The last time I checked in with Liz Craft and Sarah Fain, the Pembroke Hill grads and Hollywood writing team I call the Murder Gals &mdash; mostly because they helped adapt &ldquo;The Women&rsquo;s Murder Club&rdquo; for TV but also because a lot of people seem to get killed violently on their shows &mdash; they had just made the leap from &ldquo;Dollhouse&rdquo; to another Fox series, &ldquo;Lie to Me.&rdquo; </p><p>Lots of people were surprised the duo would leave producer Joss Whedon, but they&rsquo;re under contract to the studio, not to any one show, so when Fox decided they were more sorely needed at &ldquo;Lie to Me,&rdquo; that was that.</p><p> Besides, they went from one old boss to another: Shawn Ryan, creator of FX&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Shield,&rdquo; where Craft and Fain worked three seasons, is now running &ldquo;Lie to Me,&rdquo; which stars Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Lightman, &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s leading deception expert.&rdquo;</p><p> Fox wanted a change of direction, and Ryan wanted employment after CBS canceled &ldquo;The Unit.&rdquo; Ryan&rsquo;s first hire was the Murder Gals, who wrote the season premiere that&rsquo;s airing at 8 p.m. Monday on Fox 4.</p><p>We talked about the show, why they&rsquo;re not on &ldquo;Dollhouse&rdquo; anymore, and what drove Fain to start a blog to air her private deliberations over becoming a single mom at age 38. Our edited Q and A follows.</p><p><strong>Q. Why were you picked to write this episode, which not only kicks off the season but reboots the show from a story-driven procedural into one that&rsquo;s more character-driven?</strong></p><p><strong>Craft:</strong> One, we were already in place on staff (laugh), so it was a practical thing. A writer had left &ldquo;Lie to Me&rdquo; to do a pilot, so they needed an extra brain, or two in our case. It went over well, and we got along with everybody, and they just decided to keep us here. Plus, &ldquo;Dollhouse&rsquo;s&rdquo; future was in such question. It wasn&rsquo;t a breakout hit, and Fox did a really smart thing picking it up. </p><p><strong>Fain:</strong> We always write character-based dramas, no matter what world the character is in, so it doesn&rsquo;t really feel different for me. </p><p><strong>Erika Christensen plays a woman with multiple personalities. Whose idea was that?</strong></p><p><strong>Craft: </strong>Shawn just said over lunch, &ldquo;It&rsquo;d be fun to see Lightman with a multiple personality case,&rdquo; and Sarah and I said, &ldquo;Oooh, that sounds like a season premiere.&rdquo; It came off very quickly, which was good because we didn&rsquo;t have any time. We loved Erika. She&rsquo;s on &ldquo;Parenthood,&rdquo; and the only reason we got her was because &ldquo;Parenthood&rdquo; had to shut down (when cast member Maura Tierney began cancer treatment) and there was this window where we were able to get her for that episode. It was really important, like make-or-break, who we got for that role, and we couldn&rsquo;t have been more thrilled.</p><p><strong>Did you have to vet this with Paul Ekman (the lie-detecting expert on whose life the show is based)? </strong></p><p><strong>Craft:</strong> Yes. He wasn&rsquo;t a big fan of this episode. Sarah, is that safe to say?</p><p><strong>Fain:</strong> I agree. He&rsquo;s really grounded in science, and multiple personality disorder is not necessarily a scientifically recognized illness.</p><p><strong>Craft: </strong>It&rsquo;s controversial as a diagnosis. We tried to kind of work with him and make adjustments to acknowledge that.</p><p><strong>Fain: </strong>We gave Foster more of his point of view (Foster, played by Kelli Williams, is Lightman&rsquo;s recently divorced colleague at his consulting practice).</p><p><strong>And then there&rsquo;s going to be a rival for Lightman this season, too?</strong>