Lie to Me (TV series)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In the latest episode, "Beat the Devil", if Lightman's backup plan to catch Walker was all about that GPS thing, why did it take the police so long to show up? Why did he have to go through getting kidnapped and waterboarded? (And why doesn't he seem to be traumatized by this at all?)
    • While I agree with your problem with Cal's backup plan, Cal is former MI 6. It's not too far outside the realm of possibility that he has been trained to resist waterboarding, especially since he's an interrogation expert. It's still ridiculous that he let himself get kidnapped.
    • Wasn't Cal trying to get him to confess? Surely the police are allowed a little driving time, unlike an Instant Emergency Response.
  • How the hell, in the episode "Delinquent" (aired July 19th), did they get away with breaking a girl out of juvie when they end up GOING BACK TO THAT SAME PRISON while she's still away? . There wasn't even a fuss about it at the prison! I mean, how does that work?
    • In a similar vein, HOW did Cal get away with assault and battery, via choking a girl into revealing her "defender" identity in "The Core of it"? I'm getting pretty tired of the show shrugging illegal acts to "it's Cal!".
      • That's my problem with him punching Loker for getting kissed by Emily, which is easily wrapped up when Loker forgives him. It seemed to me we were supposed to roll our eyes fondly and think, "Oh, that Cal!" when in the real world, Cal would have gotten sued and/or had charges of assault pressed for punching his employee. That bothers me.
      • The above two have half-decent explanations (not good, but usable). In "The Core of It," the only observers were The Lightman Group and the "subject" (so to speak). And since he proves her innocence she has no reason to press charges. In the case with Loker, Loker probably felt Lightman had a point being that upset considering the situation. He also probably wanted to keep his job. Still no clue as to the prison one, since the prison really has no reason to not press charges...Unless everyone in Lie To Me is unbearably forgiving once you solve the case.
  • It can't just be me noticing that both Cal and Loker have taken extreme levels of sociopath in season three? I mean, Cal's slacking off on business decisions, going undercover at the drop of a hat, torturing his employees more than usual, and NO ONE questions this? His body language is all over the place; he looks like he's high on something. And Loker's gotten so scathingly critical, practically ripping Torres's head off whenever she tries to talk to him reasonably. He's job-hunting on company time, stealing his boss's possessions, and he hacked Gillian's computer twice. Not to mention that oh yeah, Cal's treatment of Loker has gotten worse, and has been explicitly compared to the process you'd use to create a sociopath. It's working, and I don't trust Fox/the show to either run with the sociopath thing in a well-crafted manner or to give us a plausible explanation.
    • Agreed. Cal's treatment of Loker has become almost Flanderized. Frankly, I don't blame Loker for looking for a new job (although not on company time. That's not kosher.).
      • Seconded. Loker can't at all be blamed for that. And I'd add that he SHOULD do it on company time, specially the way he's been treated. Rules should only oblige on as long as they are fair and power is not meant to be abused.
  • In the second episode of the third season, "The Royal We", Gillian refers to a mother speaking for both herself and her daughter as using "The Royal We". However, the royal we is not when you're referring to yourself and another person, that's just the regular we. The royal We comes from Queen Victoria's quote "We are not amused", referring to herself and to her office.
    • Perhaps it was a movie reference.
    • She meant that the woman was projecting her thoughts, desires, and ambitions onto her daughter. When she said "we" she meant "I."
      • The Royal We is about a single personality split into two, not a mother projecting onto her daughter.
  • Is it just me, or has Loker's brutal honesty trait kind of... disappeared?
    • That happened back in season one. I don't ever recall it being brought up in season two.
    • The season 1 episodes were aired out of order. It seemed to me like there was a coherent plot in there somewhere about Loker's use of radical honesty and why he stopped using it, but it got lost in the shuffle.
      • Maybe he just realised it’s, you know, idiotic.
        • That's probably it. In the pilot, Lightman asked "What did you call it, radical honesty?" as if it was something Loker just came up with recently. It seems like he just picked it up and got tired of it after a few months, but the fact that it was his character establishing moment ruined the effect.
  • Why cancelled. CBS hates me!
    • I'm glad it was cancelled. Seriously, for the first two seasons, it was the best thing I've ever watched. In the third, they suddenly made Lightman twenty times more of a jerkass than he was before, which just made the whole thing look like a complete House ripoff. At least they stopped before the whole thing turned unwatchable.
      • Yeah. I watched S1 and S2. Then I watched just ep 1 of Season 3 and stopped there when I noticed how Cal was already significantly more egotistical and erratic in that episode than he was in the previous two seasons; the thing that particularly did it for me was watching Cal verbally beat down Gillian Foster when she was trying to get him to bring in enough money to keep the firm afloat. I'm also of two minds regarding Loker. On the one hand, he did a pretty stupidly self-righteous thing by tipping off the SEC against the Lightman Group's directives. On the other, Cal and Gillian keep raking him over the coals for it to the point of Cal purposely trolling him on a few occasions.
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