beautiful crime

Lie to Me: Killer App 3x13

LIE TO ME- 1x01 "Pilot" premiered 15 years ago today (January 21, 2009)

it introduces characters in a non obvious way, no 'hello brother' (no offence vampire diaries but it's lazy) a good example of this is cal talking about his daughter and the show cutting to emily on screen, now you know who she is but the script didn't have to explicitly state it

next, it introduces a new character on the first episode. eli, gillian and cal have all known each other for years, there's no room for new information but introducing torres as a new character on the first episode means that the audience gets to see her learning about everyone else, which gives the audience an easy way to also learn information about the characters without having things like 'omg rememeber when you and matt dated before your parents died six months ago' (again, no offence vampire diaries)

thirdly, it gives good character insight. from the first episode you can tell that gillian is the sunshine to cal's midnight rain. you can see how much he cares for gillian after the issue with her husband and in the last scene you can see that he doesn't hate the world with the way he helps that random lady. you can tell things about his character that some shows take ten episodes and forty flashbacks to tell you. (i'm just looking for vampire diaries digs now, i like the show but the script work is lazy)

it also tells you exactly what the show is about in a creative way, having cal explaining what he does to a classroom, criminal minds does a similar thing in its first episode, which i also think is fantastic and if anyone wanted a breakdown of that, i'd be happy to.

Gillian Foster: Lie to Me Season 2 (Part 2)

                   honey you’re familiar like my mirror years ago     idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on it’s sword             innocence died screaming, honey ask me I should  k n o w                            I slithered here  f r o m  e d e n  just to hide outside your door