TVSquad

If you're one of the fortunate few who make it big in the television biz, shouldn't you take the opportunity to use that cushy cushion you have built for yourself and take a big risk on something exciting and new? Not if you're one of these big television producers.

Big shots like Shawn Ryan, David E. Kelley, and Shonda Rhimes all have pilots in the can that don't seem to stray much farther from the shows that made them the big shots that they are today.

For instance, Ryan, creator of the groundbreaking FX cop drama 'The Shield,' has another cop drama premiering with Fox called 'Ridealong.' Kelley, the writer/producer behind 'The Practice' and 'Boston Legal,' has created a reality drama for NBC called 'Kindred.' Even Rhimes, the woman behind ABC's 'Grey's Anatomy,' has another medical drama show for ABC called 'Off the Map.' Is ABC looking to create an all-medical soap opera cable channel in the coming year?

(S02E10) "...everybody does it because it feels all right, and it's more polite, but a lie's still a lie even when it's white..." - Loker

With the fall TV season slowly winding down, it was a pleasant surprise when Fox announced that Lie To Me's fall finale would air practically halfway into December. Now that the episode has come and gone and the TV schedules are becoming more and more barren over the coming weeks, I'm already wishing that Fox would just make up their minds and figure out when the final twelve episodes of the season will start airing. While "Tractor Man" wasn't Cal and the gang's strongest outing, it was still a solid reminder why Lie To Me has become so much more than just another crime procedural.

Despite the fact that FX's late drama The Shield has only been off the air for a little over a year, it looks like the gritty cop drama's cast just can't get enough of each other -- a handful of them will be staging a mini-Shield reunion on Lie to Me this coming spring.

According to the press release from Fox, former Shield cast members Catherine Dent (Danny), Kenny Johnson (Lem), David Marciano (Billings), Benito Martinez (Aceveda), Cathy Cahlin Ryan (Corinne), and David Rees Snell (Ronnie) will all be featured in the episode, entitled "Pied Piper."

(S02E09) "She's the female equivalent of roulette and you like the view." - Foster

There's always a potential for screw-ups when networks start airing episodes out of the producers intended order (see NBC and their goofs with Detective Crosetti's death in season three of Homicide), but Lie to Me seems to have avoided that sort of miscalculation despite FOX's shuffling of the season order. That is, until "Fold Equity" aired last night. Originally set to air during Fox's Simpsons week (catch the Sideshow Bob reference?), "Fold Equity" didn't drop the ball on anything as major as a character's death, but more than once during the hour it felt as though we were taking some giant steps backward.

(S02E08) "You believe in Santa Claus?" - Lightman

Ho Ho Ho... you're going to Afghanistan. Not exactly a Christmas present to be happy about. Having said that, Cal must surely be happy about what he accomplished in last night's episode of Lie to Me.

Sent to a US Marines outpost in the middle of the desert near Kabul, Cal was tasked with uncovering the truth about a deep-cover US operative who got left for dead and had to join to Taliban to survive. Cal was able to get plenty of info from his subject about two missing Marines but we ended up learning far more about Dr. Lightman as a result of his methods.

(S02E06) "You work here. I know everything." - Lightman

Looks like we've got a bit of a trend going on here. Just a few weeks ago, we got a glimpse into Cal's seedy criminal past and now we got a taste of what Reynolds was up to before he became the FBI liaison to The Lightman Group.

As enjoyable as a one-off case on Lie to Me can be, it's way more interesting when Cal starts using his talent on the people working in his own office. There's more than enough material to mine here and hopefully there's more of this in the future.

(S02E05) "It's always the popular ones who think they can get away with murder." - Loker

Easily the best episode of Lie to Me to date, I have to wonder -- I can't be the only out there who's just dying to know more about Cal's past, right? Lennie James guest-starred as Terry Marsh, one of Cal's old crime pals and his arrival created so many questions that have just pushed aside anything else going on at The Lightman Group. Unless Gillian or Loker turn out to be serial killers from past lives, nothing else really matters right now besides Cal's history.

Here's some good news for you "LieHards" out there:

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox has ordered an additional three scripts for Lie to Me, the Shawn Ryan-helmed drama.

Assuming Fox approves the scripts once they've had a chance to see where the story goes, that'll bump Lie to Me's season two total to 16 episodes. It's not a full back nine - but it's closer. That being said, don't forget that Lie to Me was a mid-season replacement earlier this year and the fact that it got picked up at all was a pleasant surprise.

