Cal Lightman does not give a ****

When I first wrote about FOX's Lie to Me, I noted how similar it was to the genre. It's a procedural show that is mostly based around its main character. It wasn't until sometime in the later half of Season 2 that I noticed just how much I loved the show.

House kicked off this genre, and just Hugh Laurie's portrayal, Tim Roth is really incredible in his role. However, Laurie has a more balanced view of House as this tragic hero, whose great power comes with an incredibly potent side of hatred and self-loathing, whereas Tim Roth as Lightman is just pure headstrong, scenery-chewing arrogance. Both are incredible to watch, but Roth is great purely of his own accord, while Laurie has had some really inventive and interesting writing in the first few seasons of his show.

Both shows have a lot of annoyances, Lie to Me more so. It has these moments that I think of as gigantic middle America fanservice, where the guys that the general American public know and hate from their lives appear as incredibly vague stereotypes and get shat all over. Just so far this season in Lie to Me, Lightman gets the asshole bank manager to apologize for being an asshole and basically has an episode devoted to making every viewer feel better than one of those pageant mothers who ruins her daughter's life. House did similar things when he rarely met patients' families - the family would be confused or out of sorts because their fucking family member is dying and no one knows why but House goes out and mouths off to them because the family is obviously annoying and also assholes. Hey, sure, I actually enjoy watching it because most of the draw of these shows is the main characters not giving a fuck about anyone's feelings and that's hilarious and entertaining, but when I realize that the show is just dropping some fanservice on us, it becomes slightly annoying.

At this point, Lightman is the only reason to watch. I do like how he plays off of Kelli Williams, who plays the co-head of Lightman's company. She's very good at being the straight woman to his antics and generally holding her own against his insanity. However, the two other employees of theirs, who seem to be the only two people who work there at all, are barely ever on screen and when they are, they're either the butt of a joke or moving plots along for Lightman. He always "takes point" in the missions and does something absolutely insane to catch the bad dudes. But since that's pretty much why I watch the show, I'm not complaining too much.