In the Fox drama, the Lightman Group specializes in interpreting microexpressions and body language, and leader Cal Lightman (Roth) is an expert at manipulating his own body’s language to fluster and confuse people into inadvertently revealing their true motives. Executive producers Alexander Cary and David Graziano explain that Roth deliberately created Lightman’s odd food mannerisms as part of his character’s work strategy.

“It really is a Tim character choice,” Cary tells TVGuide.com. “You look at the type of the scene and then you look at the type of food that’s going to most subvert the gravity of that scene. For example, in Episode 301 when Cal’s in the bar as a prisoner of two bank robbers and he bites into a pickle. Yeah, that’s Tim’s choices. That’s what he chooses to kind of provoke them. Lightman is a character who likes to put people off their game. Eating and talking through a mouthful of potato chips or three hot dogs is what he does to repulse people to a certain extent.” Graziano adds. “He’s a provocateur.”

So far, Lie to Me viewers have responded to Lightman — repulsive quirks and all — positively. The series won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite TV Crime Drama, while Roth was named Favorite TV Crime Fighter. “Sometimes the fans ask for us to have him stop talking with his mouth full and some people like it,” Cary says. “You know it’s just one of those things we have to be a little judicious with otherwise it become a little bit cartoonish.”

In fact, Roth has been pulling back on his performance, creating a sort of Lightman Lite. “You may have noticed in the second half of this season Tim, as he would say, de-quirked his performance of Lightman a little bit,” Cary says. “There wasn’t quite as many sort of facial tics and sort of body language tics. He played it a little straighter. He played it a little quieter which is a conscious choice of his.”

Fans also may have noticed that Lightman’s colleague, Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams), has her own signature eating habit, a weakness for sugary junk foods, that hasn’t gotten much play recently, but is still part of the character.

“I think we did a scene to refer to that if I’m not mistaken … but we took it out,” Cary says. “We had to take it for time actually. It’s something that we’re aware of. Kelli Williams actually quite likes that character trait. We may use it. We may not. It doesn’t really go anywhere at the moment.”

Lightman’s eating habits, however, are an ongoing part of the show, and Roth comes in to work ready to plan the next gastronomic gambit. “The show’s about behavior and we have an actor who loves to see the character misbehave,” Cary says. “That’s what it is. We all like to misbehave. That’s what the show is about.”

And make no mistake: Roth makes food selections based on their potential to draw laughs. “He likes pickles because they make a funny noise when you bite them,” Cary says. Graziano adds: “Some foods are funnier than others. Pickles are hilarious.”

Truthfully, the episode has nothing to do with Facebook, but you can’t help but notice the parallels between it and the Oscar-nominated film, The Social Network, which explores the complicated personal and legal entanglements behind the founding of the most popular website on the Internet. In Lie to Me’s tale, Nikita’s Ashton Holmes plays Zach Morstein, the wunderkind co-creator of a popular dating application who Dr. Lightman (Tim Roth) fingers as the lead suspect in the murder of Zach’s best friend and company co-founder.

Executive producers Alexander Cary and David Graziano happily wear their influences. “We didn’t want to shy away from it as a milieu because there was a movie that took place in that arena,” Graziano tells TVGuide.com, noting that the original story was based in small-town politics, not technology. “It is really hard on television to establish the character of a small town. At its heart, this episode always was about three close friends and how they become divided. So, rather than it be small town where this happens between three local politicians, we just made them friends with a corporation.”

“Obviously we were aware of [The Social Network], but it didn’t really inspire us or inform us,” Cary adds. “You draw your inspirations from these places but then, once you’ve come out of the gate, you go with it in your own way. We just thought it was a fun way to do this story. It was a fun type of character to go against Lightman. It’s sort of old-school against new-school.”

Indeed, Graziano says the episode is actually more of an homage to Peter Falk’s Columbo. “We liked the way he is a working-class protagonist who goes up against these very powerful, very rich antagonists and through the course of an episode, takes them down at the knee,” Graziano says. “Lightman is sort of cut from the same cloth. The important things about these episodes is that you always need a very clear and strong obstacle to the truth. The people that are the strongest obstacles just wind up being the people with the most to lose and the people who are the smartest and most powerful.”

It just so happens that the murder victim is a former patient of Dr Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams), which raises the stakes for Lightman & Co. In fact, when Graziano and Cary learned that the episode would double as the show’s season finale (Fox opted not to order the back nine episodes to make room for new midseason shows), they decided to more fully explore Foster and Lightman’s “relationship status.”

“We wanted to make a statement about what’s at the nucleus of their friendship, which is a deep love and a respect,” Graziano says. “And one of the things Lightman does for her — he’s her protector.”

“We wanted to really cement the relationship between Lightman and Foster,” Cary says. “We wanted to really do a love story in a very indirect way between Lightman and Foster with a sort of horrible crime that affects Foster, and therefore Lightman, personally. And I think what we wanted also to do was imbue Lightman and Foster and some of the other characters with a sense of hope for the future.”

But what is the show’s future? While Fox execs are unlikely to rule on Lie to Me’s future prospects until May, Cary remains very confident. “They have been incredibly supportive to us and encouraging, and they have made it absolutely clear that we should not pack our bags,” he says. “We’re feeling really good and they’re looking after us and keeping us busy. I think this is just the nature of the business. They make people like us fight for our shows and it’s fair enough. To fight for our show is no bad thing, and to allow other shows to have a crack at it is no bad thing for us or the business.”

