A year late-My thoughts on Lie to Me
We finished up the last season of Lie to Me on DVD this weekend.
I don’t mind telling you the last disc was quite the disappointment with just one episode and nothing much in special features, but a quickie featurette and some deleted scenes. The episode itself was “Killer App” and it pretty much summed up everything that seemed to have gone wrong with the show between the 2nd and 3rd seasons.
Hubby and I started the show on DVD and pretty much whipped through the first two seasons, genuinely liking the Cal Lightman character as well as the supporting team, and especially the “gimmick” of the microexpressions and the comparisons to pictures of famous liars.
The relationship between Cal and his daughter was fun and I especially liked the hook-up with the ex-wife. YAY Jennifer Beals. That was my only particular ship for the show at that point. I didn’t see any good slash potential for Cal and Eli and Gillian didn’t impress me at all. In fact the one thing that sort of worried me was the early demonization of Gillian’s husband.
I could see the similarity between Cal and House, in terms of an abrasive character who gets away with it because they’re always right.
It took a while for the show to get canceled and then the last season to turn up on Netflix. When it did, we whipped through those and now I wish we hadn’t. What the hell happened?
Cal was completely disgusting, self-righteous and insufferable. Couldn’t get through an episode without mentioning his abusive father (and using him as a cudgel against anyone he’d already decided was bad.) Absolutely NO ONE was given the benefit of the doubt AND almost none of the cases were neutral. They were all personal and almost always ALL ABOUT CAL. (If I had to hear one more “love” out of his mouth I was going to kill someone myself.)
Tim Roth must have gotten bored with imbuing the character with any likability and the producers decided to anvil us with Cal/Gillian, and to that they had to also demonize Detective Sharon Wallowski, who seemed a much more intriguing character. But no, she wasn’t PERFECT meaning she actually had her own opinions.
The last episode was SUCH an obvious “The Social Network” rip-off. As with so many other episodes in this season, I was actively rooting for Cal to be wrong, which is obviously impossible, OR for the Zuckerberg expy to get away with it.
I was truly appalled by the ultimate woobie-ing of Gillian to bring out Cal’s protective instincts and the last scene was truly puke-worthy. Cal basically implies he’s going to get the killer put in a mental hospital specifically to destroy his mind with drugs, so that poor wittle woobie Gillian can get revenge for her dead patient/friend. Clearly I was supposed to be rooting for Cal in that scene. UH, NO!
Let’s never mind how badly the show has generally maligned all other health care and medical professionals, or basically anyone who doesn’t bow down before the great Cal Lightman.
BLECH.
There is so much of this that could describe House MD and yet here I am waiting for that to wind down after 8 seasons, during which I’ve hated the show, but never stopped loving Greg House.
I’m not really sure why. Is there something that Hugh was willing to give House that Tim Roth wouldn’t or couldn’t give Cal? Is Roth’s approach more honest to playing such a prick or did the Lie To Me people actually not see Cal that way in spite of the verbal and physical violence he inflicts on people.
DIGRESSION
Just by a contrast. OK, I realize it’s not the 70’s anymore, but we’ve been watching all of Columbo from the beginning, and one of the things that stands out (aside from that era’s version of HEY, IT’S THAT GUY!) is that Columbo actually treated the baddie with respect. Yes, some of it was to throw them off guard, but even once they’d revealed themselves, he never called them names, or used any kind of physical/verbal abuse at them. Sometimes he even allowed them to go in un-cuffed. We watched one last week with Susan Clark as the killer and when she pulled the gun, he actually said, “You’re too classy a woman to do that.”
END DIGRESSION
Is it just my original slash love for House/Wilson? Would I have liked Cal better if I had gotten a Cal/Eli slash vibe, or one with Mekhi Phieffer when he was playing the FBI Guy?
There’s no sane person who thinks House is still the show it was in the first two seasons and hopefully no one who’s not on mind-destroying drugs who still thinks it’s even a good show, but it’s still somewhat better (excluding utter shite like ODOR and Last Resort) than that last season of Lie To Me, which ain’t saying much.
