In which she watches Lie to Me*
Aug. 21st, 2009 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborahAnd lots of Criminal Minds DVDs. But here's a review of Lie to Me season 1 episode 12, "Blinded".
I watch Lie to Me partly because it's on at the same time as House was so the timer record is all set up anyway. Partly because I like watching people get into other people's minds (hence my present Criminal Minds fetish). Now Lie to Me is mostly pretty shallow at what it does (especially compared to Criminal Minds), but it's a pleasant kind of shallow so I've been enjoying it anyway.
The problem comes when for some reason the FBI decide to get Lightman &co in on a serial rape case. I mean, investigating fraud, sure; consulting in arson cases and international diplomatic incidents, whatever. But this episode we've got a guy in prison for raping and blinding a whole bunch of women ten years ago, and we've got a fan of his out there now copycatting his 'art'. This is the kind of thing that the FBI's own Behavioral Analysis Unit is all about, so I have a hard time suspending my disbelief at them paying good money on a private citizen, let alone an arrogant, abrasive maverick like Lightman. (Let alone then putting him on retainer and giving him a bodyguard guy or whatever that was about.)
Anyway. I can get over that because, though I'd like it to be more, it's just fluff. So I set aside my private thoughts about how Criminal Minds would handle this. (Hotch interrogates the prisoner and doesn't let him away with that "I blinded them so they wouldn't be able to identify me" bullshit. Reid goes through the fan mail and winnows the useful leads out from the merely creepy early on. Morgan and Rossi go to the crime scenes and gather clues there. Prentiss and JJ talk to the survivors, don't touch them without warning and permission, and get a description of the unsub's voice if nothing else. Garcia digs up the electronic dirt on the parole hearing, suspicious name change, etc. The team knows from scratch that the prison guard has neither the personality nor the looks and skills to pull off the kind of ruse this guy does. He probably doesn't even drive an SUV.... They *might* ask the rape survivor to go in with the guy who tortured, raped and blinded her, but only if they really really had to and I don't think they'd have to: this shouldn't be a hard case.)
Setting these thoughts aside, I say. In the previous episode, Lightman made a big deal about his company being all about loyalty. In this episode he plays "the long con" in order to gain the prisoner's trust -- and to do so he lies to every single person around him: the FBI who later decide to put him on retainer, and everyone in his company. Not content with merely lying to them, he manipulates his protegee Torres into going against his instructions so that he'll have a chance to verbally abuse her in front of the prisoner. (Knowing that she comes from an abusive background! Interestingly, whenever he's acted out verbal or physical abuse with anyone else in past episodes, it's always been done with a) their consent prior; b) their full knowledge during; and c) some "but actually we're all cool, right?" banter afterwards. Torres gets none of this.) Even aside from being bad ethics - it's fairly clear that Lightman's sense of ethics is all kinds of skewy - it's just bad strategy to teach your employees that going against your instructions is what you wanted them to do all along. Combining this with the previous episode, where you just demoted another employee to unpaid intern as punishment for going against your instructions, sends kind of mixed messages.
I did like how Foster made an effort to illustrate to the most recent abductee that her life isn't over by bringing in an abductee from the ten-years-ago series with her loving husband. This was sweet and a very nice message to send to women everywhere. However, it was somewhat undermined when the ultimate twist of the story was that this 'loving husband' was actually the fan of the first rapist who's only married this woman in order to be close to her raper and get off on her retellings of her ordeal. Dear writers: you self-satisfied muppets, what in seven blazes did you do with that wet noodle God put in your skull? You really think that "Rape isn't the end of the world: if you're lucky you'll get to marry another rapist!" is the message you want to be putting out there? You think?
<deep breath>
So towards the end of this episode, while this guy's wife is still trying to process all this, they find a list of twenty houses, one of which is where the copycat is grooming his latest victim. Lightman grimaces because they don't have time to check all twenty before the guy starts torturing, raping and blinding her. I really enjoyed the moment where it's the actual FBI agent who says, "Well, it needs to have a basement where he's keeping her, and it'll have driveway access, and it's the kind of neighbourhood where no-one would notice what's happening, so this one, let's go," and Lightman blinks in startlement. Because Lightman isn't good at that kind of stuff: what he does is mostly blunder around playing "hot and cold" games. So you'd think I'd have liked it when in the final scene he admits he needs this skillset and this guy to join his company -- but I didn't at all. Because actually what I want is for him to learn that there are people outside his company who have useful skills and that being able to collaborate with people who don't work for him would be an advantage. Also, while on the one hand it's nice to add another character of colour to the permanent cast, on the other hand bringing in a character of colour by coercion and telling him smugly that "Hah, you may think you work for the FBI but actually you're going to be following my privileged white-guy orders" is just a tad skeevy.
Shorter me: Generally frivolous, easy viewing if you can avoid thinking about its gobbets of ickiness. Plays with minds in ways I enjoy; but the writers don't notice the skeeviness in the ways it plays with power, because they're more interested in being edgy than in exploring real interpersonal issues like that.
I watch Lie to Me partly because it's on at the same time as House was so the timer record is all set up anyway. Partly because I like watching people get into other people's minds (hence my present Criminal Minds fetish). Now Lie to Me is mostly pretty shallow at what it does (especially compared to Criminal Minds), but it's a pleasant kind of shallow so I've been enjoying it anyway.
