The Omega team targets a hedge fund manager Reed to see if he is somehow leaking information that is causing catastrophes and loss of life around the world.

“How much was true and how much a lie?” a character asks Helen. She replies, basically, that all of it, everything she told her, was both. This perfectly sums up the whole show, and encapsulates the problem it seems to have trouble overcoming. True Lies seems to want to be both funny and edgy, and is succeeding at neither. Combining the two is impossible in theory (and has been done elsewhere), but the melding isn’t working in this particular case.

The team try to get to Reed through his girlfriend Lisa and decide that Helen is the key thanks to her people skills, sincerity and common sense.

Naturally the boyfriend turns out to be a bad guy and Helen must convince Lisa that Reed isn’t the good guy she believes he is. This leads to the suspenseful climax where they break into his office, but he knows they’re there and comes after them guns ablazing. Except it’s not all that suspenseful as there isn’t all that much doubt that Harry and the rest of team Omega will save them and save the day.

I love that the show wants to make Helen integral to the team, and competent in her own right. Kudos to them for not making her an appendage or tag-along. The problem with that is two-fold. First, if she is so wonderfully perceptive and skilled, it doesn’t really make sense she missed her husband’s double life for seventeen years. Making her hyper-competent crosses the line to cartoonish and actually does the character a disservice. Second, it also makes the rest of the team look cartoonishly inept without her. How did they ever manage for seventeen years?

Verdict: The show remains consistent. If only it were consistently better. 5/10

Rigel Ailur

http://www.BluetrixBooks.com