'Lie to Me': The kidnapped and the lying
I never would have considered all the reasons to hire a firm to find out if someone's lying -- which is probably why I find it pretty easy to get caught up in the scenarios on Lie to Me. This week they neatly managed a storyline about a missing 11-year-old girl and a potentially fraudulent author with a date with destiny, a.k.a. Oprah's Book Club.
Don't mock me for liking a nice cranberry spritzer with my spoilers...
Samantha is missing; her parents, who adopted her five years ago, claim she's missing. They've offered a reward, and they've hired The Lightman Group to help them decipher which of the tipsters might be telling the truth. Looking for some common ground, Samantha's mother asks Cal and Gillian if they have kids -- and the flicker across Gillian's face as she responds no lets us know something's up. But Cal's getting down to business, asking the parents over and over if they killed their daughter until the mother's anger and the father's devastation proves to him that they didn't. Outside, Cal asks Gillian if she's going to be OK. "I know what you're thinking," she says. "It's not going to be a problem. I'm fine."
They meet with a detective who's still suspicious of the parents, then Cal very efficiently weeds out the tipsters motivated by money and the over-claimers -- egads. One of Samantha's classmates, though, points the way to Walter, a boy they go to school with, who's hiding something. Cal and Gillian go to question the poor kid, who's finally found out for guarding Samantha's backpack, a "runaway kit" she left with him for safekeeping. Which leads them to Samantha's therapist -- who's a little shifty for a therapist, and very reluctant to offer information that could lead to a missing kid being found.
A runaway theory starts to compete with the abduction theory, and after Cal uses one of his classic fake-outs (this one nearly comparable with Alec Baldwin's voicemail rant), it comes out that while Samantha and her mother were fighting, an accident caused her to burn her back on a stove burner. It's not your fault, Gillian tells her -- sometimes adopted kids have trouble connecting; it's nothing to be ashamed of.
A male nurse who treated Samantha's burns at a free clinic who turns out to be a a pedophile tells Lightman where he's seen her, and they track her down after a stakeout. Reunited with her parents, she keeps saying her name is Jessica and she has to get home before her curfew. Gillian works with the mother again, talking her into engaging with the girl so she'll open up -- and in turn opens up about the baby she and her husband adopted last year and the birth mother who changed her mind. Samantha's mother finally gets through to her -- and we learn that there's another 11-year-old girl who's still being held where she was.
Cal plays a nifty game of 20 questions with the reluctant girl, getting her to confirm without uttering a sound who took her: the therapist. Her 11-year-old daughter, Jessica, died 10 years ago, and the girls are meant to be replacements. They find the therapist and Heather, the girl who was held with Samantha, on a pier in a little lake (where in DC that's supposed to be, I couldn't tell you). She briefly waves a gun, but Gillian talks her down. Kelli Williams does beautiful work thoughout this episode, from her interactions with the parents to her partnership with Cal, which is consistently protective, respectful, and work-affectionate.
On to the prospective disaster awaiting Oprah's Book Club. The publisher of a book by a peace activist in Uganda who was kidnapped and held in the bush has hired the firm, looking to investigate reports that the author took part in massacres staged by the rebels who held her. The publisher wants to find out if Farida, the activist, lying, and Eli and Ria are on the case.
At first, they detect no evidence of lying -- not in talking to her one-on-one, not in a speech, and definitely not in Eli's copy of her book, where she signed not only a message but also her phone number. Farida is perfectly poised -- no shame when talking about the violence, but a little nervous when speaking publicly. Both in her speech and later in a video they watch, she recounts her kidnapping, how she was made a rebel officer's wife, and the torture and massacres by child soldiers that she saw as part of the nightmare her country's been experiencing. But Ria suspects something's up.
Eli, who's now got a thing going with Farida, even though she now knows what he does for a living, goes on the defensive with Ria, deriding her relative inexperience and defending the author. But Ria's a natural at detecting deception -- and she's right. It turns out that Farida didn't kill anyone, but she wasn't kidnapped either. In an effort to put a human face on the tragedy of her country, she made up her story. And there's no way you can't feel a little for Eli, who seems to be chronically and extremely earnest -- and therefore doomed to disappointment. But at least he and Ria make up.
What did you think? Did you buy the story of Samantha's kidnapping at all? What do you think of the way we're learning more about each character? And have you caught yourself in the midst of any microexpressions lately?
Love this show. Forgot how gifted Kelli Williams is as an actress- you really feel for her in the last scene. Unlike other procedural shows, the underlings (Eli, Ria) are both interesting as well.
I liked the way Gillian's backstory was woven into the episode. It's 2-3 eps in and now we're seeing the stresses on the marriage. No, not condoning creep husband for cheating, but we now know the loss and grief that they faced or denied. The writers didn't rush the "reveal" but let it unfold. Great.
I watched this for the first time last night and was pleasantly surprised. The use of real-life photos of various historical/important people caught in the act of lying or attempting to hide their emotions was a neat touch. **** Cheney should give lessons.
Even though I had the B-side case figured out early on (with its shades of A Million Little Pieces), I did not have a clue who had taken the two girls. That was well-done, although I do wonder who psychatrists go to when they start going nuts. I had to check on imdb to find out where I'd seen the girl who played Samantha (she was in Swing Vote last year, which I didn't see, but remembered the commercials).
Hope Fox keeps this on, maybe pairing it with Bones.