(S02E04) "If we don't do exactly what this guys says, he will kill Cal." - Foster

Looks like it didn't take long for Cal's decision to buy out Zoe to catch up to The Lightman Group. Cash poor, Cal has been relegated to handling simple, pedestrian cases that do nothing more than bring in a paycheck. As the episode opened, there was obviously the possibility that Cal was actually at that singles mixer for himself, but it became clear pretty quickly what he was up to once he started grilling that blonde about marital fidelity.

Lightman looked embarrassed that he had to be doing it, but it did lead to a very heated discussion between him and Gillian. It would have been nice to see them argue a bit more about where their income will come from, but then a case that guaranteed to not pay anything wandered in the front door. Good thing, too, because it turned out to be arguably Lie to Me's strongest episode to date.

(S02E03) "So you're setting me up on a blind date with a potential murderer?" - Torres

When I first heard about Lightman's Mexican holiday via Shawn Ryan's Twitter account, I had pretty high hopes for it because as he suggested, it should be a "fun one." I assumed it would just be Cal and Emily having a grand ol' time, making fun of cabana boys when they lied about being out of pineapple juice or dark rum. There was some of that, but Cal, who always needs something to do, ending up getting embroiled in a fairly interesting case. The problem? The case that Gillian and the rest of the team got caught up in was far more intriguing and Cal wasn't there to take part of in any of it. Well... sort of.

(S02E02) "I mean, how can I not judge someone who creates their own harem and then tosses out the competition when they hit puberty?" - Foster

Already this is shaping up to be leaps and bounds ahead of season one of Lie to Me. The cases are more interesting, the writing is tighter, and most importantly, it's becoming far more personal for the employees of The Lightman Group. Every case has far more meaning when Cal and his team are in it for more than just a paycheck. That isn't to say that I'm against seeing cases like we saw in the season premiere with Erika Christensen, but finding out that Cal's daughter Emily has a connection to a statutory rape case he's investigating is far more compelling.

(S02E01) "Oh, your husband likes unprotected sex with hookers, so it might be a good time to get yourself tested for, you know, everything really." - Cal

Lies! Lies! Lies! Or are they? With the return of Lie to Me comes a whole new batch of poker faces for The Lightman Group to interpret and fortunately for us, the overall vibe of the show is a lot more believable than it used to be. If I'm going to watch a show where the lynch-pin of every episode rests on the ability of Tim Roth's Dr. Cal Lightman to negotiate all the little twists a suspect's face makes, then I better not be able to figure it out myself in the first five minutes. When I recently spoke with Roth, he said the show was a lot better now. He wasn't lying.

Lie to Me is not a show that grew on me last season. When it first premiered earlier this year, I didn't even bother watching it. I tend to shy away from mid-season replacements to begin with and something about seeing Tim Roth speaking in his normal British accent in promos for the show seemed weird to me.

Then summer arrived, TV viewing options started to dwindle, and suddenly Lie to Me became a viable option. I watched the pilot, was mildly amused, and then dropped it for over a month before I looked at another episode. At first, it wasn't that great, and now that I've had the opportunity to speak to Roth about it, it's good to know that I wasn't alone in thinking that.

FX held panels for Archer and Sons of Anarchy on Friday morning, but by then press tour fatigue had set in, and the energy in the room was low for both. It was especially low for Archer, a Adult Swim-esque spy cartoon by the creator of Sealab 2021 that most of the critics hadn't yet seen. The panel seemed to be more content with answering with wise-ass remarks that made themselves laugh but the just served to make us tired masses annoyed.

Things perked up, though, when the network presented five of its show-runners to talk about what it's like to develop edgy dramas for basic cable. But since the theme of the week has invariably been "Leno at 10," the questions often came back to the fact that NBC with one fell swoop wiped out five hours of scripted drama per week. And the show-runners took every opportunity to bash the Peacock for it.

And it got ugly: "I feel they should take the American flag down in front of the building and just put up a white one," said Rescue Me's Peter Tolan, "because they've clearly given up."

Earlier this week, I told you about the real reason Without A Trace was cancelled. Now, executive producer Shawn Ryan reveals the real reason The Unit was cancelled. "Listen, if the show had been owned by Paramount and Medium had been owned by 20th Century Fox, we'd be making the fifth season of The Unit now." You see, TV fans, it's comes down to money. CBS owns Paramount so it would earn more in the long run if The Unit made more episodes, went into syndication and reaped revenues for years to come. However, Fox owns The Unit. Get it?