You flop onto the bed, forgetting the two books you brought with you because your eyes don’t need that kind of exertion in that moment. You find the remote on the nightstand table, pick it up and turn on the TV, flipping, flipping, flipping. An infomercial for yet another bald-be-gone hair product. A CNBC documentary on where stocks go when they die. A local newscast that you briefly rise up from the bed for because you can’t believe it, but that anchor’s toupee is falling off! It’s amusing for all of 45 seconds, and then you fall back down and keep flipping.
Suddenly, there’s Christopher Lloyd looking grim, in a magician’s tuxedo. What’s Doc Brown doing? Then there’s some David Blaine-type escape artist buried alive, some major unexpected drama, and then a cut to the main titles of this series, Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Chris Noth? Mr. Big on Sex and the City? You only know that because either one of your ex-girlfriends loved that show and made you suffer through it, or you loved watching that show with your girlfriends, chattering away, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the female set. There’s nothing else on TV in this city, so you settle in to see what this is all about.
Law & Order Criminal Intent: The Seventh Year – ’08 – ’09 Season (which is actually a mistake, because according to the page for it on epguides.com, the original airdates show this to be the ’07-’08 season) continues that tradition of being the kind of show that you watch outside of your life because your life has no room for it, what with everything else you watch. The series undoubtedly has its fans, or else creator Dick Wolf wouldn’t have his history-making reputation, but the overall feeling is of this being vacation television.
Episodes are split between two sets of partners: Detectives Mike Logan (Chris Noth) and Megan Wheeler (the freckled beauty Julianne Nicholson, who is absent until the episode “Contract,” and replaced temporarily by Alicia Witt’s Nola Falacci), and Detectives Robert Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe), who are the rock of the series since they’ve been around for the majority of its run. What’s found throughout this season is a mix of the understated, the way overdone, the interesting, and the did-anyone-think-to-look-this-over-again-before-production? “Lonelyville,” for example, an episode with Logan and Falacci, involves sexual blackmail done on men lonely in their marriages, and almost centers on a semi-emerging writer (Josh Pais in a laughably overwrought performance) who finds a tied-up, dead Russian woman in his hotel room bed and flees. Naturally, the spider web of this scheme is gradually spun, and just wait until the end when guest star Lola Glaudini’s performance as Leanne reaches an end that would be disturbing if one could stop laughing.
From this episode alone, there are two distinct approaches to the massive Law & Order franchise, as I imagine there have been since the mothership proved its longevity all those years ago: One is an interest in the workings of the lead characters, basically as a fan of the series, be it the mothership, or this, or Special Victims Unit, which ties into the cases and any guest stars who show up. The second is checking in once in a great while when a favorite or well-known actor guest stars as the criminal, or suspects of the week, or becomes a member of the main cast.
For me, that’s Eric Bogosian, one of my favorite monologists, who joined the Criminal Intent cast in the sixth season as Captain Danny Ross. In some episodes of this season, he looks like he’s only there for the paycheck, which is understandable since stage work and books don’t always pay a living wage, and here’s a living wage. He’s cautious, careful, and especially proves his worth in the final two episodes of the season which greatly affect both sets of detectives, Logan and Wheeler’s case setting the stage quickly for Logan’s departure. It’s especially interesting to watch Captain Ross partially out in the field in the season finale “Frame,” after Goren’s brother (guest star Tony Goldwyn) is found dead.
One of Criminal Intent’s few notable skills, besides casting lead actors that can deliver, even when the proceedings become too silly to watch, is subtly integrating the detectives’ personal lives to the point of almost not noticing it because we’re wondering about the case of the week as much as the detectives are. In that Christopher Lloyd episode with him as the magician The Great Carmine, Goren is a kid in a magic shop, exclaiming in his own way about the magic tricks he sees, and explaining them to Eames with such enthusiasm not that apparent in Goren. In fact, “Vanishing Act” is the only fascinating episode of the seventh season because we want to know how the famous escape artist ended up dead, and in an entirely different location from where he was. The writing remains strong up to the increasingly labored ending.
Personally, in this season, there is only Julianne Nicholson, who works a Mia Farrow/Rosemary’s Baby haircut better than Farrow ever could, and such surprises as Angel Desai (Marta in the stage production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, which is available on DVD) as a coffin expert in “Vanishing Act;” Denis O’Hare as the priest in “Frame,” who disappears into the role, distinguishing himself from every other role he’s done equally well; and Mo Rocca briefly at the beginning of “Contract,” a half-assed homage to Sweet Smell of Success that’s finished by the middle of the episode. Even when the writing fails, the casting never does. That, above all, will be the greatest legacy of the Law & Order franchise. This seventh season maintains that reputation.