Seriously disappointed. Seriously.
I don’t mind telling you the last disc was quite the disappointment with just one episode and nothing much in special features, but a quickie featurette and some deleted scenes. The episode itself was “Killer App” and it pretty much summed up everything that seemed to have gone wrong with the show between the 2nd and 3rd seasons.
Hubby and I started the show on DVD and pretty much whipped through the first two seasons, genuinely liking the Cal Lightman character as well as the supporting team, and especially the “gimmick” of the microexpressions and the comparisons to pictures of famous liars.
The relationship between Cal and his daughter was fun and I especially liked the hook-up with the ex-wife. YAY Jennifer Beals. That was my only particular ship for the show at that point. I didn’t see any good slash potential for Cal and Eli and Gillian didn’t impress me at all. In fact the one thing that sort of worried me was the early demonization of Gillian’s husband.
I could see the similarity between Cal and House, in terms of an abrasive character who gets away with it because they’re always right.
It took a while for the show to get canceled and then the last season to turn up on Netflix. When it did, we whipped through those and now I wish we hadn’t. What the hell happened?
Cal was completely disgusting, self-righteous and insufferable. Couldn’t get through an episode without mentioning his abusive father (and using him as a cudgel against anyone he’d already decided was bad.) Absolutely NO ONE was given the benefit of the doubt AND almost none of the cases were neutral. They were all personal and almost always ALL ABOUT CAL. (If I had to hear one more “love” out of his mouth I was going to kill someone myself.)
Tim Roth must have gotten bored with imbuing the character with any likability and the producers decided to anvil us with Cal/Gillian, and to that they had to also demonize Detective Sharon Wallowski, who seemed a much more intriguing character. But no, she wasn’t PERFECT meaning she actually had her own opinions.
The last episode was SUCH an obvious “The Social Network” rip-off. As with so many other episodes in this season, I was actively rooting for Cal to be wrong, which is obviously impossible, OR for the Zuckerberg expy to get away with it.
I was truly appalled by the ultimate woobie-ing of Gillian to bring out Cal’s protective instincts and the last scene was truly puke-worthy. Cal basically implies he’s going to get the killer put in a mental hospital specifically to destroy his mind with drugs, so that poor wittle woobie Gillian can get revenge for her dead patient/friend. Clearly I was supposed to be rooting for Cal in that scene. UH, NO!
Let’s never mind how badly the show has generally maligned all other health care and medical professionals, or basically anyone who doesn’t bow down before the great Cal Lightman.
BLECH.
There is so much of this that could describe House MD and yet here I am waiting for that to wind down after 8 seasons, during which I’ve hated the show, but never stopped loving Greg House.
I’m not really sure why. Is there something that Hugh was willing to give House that Tim Roth wouldn’t or couldn’t give Cal? Is Roth’s approach more honest to playing such a prick or did the Lie To Me people actually not see Cal that way in spite of the verbal and physical violence he inflicts on people.
DIGRESSION
Just by a contrast. OK, I realize it’s not the 70’s anymore, but we’ve been watching all of Columbo from the beginning, and one of the things that stands out (aside from that era’s version of HEY, IT’S THAT GUY!) is that Columbo actually treated the baddie with respect. Yes, some of it was to throw them off guard, but even once they’d revealed themselves, he never called them names, or used any kind of physical/verbal abuse at them. Sometimes he even allowed them to go in un-cuffed. We watched one last week with Susan Clark as the killer and when she pulled the gun, he actually said, “You’re too classy a woman to do that.”
END DIGRESSION
Is it just my original slash love for House/Wilson? Would I have liked Cal better if I had gotten a Cal/Eli slash vibe, or one with Mekhi Phieffer when he was playing the FBI Guy?
There’s no sane person who thinks House is still the show it was in the first two seasons and hopefully no one who’s not on mind-destroying drugs who still thinks it’s even a good show, but it’s still somewhat better (excluding utter shite like ODOR and Last Resort) than that last season of Lie To Me, which ain’t saying much.
Seriously disappointed. Seriously.