic sign of deception.