And Graziano notes that the final moments of the finale will leave everyone wanting to see what comes next. “We’ve made some promises that we plan to achieve in Season 4,” he says. “Those aren’t just things that we’re planting in the episodes to string the fans along, but where we want to see the show go.”

Lie to Me’s Season 3 finale airs Monday at 9/8c on Fox. Do you want to see another season of the show?

Fans can expect a dose of dark romance in the second episode. The story centers on George Parker (Mad Men’s Sam Page), a charming yet shady ladies’ man who is about to become engaged to a wealthy divorcée. “He’s almost too good to be true,” says Cary. Spoiler alert: There’s nothing “almost” about it, and Lightman is tasked with uncovering the skeletons in the lothario’s closet.

A recent decision by Fox, meanwhile, has fans wondering if their beloved show is headed for the boneyard. Early in December, the network declined to order any further episodes to make room for the upcoming cop drama The Chicago Code. But Cary assures viewers his series is still vital and chalks the issue up to tricky scheduling. “They know what this series is and what it can do for them. But they’re trying to find out what some other products can do, too. They want to see how other shows perform, then schedule accordingly,” he says. “But I’m fairly confident that we’ll be very much in that plan for the fall.” No lie.

Lie to Me airs Monday at 8/7c and 9/8c on Fox.

Matt Roush: It’s probably wise to stop using Lone Star as a yardstick by which to measure any other show’s chances for success. That was (unfortunately) an ambitious but immediate noble failure, and except for the fact that Lie to Me was rushed back on the schedule to fill its time slot, the two shows have nothing in common. Lie to Me seems to me destined to be a somewhat undervalued utility player for Fox, the kind of show that often looks like it’s being taken for granted or badly used. Witness how Fox burned off so much of the second season during the summer months, and then slapped it on Mondays with very little warning. (Not that Fox had a choice.) The fact that Lie to Me will once again fall off the schedule in February when The Chicago Code premieres is hardly surprising, given that prime-time real estate is at a premium in the back half of the season on Fox once American Idol kicks in. But I’m not sure this necessarily means the show is in immediate danger. Networks need shows like this to fill troublesome holes on the schedule, and while it’s unlikely to ever be a breakout hit, I’m hoping Lie finds its place on the network as Bones eventually did.

Editor’s Note: There is still no word on a full season pickup for Lie to Me. However, the thirteen episodes that are currently set for this third season may in fact finish airing before The Chicago Code premieres on 2/7/11.

“It’s just a fun alternate universe with all these people you’re accustomed to seeing in a certain environment,” Shield creator and Lie to Me executive producer Shawn Ryan tells TVGuide.com of the stunt episode (Monday at 9/8c on Fox). “It was different, but I think everyone was just really happy to see one another again. I think it meant more on a personal level even than a professional level. We had a very tight-knit group on that show, so to be able to reunite … was very nice.”

Ryan says he immediately began looking for ways to bring Shield actors to his new show when Season 2 began, but then got greedy. “I started thinking, ‘Why am I looking to just get one or two of them if I could maybe get more?’” he says.

A member of his writing staff then crafted a story that could support the extra faces. At the center of the episode are Benito Martinez and Catherine Dent as Charlie and Faye Sheridan, a married couple whose son was murdered 17 years earlier. When the couple joins Lightman (Tim Roth) and Zoe (Jennifer Beals) to witness the execution of murderer (David Marciano), Lightman suddenly suspects they’re watching the wrong man die.

When the Sheridans are targeted again, Lightman turns to the executed man’s younger brother (David Rees Snell) and ex-girlfriend (Cathy Cahlin Ryan) for answers. All roads lead to a mysterious photographer (Kenny Johnson), who becomes the key suspect. (All three are also Shield alums.)

“It was fun to find a new chemistry,” Martinez says of the experience. “We found a whole, new completely different vocabulary and relationship that was organic to these characters. What was instant was our trust for each other. With Catherine, we knew each other in and out, and that trust was there.”

Martinez, who also guest-starred on Ryan’s CBS drama The Unit says he welcomes any opportunity to collaborate with his former boss. “He’s one of the good guys,” he says. “If Shawn asked me to pull cable on a show, I’d probably do it. He’s that kind of guy. … He has talent, and he cares about aking the journey together, as crazy as it might be. His talent takes you places that are outside the norm, and as an actor, it’s fantastic, it’s risky.”

Ryan promises that Lie to Me fans won’t see the regular characters get short shrift to make room for the guest stars. “We also find out the past of how Zoey and Lightman fell in love and how their daughter Emily came into the world,” he says. “There’s a lot of juicy stuff.”

Ryan, who has stepped down as showrunner for Lie to Me’s third season to focus on his new Fox series, Ride-Along, says the episode eschews in-jokes or any winks at his previous creation. He does, however, hope that Shield fans who tune into Lie to Me for the first time stick around.

“We take the show pretty seriously, and we wanted the show to stand on its own for those people who aren’t Shield fans,” says Ryan, adding that he hopes Lie to Me will continue and thrive. “I have emeritus status — I’m not completely out of the picture, although I am certainly not responsible for the good work that they’ll do this year.”

Special thanks, as always, to TV Guide for allowing us to reprint the article in its entirety.