Review: Lie To Me 3.02 "The Royal We"

In the opening of this week's Lie To Me, "The Royal We", Emily quotes Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Though not obvious at first, this is the core theme of the episode. While Lightman has to handle writing a new book, ejecting Loker, and inducting the new employees into his service, he also has a deadly family situation at his fingertips.

Beauty pageants come up a lot in procedurals; I even have vague recollections of one in an episode of Numb3rs, one of my all-time favorite procedurals in the past decade. A lot of them tend to focus mostly on the innocence of the little girls, the sacrifices the families make so their little girls can be successful and blah de blah. So it was nice to see Lie To Me take the extreme psychological route in order to highlight more subtle nuances to Lightman's work. In this case, the little girl is far from innocent; she's sadistic, cutting herself on the thigh while reading her mom's diary from her own pageant days. See, she gets off to pain, which her mom has a-plenty, and then little Megan takes it upon herself to extend that pain to others, resulting in a sexual assault charge against Mr. Fletcher, soccer mom-widow extraordinaire. But Megan also has the usual pageant girl issues -- the scene in the rafters where Lightman belittles his own mom's suicide is remarkable, not just for the shocking truths that Lightman and Megan lay bare in the conversation, but for the continuity of Cal's character bringing new emotional weight to a worn out procedural plot.

Somewhat less impressive, but somehow still very humorous, is how Cal and Loker are handling each other now that Loker is on his way out. Cal throws Loker's stuff onto the floor; in retaliation, Loker steals a pen, then helps Cal out during a particularly difficult point in the case. They're both awfully like children, aren't they? But the real stinger comes at the end, when Torres finds out that Loker has applied for a job at The Pentagon -- Lightman's old bosses.

The episode has some issues. Notably, it's becoming more difficult to see the thematic connection between the main case and the drama within Lightman Group. Sure, I get that they're supposed to be family, but especially within the past few episodes (and I'm including the end of S2 in this), it's been hard to really make that familial bond clear. And I don't think I have to tick off the list of reasons why relating to a sadistic pageant girl with mommy issues is a hard thing to do.

Overall, though, "The Royal We" is on par with some of the darker episodes the show has ever done -- quite an achievement for an episode about pageant girls. The only thing I could really request of the show right now is that we get more Foster and Torres moments. Cal and Emily are great, but they're the core blood family of the show, and at some point, we know what to expect from them (not unlike the Taylors in Friday Night Lights). The Lightman Group is peppered with wonderful characters, and I'd like to see them in the spotlight more. There's no need to always say "Let there be Lightman."