Lie To Me
FOX. Wednesdays at 9.
Cast: Tim Roth, Kelli Williams, Monica Raymund, and Brendan Hines
So, I kind of really wanted to dig Lie To Me. Going into watching the pilot, I was kind of excited. I had previewed it with the first few minutes, which were all fun. I thought the premise was interesting. I really liked at least half the actors involved. So I really wanted to like Lie to Me. I really did. Unfortunately, after having watched the pilot, I really don’t.
There are, sadly, a bunch of problems with this pilot. Surprisingly, pacing and exposition are not one of them. Lie to Me manages to avoid the two biggest problems a pilot can face really well, actually, making it seem like we know the characters and not seeming to drag in trying to fit all that exposition in. Which is why Lie To Me’s lackluster-ness (shut up, I know that’s not a word) is all the more disappointing, because it falls onto all the things above that had jazzed me for the pilot.
Don’t get me wrong, those first few minutes are fun. They introduce Tim Roth’s character, Cal Lightman, who is basically a human lie detector, really well and make him an interesting and dynamic figure. And then, for the rest of the hour, they proceed to rob him of everything that makes him interesting. What I mean by this is that they lay out everything, so, SO blatantly with close-ups, that it makes what he can do seem way less cool. On Psych, which is also a show about a guy with a really unique talent using it to solve crimes, they do the same thing, but in a way that still allows the viewer to play along. On Lie To Me, it’s all so laid out it robs the show of the fun. I mean, there were two big mysteries to the pilot, and yet I managed to solve both of them, plus a sub-mystery, a while before the characters did, simply because they provided all the information WAY too early.
What also robs the show of fun, sadly, is the actors. Tim Roth is, as usual, pretty fantastic. He does his best to make this really weird character an interesting guy. However, the cast of characters around him really kill the buzz. Kelli Williams, who plays Cal’s number two, seems to REALLY think she’s popping and has chemistry with Cal, which she REALLY doesn’t. Monica Raymund seems to have been brought to play the hard-edged Latina woman simply because Michelle Rodriguez has had one too many DUIs, since what she does essentially seems like a Michelle Rodriguez impression. And now we get to Brendan Hines, which is where I get really sad. See, I like this guy a lot as an actor. Tyler Ford, who he played on the far superior “The Middleman” will stand out as one of the best TV boyfriends I have ever seen. Here, he is something close to a disaster. I’m more inclined to blame this one on the character, since the show seems to have no idea of his purpose except to be weird, but all I know is that the character left a really bad impression.
So yeah, I really wanted to like Lie to Me. But I couldn’t. I tried, but unfortunately, I’m gonna have to give it:
Rating: Not Worth Your Time/Only If Nothing Else Is On
