'Lie to Me' Lies to Me

I’ve criticized the show House in this space before. House is a main character who is beginning to cross the line from likable to crotchety, despite Hugh Laurie’s greatness. His sidekick, Wilson, is far more interesting dramatically. And the show itself is amazingly predictable: somebody has a seizure; opening credits; wrong diagnosis; commercial; wrong diagnosis; commercial; wrong diagnosis; commercial; correct diagnosis indicated by oblique reference in the B story; conclusion; end credits.

But at least House is well-written. It’s also a relatively balanced show, even though House himself is an open atheist. For example, Season Three of House featured two abortion episodes: “Fetal Position,” which was so pro-life that it included a mockup of the famous image of a baby’s hand holding an operating doctor’s; and “One Day, One Room,” an episode in which House convinces a raped patient to have an abortion. Despite the show’s overall liberal tilt (see Wilde, Olivia), there is at least an attempt to be evenhanded.

Not so with Lie to Me, the House knockoff starring Tim Roth as Cal Lightman. It’s just as formulaic, and the writing isn’t as good – but more than that, the writing has become incredibly biased. Aside from the repeated snide references to President Bush and constant barrages of mini-rants straight from the Joy Behar playbook, two of the last three episodes have been blatantly leftist to an obnoxious extent.

First there was “Secret Santa,” in which the show took on the war in Afghanistan. Essentially, one of the characters had been a recruit for a secret American agency. Captured in Afghanistan, he was converted to the Taliban. He is the sympathy player in the piece; at the end of the episode, he redeems himself by saving US soldiers. The villain of the piece is the Bush Administration, which supposedly abandoned this traitor to his fate in Afghanistan.

This simply belies the facts. The American citizens who go to fight with the Taliban aren’t captured Americans – they’re generally American volunteers like John Walker Lindh. They’re Muslims who think they’re fighting for the ummah when they join up with Sharia law thugs. They’re not rogue Americans pushed to the brink by President Bush.

But “Secret Santa” was just a prelude to the climax of the season: “Tractor Man.” In this episode, those of us who oppose federal overreach are raked over the coals. The villain in this one is a disappointed taxpayer who wants to bomb US government buildings as revenge for the government’s destruction of his farm.

This sort of leftist tripe isn’t uncommon on Lie to Me. The pilot episode featured a Democratic Congressman suspected of picking up prostitutes – it turns out that he’s innocent, and that the prostitute in question is his daughter. He offers to resign his position in order to protect her. Meanwhile, in the same episode, a religious boy is suspected of murder. Turns out he wasn’t a murderer – he was just masturbating over a dead body. Terrific.

The second episode of the series, “Moral Waiver,” had a staff sergeant threatening a female subordinate with dangerous assignments in order to get her to give him sex.

Even the first season finale, “Sacrifice,” which did have al Qaeda as the bad guys, had Lightman spouting Obama talking points about pressuring terrorists for information, including that old tripe about American interrogation methods providing a training tool for terrorists (as though they would be less likely to join up if we read them their Miranda rights). We also get the CAIR talking points, with an imam lecturing us about how horrible law enforcement is for the Muslim community, and the dastardly FBI secretly bugging the mosque.

In short, Lie to Me is leftist agitprop masquerading as entertainment. It doesn’t try to hide its agenda, and it doesn’t try to present both sides of an argument. It is unabashedly Garafalo-esque. That could be one reason it has slipped dramatically in the ratings. Its first three episodes averaged 12-13 million viewers. The pilot finished #8 for the week. The most recent series finale averaged half that, with 6.59 million viewers.

That’s a good thing. When entertainment is infused with liberalism, Americans will watch. When entertainment is discarded in favor of liberalism, Americans tune out. It’s about time the creators of Lie to Me learned that lesson.