(no subject)

[kohaku]

Wow that last episode broke my heart a little. It had some lovely visuals.

I loved the introduction of Mary, a story I was familiar with. The case is described in Ekman's Telling Lies.

Mary was a forty-two year old housewife. The last of her three suicide attempts was quite serious. (...) By the time she had entered the hospital she no longer could handle the house, could not sleep well, and sat by herself crying much of the time. In her first three weeks in the hospital she received medication and group therapy. She seemed to respond very well: her manner brightened, and she no longer talked of committing suicide. In one of the interviews we filmed, Mary told the doctor how much better she felt and asked for a weekend pass. Before receiving the pass, she confessed that she had been lying to get it. She still desperately wanted to kill herself. After three more months in the hospital Mary had genuinely improved, although there was a relapse a year later. She has been out of the hospital and apparently well for many years.

The filmed interview with Mary fooled most of the young and even many of the experiences psychiatrists and psychologists to whom I showed it. We studied it for hundreds of hours, going over it again and again, inspecting each gesture and expression in slow-motion to uncover any possible clues in deceit. In a moment's pause (...) we saw in slow-motion a fleeting facial expression of despair, (...) Once we had the idea that concealed feelings might be evident in these very brief

micro expressions, we searched and found many more, typically covered in an instant by a smile.

~ Paul Ekman, Telling Lies, Chapter 1

So the real Mary survived, while Lightman's mother received her weekend pass and committed suicide as planned. This difference in the story works very well for dramatic purposes and even though I knew the real Mary survived because she confessed her deceit, it really got me. The scenes where Lightman watches the film are beautifully done, the difference between his "official" office where we have seen him work and the backroom where we now somehow catch him watching the film is drastic. There is no doubt that the film is of a somewhat personal nature; the surroundings imply as much. I had the woman in the film pegged for his mother early on, as soon as Torres said she saw Lightman watch a film with a sad English woman in it, but I let myself be mislead for a little and almost believed the "she was a patient" story.



Office vs Backroom



Isn't this awesome? I love the complete shift, the colours, the atmosphere. It's lovely.



Oh, Loker. I love you, but really, the lying thing? You're way too good at concealing your emotions and performing lies. If you only were better at controlling the leakage. I'm not sure whether it's detection apprehension (probably not, since he confesses to Torres and tells her that no one will find out it was him leaking the information) or just his conscious speaking up, as he says himself he "needed to tell someone." It is not deception guilt, for within his reasoning, his lie was authorised; he himself is not gaining from the lie, it is "for the greater good."



Still, I fear the consequences, and kind of wish back the ever truthful Loker.

Great episode, so a little heavy. I hope they will move back to a story with lighter moments next week.


I love this show.