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Lie Detector

Mr. Show with Bob and David 1997 Season 3 Episode 3

SKETCH-O-VISION

A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

A shoe-store job applicant's polygraph screening turns into a parade of cheerfully admitted, increasingly impossible confessions.

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Community rating

– / 10

The funny people

Meet the cast. 5

Paul F. Tompkins

Manager

Boss · Store Manager

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Highly quotable.

Have you ever killed a man... with your mind?

Yes. Our story was made into a hit Broadway musical.

Have you ever taken a train and eaten it piece by piece after you just derailed it with your penis?

Well, I love shoes.

The premise

Here’s the bit.

A man applying for a job at the ShoeCourt shoe store is wired to a lie detector by the store's manager and his staff. After a test question about a strange dream sets off the alarm, the real screening begins, and the applicant calmly admits to heavy drug use, pocketing space plans from a previous job at NASA and killing a man using only his mind. The examiners grow more fascinated than alarmed, and the manager wires himself up to show the machine works, blurting out a startling childhood revelation that it confirms. The questions turn ever more fantastical, from a romance worthy of the stage to devouring a train he derailed for charity, and every answer checks out. Delighted, the manager hires him for the women's athletic department, and the machine finally catches him lying when he claims to love shoes.

Behind the scenes