The best moments on the TV critics tour often come from hanging with the winners.

Hollywood, more than many cities I've visited, feels like a giant showbiz scoreboard. There are people moving up, others falling down, and more still afraid of either circumstance. But the best times come from spending time with those experiencing their first big success -- there's an optimism and anything-goes quality that can briefly wipe away the venality and cynicism that so often makes time on the Left Coast so difficult.

Yesterday, I spent part of the day hanging with Monica Raymund, a St. Petersburg native who is a co-star on Fox's newest crime drama, Lie to Me. Centered on an expert in non-verbal communication played by Oscar nominee Tim Roth (The Incredible Hulk, Pulp Fiction), the show also features Raymund as a gifted natural interpreter of non-verbal cues.

Fox seemed skittish about letting me on the show's set, so we met at a sound looping session, where actors rerecord bits of dialogue that either weren't recorded well or that the producers want phrased differently. For most actors, this is a humdrum routine; but for Raymund, a theater-trained actor scooped up by the show weeks after graduating from Juilliard, this was just her second time cleaning up dialogue.

I'll have a longer story on Monica coming soon; the show debuts next week with a huge lead-in from American Idol.  But it was fun, after days spent dissecting the motives of jaded stars and manipulative executives, to see a young actor whose eyes shone bright while recalling the few magic moments when her work transcended from "acting" to becoming the part (on the theater stage).

Here are a few pix from the looping session to tide you over. I'm minutes away from meeting the Jonas Brothers in this, the final day of madness in La La Land . . .

*