The problem comes when for some reason the FBI decide to get Lightman &co in on a serial rape case. I mean, investigating fraud, sure; consulting in arson cases and international diplomatic incidents, whatever. But this episode we've got a guy in prison for raping and blinding a whole bunch of women ten years ago, and we've got a fan of his out there now copycatting his 'art'. This is the kind of thing that the FBI's own Behavioral Analysis Unit is all about, so I have a hard time suspending my disbelief at them paying good money on a private citizen, let alone an arrogant, abrasive maverick like Lightman. (Let alone then putting him on retainer and giving him a bodyguard guy or whatever that was about.)
Anyway. I can get over that because, though I'd like it to be more, it's just fluff. So I set aside my private thoughts about how Criminal Minds would handle this. (Hotch interrogates the prisoner and doesn't let him away with that "I blinded them so they wouldn't be able to identify me" bullshit. Reid goes through the fan mail and winnows the useful leads out from the merely creepy early on. Morgan and Rossi go to the crime scenes and gather clues there. Prentiss and JJ talk to the survivors, don't touch them without warning and permission, and get a description of the unsub's voice if nothing else. Garcia digs up the electronic dirt on the parole hearing, suspicious name change, etc. The team knows from scratch that the prison guard has neither the personality nor the looks and skills to pull off the kind of ruse this guy does. He probably doesn't even drive an SUV.... They *might* ask the rape survivor to go in with the guy who tortured, raped and blinded her, but only if they really really had to and I don't think they'd have to: this shouldn't be a hard case.)
Setting these thoughts aside, I say. In the previous episode, Lightman made a big deal about his company being all about loyalty. In this episode he plays "the long con" in order to gain the prisoner's trust -- and to do so he lies to every single person around him: the FBI who later decide to put him on retainer, and everyone in his company. Not content with merely lying to them, he manipulates his protegee Torres into going against his instructions so that he'll have a chance to verbally abuse her in front of the prisoner. (Knowing that she comes from an abusive background! Interestingly, whenever he's acted out verbal or physical abuse with anyone else in past episodes, it's always been done with a) their consent prior; b) their full knowledge during; and c) some "but actually we're all cool, right?" banter afterwards. Torres gets none of this.) Even aside from being bad ethics - it's fairly clear that Lightman's sense of ethics is all kinds of skewy - it's just bad strategy to teach your employees that going against your instructions is what you wanted them to do all along. Combining this with the previous episode, where you just demoted another employee to unpaid intern as punishment for going against your instructions, sends kind of mixed messages.
I did like how Foster made an effort to illustrate to the most recent abductee that her life isn't over by bringing in an abductee from the ten-years-ago series with her loving husband. This was sweet and a very nice message to send to women everywhere. However, it was somewhat undermined when the ultimate twist of the story was that this 'loving husband' was actually the fan of the first rapist who's only married this woman in order to be close to her raper and get off on her retellings of her ordeal. Dear writers: you self-satisfied muppets, what in seven blazes did you do with that wet noodle God put in your skull? You really think that "Rape isn't the end of the world: if you're lucky you'll get to marry another rapist!" is the message you want to be putting out there? You think?
<deep breath>
So towards the end of this episode, while this guy's wife is still trying to process all this, they find a list of twenty houses, one of which is where the copycat is grooming his latest victim. Lightman grimaces because they don't have time to check all twenty before the guy starts torturing, raping and blinding her. I really enjoyed the moment where it's the actual FBI agent who says, "Well, it needs to have a basement where he's keeping her, and it'll have driveway access, and it's the kind of neighbourhood where no-one would notice what's happening, so this one, let's go," and Lightman blinks in startlement. Because Lightman isn't good at that kind of stuff: what he does is mostly blunder around playing "hot and cold" games. So you'd think I'd have liked it when in the final scene he admits he needs this skillset and this guy to join his company -- but I didn't at all. Because actually what I want is for him to learn that there are people outside his company who have useful skills and that being able to collaborate with people who don't work for him would be an advantage. Also, while on the one hand it's nice to add another character of colour to the permanent cast, on the other hand bringing in a character of colour by coercion and telling him smugly that "Hah, you may think you work for the FBI but actually you're going to be following my privileged white-guy orders" is just a tad skeevy.
Shorter me: Generally frivolous, easy viewing if you can avoid thinking about its gobbets of ickiness. Plays with minds in ways I enjoy; but the writers don't notice the skeeviness in the ways it plays with power, because they're more interested in being edgy than in exploring real interpersonal issues like that.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-22 07:04 am (UTC)But it's not all serial killers all the time! Sometimes it's a serial rapist instead! And sometimes it's a terrorist plot to infect an entire shopping mall with anthrax. Occasionally it's a kidnapping and even more occasionally no-one gets killed! Oh, oh, and sometimes it's a clown!
I've never got into any other police procedural at all; I always get bounced out by over-explainy syndrome, or why-should-I-care-ness, or by something that squicks me out, like racism or sexism or the casual assumption that it's okay to terrorise the suspect if you can get away with it. But CM tells you once briefly and expects you to remember for the next dozen episodes, so it's got more space to make me care, and I approve highly of its general worldview. Also, I'm an absolute sucker for types like Hotch and Reid. :-)
In Criminal Minds, I'm pretty sure Reid is a declared atheist; if I'm wrong then he's a declared agnostic. I think (ie, I made this up based on him crossing his arms once but I bet it's true) that Hotch studied theology at some point but I get the strong impression he's agnostic if not atheist; it's not declared though. Gideon's Jewish. Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss are all Catholic or lapsed, which seems rather numerous to me but hey, Catholic churches are more photogenic I guess? Don't know about Elle. Garcia had a vision that David Bowie is God, but I'm not sure what she believed prior to that....