I blame mid-season slump; and Shawn Ryan for leaving to go work on The Chicago Code. This episode was just a mess. No pacing, no continuity. Watching Cal slink around the bar looking into people’s faces after a mine tragedy, I’m sorry he wasn’t roughed up more than he was. I wanted to take a swing at him. There is a balance between giving too much information about who Lightman is and why he is there and not explaining his presence places at all.
Just like House has a formula (that works most of the time), Lie to Me needs to get more of a formula for how to approach the fact that people hire Lightman and then everybody listens to him. Half the time he’s touted as a quack who doesn’t do real science. I think the show just needs to give him an ironclad reputation that and perhaps enough celebrity that people don’t really need an explanation for who he is. Just as you can say “FBI” and not need to explain that, he needs to be able to say “Lightman Group” and have the characters on the show know who that is. It is really only then that he is going to be able to get away with his cockiness convincingly. Let’s face it: he’s just not that well-muscled and not that well-armed to get away with this crap; it pulls me out of the show.
The guys who killed their foreman in the mine didn’t even really try to deny they’d done it. And the case was solved with fifteen more minutes to go. The rest was just superfluous melodrama. I don’t believe for one minute that girl would have run into the rep’s office with a gun. Ugh.
The only good and interesting parts of the episode were Gillian’s interviews with the poker players. Kelli Williams is a pleasure to watch. She brings an elegance to that character that I find hard to believe she doesn’t possess in real life. I’d really like to see more of her in every episode. She and Timothy Roth are so magical together, why does the show always separate them? Same with Torres and Loker: Nice chemistry. Put them together. Or just hire someone to be your showrunner who knows how to tell a story.
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Nov 09, 2010 @ 00:11 EST5EDT
