Lie to Me (TV series)/Awesome

When you're a human lie detector, you radiate awesomeness.

• After discovering a strip club has been covertly filming its dancers and putting the footage on the internet for access in countries where pornography is banned, Cal throws a load of money to the dancers then calls the Department of Health to report an outbreak of syphilis.
• Cal calling a hot dog vendor on his bad hygiene practices in the pilot.
• "Tractor Man". The peace sign. You'll know it when you see it.
• Two episodes of Cal vs The Serial Killer, "Blinded" and "Beat the Devil". Just when it looks like Cal has been outsmarted or outlied, he pulls out something of a stinger.
  • In "Blinded" all the mistakes and slips Lightman appears to have made were really just a gambit to get the killer off-guard, to an extent that even Foster, Torres and Loker are fooled.
    • The set-up is so skillful, surprisingly for Cal; the various psychological mind games exchanged between Lightman and the killer are so convincing that even we, the audience, end up believing that Lightman might have truly met his match. And then Cal goes and owns him in 15 different ways.
  • In Beat the Devil he predicts the killer will go after him instead of the bait, setting himself up with a GPS tracker, knowing he will waterboarded, killed and revived multiple times before having to dig his own grave in the woods.
    • Not to mention the capper - "You owe me two hundred bucks, you bastard!" His accent just makes it that much more awesome.
• A group of crooked cops picked up Cal's daughter Emily on trumped up drug charges when Cal was getting too close to their operation. When Cal came to pick her up, the leader of this band of dirty cops made some less than subtle threats against Emily, which Cal was visibly aggravated by. Cut to later in the episode, Cal gets one of the cops to confess, prompting the lead dirty cop to attack. Cal floors him WITH ONE PUNCH! Since Cal has normally been portrayed as more brains than brawn, it made it that much more awesome.
• It's such a small moment in "Delinquent", but Gillian Foster fighting the gang that's broken into her house. Foster is The Lancer, usually a pacifist, the one telling Cal to think before he fights. And she whacks a guy upside the head with a frying pan. Badass.
  • And from the same episode, Ria faking tears when they won't let her see her sister. Even Cal looks impressed.

Ria: *crying hysterically* My sister! My baby sister! They won't let her eat, they won't let her sleep, the warden won't even let me see her! She's so scared and alone, and now there's this girl who's missing... *suddenly stops crying* Now, you take me to Eva, or I'll take that phone message and these tears to a friend of mine at the local news.

• Gotta give props to the eldest boy in a cultist family. in "Truth and Consequences": when it came to escaping his abusive father/cult leader, his mother hesitates to take the chance. He didn't. She follows.
• In "Darkness and Light", the HIV positive girl's father walks up to the man who infected his daughter, looking like he's about to punch the infector. The father grimaces and says, "I've always been proud of the fact that I've never resorted to violence. I'll forget your face, but you won't ever forget mine, you piece of trash."
• Loker finally growing a set in "The Canary's Song". Cal is surrounded by angry miners in a bar, some with weapons, when from out of nowhere Loker grabs a baseball bat and swings for the fences, breaking a bunch of beer bottles. Cal's reaction? "He's with me!"
  • Gillian getting rid of the FBI and keeping Cal out of jail in the same episode, especially when she wants a "thank you" (and gets it) from Cal.
• Every single time Cal comes across someone threatening or harming Emily.

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