Lie to Me S1.E2 Moral Waiver: 
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After two episodes of Lie to Me, I am honestly torn on this show. Lie to Me has a good premise and the characters are pretty interesting. That is all good but it doesn’t mean much since the show’s cases just don’t live up to the premise. After two subpar cases, Lie to Me really needs to pick it up as far as cases are concerned or it’s time on my television schedule and possibly television at all could be coming to an end pretty quickly.
So this week’s main case involves a woman saying that her commanding officer, Sgt. Scott (the talented David Anders from Alias and Heroes), raped her when she was in Iraq. It turns out that she was lying since Lightman can tell that the woman is not showing any of the signs that a woman who was raped would show. While it first appears that the woman just lied, it turns out that she made up the lie in order to protect a former soldier who was raped by Sgt. Scott. The soldier doesn’t want to testify right away but when Lightman forces the military to take her to the military base he ends up getting a confession out of Sgt. Scott that he kept the soldier away from harm in Iraq in exchange for sex. He is arrested for rape. I don’t know why but this case really didn’t intrigue me. It just wasn’t that interesting in my opinion.
The other case involved Gillian and Will investigating an allegation that a college basketball phenom took a bribe in order to play for his current college. They quickly find out that he did indeed take the bribe. They find out that he took the bribe though in order to take care of his brother especially since he has a disease that would never allow him to play in the NBA. When the college finds out they revoke the player’s scholarship. Gillian ends up giving the fee for the investigation to the player though so he could continue his education and still have a good career. While this was the smaller of the two stories I have to say that it was the better storyline even though I thought it could be developed more.
Just like the pilot, this week’s episode really showed why Lie to Me is such a frustrating show. The show has it’s moments (like when Lightman used his skills to sell all of his stock in a company that he knew was going under). The problem is that the cases don’t back up the interesting premise. The idea for the show is a good idea, it is just that the cases are pretty bland and make the show pretty disappointing. This makes Lie to Me so frustrating since the cases don’t warrant continuing to watch the show but you don’t want to give up on the show since you think the premise could finally start living up to it’s potential. I’ll give Lie to Me another chance next week but it is getting put on a short leash in order to show me that it can truly live up to it’s potential.
Your Take: What are your thoughts on last night’s episode? Do you agree with me that the cases have been underwhelming?
Photo Credit: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Mike Yarish/FOX
