Salon.com > Lie to Me

TV spot for “Hot Genius Jerks With Quirky Jobs”

Tue, 31 May 2011 20:32:00 +0000

Between "House," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Bones," "Lie to Me," and now this new show "

The Finder

" (he's a guy who is the best at ... finding stuff), I'm starting to sense a TV trend here. I am over shows where actual science and police work are treated like magic tricks, as if magicians were all horrible people with perfect teeth. Are show creators running out of good ideas? Because it's not too long till we see this spot for this upcoming network season:

Hot Genius Jerks With Quirky Jobs Promo

Announcer:

Coming this summer, your favorite characters are back ...

Int: Hospital, zoom in on House's cane, tapping impatiently.

Announcer:

He's the world's most brilliant diagnostician ...

House is in hospital, limping away from patient's room trailed by Hot Nurse.

Nurse:

How did you know that replacing her blood with Draino was the only way to save this child's life?

Announcer:

The only thing he can't fix ... is his horrible social skills.

“Mentalist,” “Lie to Me”: The truth hurts

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:01:00 +0000

No one wants to hear the truth. We all talk a good game about honesty, but really, we don't want to know. We lament how full of shit most people are, but try the truth on for size and see how fast your friends, family and former lovers cringe and scatter.

We can't handle the truth, none of us can. If you mistake that bit of truth for an insult, that says something about your (limited) tolerance for acknowledging your (many, obvious) flaws.

But like a good joke, the truth depends on tone. If you're at all uncomfortable with flatly stating the facts, you're bound to confuse and scare people. When spoken by the jittery, the needy, the confused and the bitter, the truth is encountered as a ploy, a blunt weapon or a cry for help. Yet with a confident, self-possessed delivery, the truth sounds more like a bit of helpful information, paired with an unexpected invitation to cast aside pretense and speak from the soul.

With a relaxed tone and a little eye contact, the truth can be daring, even intoxicating. Hmm, your words are strangely factual and accurate. Are you trying to flirt with me? Is that the truth in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Truthiness becomes him

Move over, Dr. House

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:26:00 +0000

In the realm of procedural dramas, the quirky genius who can see right through you is nothing new. It made a star of Vincent D'Onofrio on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." It made a hit out of CBS's "The Mentalist," in which Simon Baker plays a disturbingly observant detective. And that's not to mention Patricia Arquette's clairvoyant on NBC's "Medium," the seers of USA's "Psych," and the mathematical geniuses who use digits to solve crimes on CBS's "Numbers." These days, a crime drama without a brilliant oddball is like a sitcom without a hapless dad.

Fox's new drama "Lie to Me" (premieres 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, right after "American Idol"), then, is hardly breaking new ground. Starring Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Lightman, an expert at "deception detection" based on psychology professor and lie-detection specialist Paul Ekman, "Lie to Me" includes all of the elements you'd expect from the snippy-guru procedural: Roth as the outspoken eccentric with a head-spinning knack for sniffing out lies and the lying liars who tell them; Kelli Williams ("The Practice") as Lightman's sexy sidekick Gillian Foster; a gaggle of quirky underlings like Eli (Brendan Hines), the compulsively honest but still unnaturally handsome right-hand man, and Ria Torres (Monica Raymund), the beautiful young recruit who scored off the charts on her deception-detection tests. With so many predictable elements in play, you'd expect "Lie to Me" to amount to a series of tired exchanges rife with clichés, a crime that's impossibly easy to solve and an ending that centers around an unlikely confession.

I Like to Watch

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:21:00 +0000

It takes about a week to adjust to being on vacation. At first, the mind can't relax. It makes lists. It gets fussy over dinner, or obsesses over college savings plans. By the middle of the second week, the mind finally loosens up. That's when you find yourself flipping through catalogs for hours, or picking lint off your sweater in a semi-hypnotic state, until you forget who you are, where you are and what you were doing.

In this cruel modern world, just as the stress of your work life finally subsides, just as you start to feel happy and numb like an overfed donkey, it's time to get back to work. I need four weeks of vacation time, minimum! I want to wander aimlessly, nibbling on clover, in a daze. Instead, just as I get the laundry done and sit down to read a book, my holiday break is over.

And it takes about two weeks to adjust to being back at work. I tried to explain this to my husband yesterday: The mind doesn't want to do a job. The mind wants to go to the mall and gaze at the intricate, almost balletic movements of the hot-dog-rolling machine at Orange Julius. The mind wants to take a nap. The mind wants a doughnut.