I recently burned through the 48 episodes of Lie to Me (thank you, Netflix), which I have discovered is yet another good show cancelled by FOX. The dig at FOX is obviously my bitterness over Firefly and Dollhouse, and Lie to Me does not come close to the glory of the Whedonverse, but today is not the day to talk about the show itself. One thing that struck me about the show was the treatment of the main character's teenage daughter's love life. And that's what I want to look at today.
To those who do not know about the show, Lie to Me is a slightly different process show that centers on Dr. Cal Lightman (played by the one and only Tim Roth), whose private company contracts mostly with law enforcement to assist in investigations. Cal has a teenage daughter, Emily, whose custody he shares with his ex-wife. Emily is not exactly goody two shoes (having a fake ID and being sexually active), but in general, she is a good kid and is treated as such. The show does a really good job of treating her as a normal, non-problematic teenager with nothing more than the average issues teenagers deal with. Cal is not exactly happy about the fact that Emily is sexually active, and he does get upset when he found birth control pills and discovered that his ex-wife knew about it and didn't tell him.
However, he never really demonstrates a desire to control Emily's sexual behavior and eventually communicates to her that it's the boys rather than her judgment that he doesn't trust. For many parents, I imagine that the idea of your teenager having sex is uncomfortable, even if you are completely comfortable with the idea that teenagers do have sex and are capable of doing so responsibly if properly equipped and educated.
During the short life of Lie to Me, Emily brings home several different boys. But never is this behavior portrayed as problematic, even if Cal does his best to make the boys uncomfortable (it is actually Cal who is portrayed as overreacting, a position which he begrudgingly grows to accept). Emily has a loving and healthy father-daughter relationship with Cal and, in the end, is comfortable enough with telling Cal that she broke up with her boyfriend (whom Cal was starting to get to know better) because he doesn't believe in pre-marital sex. Cal does not lecture her nor is he particularly troubled. It's an "oh, well" moment than an "oh, no!" moment.
All in all, Emily is a normal teenager. At sixteen, she is sexually active, which is not anomalous considering that one-third of American kids at that age are so and the average age of first intercourse is around seventeen. Emily may have a fake ID and plan on going to music festivals, but she does not engage in destructive behavior. When she accidentally hits a wandering woman with Alzheimer's with her car, the woman was very minorly injured (if at all) and could have walked away, but Emily not only offers to drive her to the hospital but also brings in her father's professional expertise to figure out what the woman is so afraid of and make sure she is safe.
To be sure, Lie to Me is not a show that explores the main character's relationship with his daughter in depth. But the reflection of parents' values about teenage sex on a non-teen TV show--and one that does not focus primarily on the characters' family relationships--is important in normalizing healthy, non-destructive teenage sexual behavior. Most time teenagers engage in sex, nothing remarkable happens as long as they are properly educated about healthy sexual behavior and are sufficiently mature. It helps the case for proper sex education if parents accept the normalcy of teenage sex. TV shows shouldn't exploit main characters' teenage kids' sexual behavior to create a dramatized storyline. Instead, they should take a page out of Lie to Me's playbook and treat teenagers having sex as normal and behavior that can be healthy with proper knowledge and maturity.
