Lie To Me

How can we tell when someone is lying? The answer is in your face, literally! In the new Fox TV series “Lie To Me”, people’s micro-expressions, or split-second responses, are observed in order to determine if they are being truthful. If we took this show from an everyday viewers standpoint, we would find that this show has more than the simple level of “catching the bad guy.” Now, as an avid watcher of “Lie To Me,” I find that taking apart a simple scenario can take a drastic turn when one piece of evidence is presented.

The show starts with a man peering and leaning into you. You stare into his green eyes as he shows a slight smirk upon his face. As soon as he pulls away from you and begins to speak, you instantly have a sense of his character and that he stands as the dominating figure of the show. This man, Dr. Cal Lightman, sits back in his chair comfortably and casually begins his analysis of a prisoner who has planted a bomb in a black church. The close-up shots you receive of the prisoner are not that of intimidation, but of fear and the signs of nervousness. All of these statements about the show are true; however, how you react and take in the information presented to you is up to you as a viewer. Dr. Cal Lightman can seem intriguing to you with how long he stares at you. Why is he staring at you? Your response and curiosity is quickly cut ff with an answer: the prisoner. The mass of tattoos on the prisoner’s body makes him frightening, but he himself is frightening of Lightman. Lightman’s speaking quickly cuts off the information the show gives you to analyze. Snap judgments about how the show and how characters affect your emotions give you, the viewer, an ultimate choice to keep watching or let the ratings fail. The almost ADD feeling of this show, the constant guessing game on what micro-expressions mean, and the ultimate secrecy of people’s personal lives makes this show an instant hit.

Our culture today is based on not slowing down and a constant stream of information. If we do not receive information in the correct order, we need the time to stop and figure out what is wrong. In the episode Love Always, the South Korean ambassador is worried that he will be assassinated at his son’s wedding. As a viewer, we follow the main characters in finding the gunman at the wedding reception. As the gunshots go off, we are left in the dark about who does the shooting and who actually gets shot. At this moment we are blindsided by lack of information. What are we suppose to do? The viewer always gets the knowledge before the characters. This is when we yet again decide as a viewer if this lack of information is worth our time to see what happens. We are constantly being tested to see if we need the information to feel satisfied, which is why I feel Lie To Me is successful. Like Pavlov’s dog, we have been trained to receive the treat after the bell has been rung. In this case, the gunshot is the bell and the mystery being solved is the food. As a viewer, when we understand what the producer has done to our stream of information, we expect more of the same tricks to happen over time. This is how we know that the show itself is lying to us.