The second of the two Lie to Me episodes on Monday night, entitled “Rebound,” follows The Lightman Group as they investigate a wealthy woman (Lily’s) suspicious boyfriend (George.)
When they interview Ingrid, one of George’s ex-wives, Torres says that her slow breaths and racing heart are signs of hate. This is inaccurate, since there is no universal expression of hatred.
What is irritating about this episode is the fact that The Lightman Group is acting more like a private detective agency than a scientific one. Dr. Lightman and Dr. Foster pretend to be a married couple in order to get more information about George’s fraudulent schemes.
Another ridiculous part of the episode involves George and his lawyer being interviewed in the “glass room.” Once Dr. Lightman is able to coax the story of the fraudulent scheme out of them, he has one of the screens go up to reveal three of the women he conned, watching in on the whole thing. The scene feels much like a Maury Povich episode, when someone is brought on the show to talk about another person, and that person is watching the whole thing from a back room. It is quite disheartening to see the show use such tacky measures to advance the plot, which isn’t even that great to begin with.
Furthermore, the writers once again revert to flashing photos from the media after a character makes a certain expression. For one, George’s expression in the following clip doesn’t even match the expressions in the photographs that follow.
Also, as usual, there is no explanation for what the expression even means. Is it meant to show guilt? If so, it is inaccurate to imply that guilt is expressed the same way universally.
As we said yesterday, the second half of Lie to Me’s third season started off terribly, and this episode is no better. Even though more science is talked about, the information is inaccurate, which is just as bad (or perhaps even worse) than neglecting it all together. If this is the quality of writing that Fox is continuing with throughout the rest of the season, they may as well cancel Lie to Me altogether.
Did you watch “Rebound?” What did you think?
In reply, “If this is the quality of writing that Fox is continuing with throughout the rest of the season, they may as well cancel Lie to Me altogether.”
If that happens (and it seems very likely to me), then hopefully another network will pick up on the original – and very excellent – idea for the show, and coming science with excitement and great stories and plot lines, on the foundation of the solid acting. But the show in its present state needs to change dramatically or it will lose audience and get cancelled, and I’m afraid that’s where it will end up fairly shortly.
Russ Conte
I agree with Russ on this one.
The one interesting aspect of this episode was bringing in the concept of the sociopath, but then they didn’t really take that anywhere either. I enjoyed the episode because some of the acting was decent, but more in terms of an ordinary TV show than an episode of Lie To Me.
Paul Ekman: “There was a lot of science in “Rebound,” but regrettably most of it was wrong!”
He does describe a little bit about sociopaths, but that’s about it. See here for more of Dr. Ekman’s comments:
http://community.fox.com/drpaulekman/blog/
Russ Conte