Secure Immaturity

I was recently reading an article that Chris Noth, one time star of the original Law and Order, it’s sister series (or the ‘bastard cousin’ as my friend Tony calls it), Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and Mr. Big on Sex and the City, really regretted starring on Criminal Intent since it’s very episodic nature made his acting abilities stagnant and non-existent. He did later recant and say that they made a lot of great episodes (and they did) and the people were great (nice save!). But he was saying what most of us were thinking anyways (and I won’t comment on the fact that Noth is an excellent one note actor. . .he’s not exactly Russell Crowe). And his thoughts are why, for the most part, I stayed away from the Law and Order franchise in it’s entirety.

For one, I never loved the court sequences in the original show. So, essentially, I liked half of the show. Special Victims Unit is just too troubling for me to watch week in and week out and Trial by Jury was cancelled well before it’s time, though it was no fault of the show (long time Law and Order actor Jerry Orbach, was ‘transferred’ to that show, had died). But, for whatever reason, the ‘bastard cousin’ Law and Order series always kept my interest at times if not for long periods. It seemed that everything Noth was complaining about was, at least in the early years, non-existent. Criminal Intent was the closest thing I could get to the ‘real’ X-Files and Vincent D’Onofrio as Detective Goren and Katheryn Erbe as Detective Eames, was pretty damn close to Mulder and Scully.

See, Criminal Intent seemed to be the Deep Space Nine of the Law and Order franchise. It didn’t stick to the general expectations of the other shows in the franchise: it took a different perspective (you often knew who the killer was from the start but the motivations were the mystery) and it focused on aspects mostly forgotten in the inner-city (white collar crime, big business scams, high priced heists, and extremely gifted killers). Despite all these things working in it’s favor, the name Law and Order, sadly, drove me away.

But with a bonus at work comes spending cash and a local store (which shall remain nameless because, in the end, for reasons I won’t go into here, sucks major balls) had a sale of seasons 1 and 2 of Criminal Intent for only $25 bucks. A passing interest became a large investment of time. . .and that investment paid off heavily. Not only does CI not feel like a Law and Order series but it contains one of my, now, favorite television characters of all time, Detective Robert ‘Bobby’ Goren, played by the truly bizarre Vincent D’Onofrio.

Now the first thing I learned as I popped in the DVDs, as I expected all along, is that there really is no reason to a)buy DVDs of this show (it is endlessly repeated on 80 channels) and b)follow the show in order. As D’Onofrio points out in the special features, he took the role on an episodic program because it would contain absolutely NO soap. So yes, Criminal Intent has pretty much no arching story lines and virtually no character development on the surface. And while that bothered me from the outset (I’m a serial kind of guy), I realized that television doesn’t have to be plot heavy to be fun and exciting.

Plus I realized, if your patient, the character development comes slow and builds over time. The show almost rewards you for following characters you know nearly nothing about (I can only recall one ’social’ moment, outside of work, with our leads) by sneaking in a little here and a little there. Over a long period of time, the people become like work buddies. You might not go to their house or know their deep secrets, but you like them just the same. In the end, the show is their work and not their lives so we don’t really NEED to know them on any deeper level. But, naturally, D’Onofrio isn’t going to just walk through a performance. His character of Goren is so impressively, and almost oppressively, eccentric, that you are entranced with everything he does.

And while I normally don’t like episodic TV, Criminal Intent has an amazing success rate in terms of coherent and interesting mysteries of the week. The first season runs a little bland and general compared to later seasons but the presence of Goren, and his straight ‘man’ Eames, makes the shows worthwhile. The second season is where the show gains a lot of steam. The cases get more complex and the case studies become both more bizarre and twisted. And while the show aims to be as anti-soap as possible, Goren is given a ‘nemesis’, of sorts, named Nicole Wallace (played by the gorgeous Olivia d’Abo) who appears five times in the series, twice in the second season.

Bizarrely, these are the most gripping episodes (and they rely on a pseudo-serial/soap understanding of past events) and it makes you wonder whether the show SHOULD be somewhat soap and if the show is betraying itself by being soap in these very few episodes. And while the Nicole Wallace episodes stand out the most, I wasn’t disinterested in watching the episodic plots that surround it. As mentioned, D’Onofrio and Erbe are fantastic together and make the whole show tick but the other two original regulars also make their marks.

Jamey Sheridan plays Captain Deakins and while he doesn’t really do anything of any importance except check on the status of investigations, he has an every-man, nice guy quality that is attractive. You like when Deakins shows up and he often is the only comic relief on a sometimes very dark show. Plus he himself adds a few personality quirks in there from time to time (for those who follow the show a lot, I particularly like Deakins choice in eye wear in the first two seasons). I am also immensely impressed in the normally anonymous Courtney B. Vance as ADA Carver. I can’t accurately compare him to other ADAs and DAs on other programs but Carver is a righteous douche bag in this show, but somehow likable. He has this sophisticated arrogance to him, and he is often right, and I like how he often butts heads with the detectives. Carver deals with what can be proved and generally hates (or doesn’t understand) Goren’s odd thinking. He also can get a little crafty which peeves Goren and Eames. It’s a nice character quirk to a pretty thankless role.

So I suppose the only thing to really say here is that I was surprised that I would find myself kind of addicted and in love with a show that goes against everything I usually like in a TV show. But the writing is actually top notch, the performances are always engaging and bizarre, and the mysteries, for the most part, always make me think which is, oddly, more then I can say for a lot of plot heavy shows I like. Maybe I like Criminal Intent because it takes a proven formula and stretches it a bit. Sure, sometimes it sticks to a formula but at least its a formula the show created for itself and didn’t endlessly regurgitate from years of previous series. I’m not too hot with the new Jeff Goldblum/no-D’Onofrio CI that’s currently on BUT I’ve got plenty of back issues, as it were, to watch before I get there. I’m team Goren!