chung chung
And now, lots of some thoughts on Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
In my defense, it's Sunday. (Also, meet my new iTouch! It's AWESOME.)
(aj, this is somehow all your fault, FYI.)
un. you're starting to remind me of someone...
Rewatching CI: like visiting the grandparent that doesn't have dementia. I watched season eight sporadically, and then watched most of it in a marathon a couple weeks ago (thanks, USA), and, let's be honest, it was not great. However. For the sake of fairness, this is a list of the production issues the CI crew had to deal with during last year's filming: the introduction of a completely new character to the show; Julianne Nicholson's pregnancy; a new showrunner who got fired two episodes into filming, which I'm sure fucked everything up quite nicely; and then they shot out of sequence just for the pièce de résistance.
Compared to the clusterfuck of SVU's season ten, which was operating concurrently at full cast and crew strength, there isn't even a choice as to the better show. As for the storylines, I will take two seasons of ANGST and one season of blaaargh over the five seasons and counting of bullet train mandolin spin cycle giraffe juice on offer from the folks at SVU.
And as for characters, okay, Elliot and Olivia are barely recognizable as people anymore, let alone characters with consistent anything. and while I would prefer it if Goren would stop rambling around crime scenes like a big, sad mountain bear, it's not like any of it's not justifiably the result of the ANGST seasons, and then there's Eames, dear, snarky, practical Eames, partnered with Nichols in the season finale and still recognizably and very much herself. I am making a heart in the air with my hands, is how I feel about THAT.
(She's my favorite. It's like her and Mike Cutter, giant gap, everyone else.)
deux. these are their stories
So, it's really easy to watch Law and Order in any of its permutations on American TV (How to find L&O, a comprehensive guide -> Turn on TV. Wait.) but I think not really easy to get into in any sort of fannish sense, because they're pretty strict procedurals, each with a very specific formula that the plot (usually) adheres to (although in the case of SVU, the plot formula is basically "crazy time") Character stuff is lightly sprinkled in with the plots, the idea is that the viewer learns about the characters in the course of watching them do their jobs. A casual viewer tunes in to see someone reliably murdered or robbed or raped, the investigation that follows, the crime solved or not. Characters leave and are replaced with little fuss. Lather, rinse, repeat for twenty years.
But if you're not a casual viewer, then the three shows have two parts, the plot and the story. On original Law and Order, the plot is the murder of the week, but the story last year was the Lawyers, Mike and Connie and Jack McCoy, versus the corrupt New York governor, and it was pretty awesome, parceled out in tiny increments week by week for the entire year and wrapped up nicely in the season finale. On SVU, the plots are at least supposed to do with sex crimes, and how terrible they are, but the story for years and years has been about Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson, both separately and together. What broke SVU wasn't really the plotting (which was and is completely terrible) but that the writers took Elliot and Olivia to a certain place in their development and just left them there. For years. They broke the story with inattention, and the show itself feels tired and worn out because it keeps twisting back in on itself and not moving forward.
And then there's Criminal Intent. Which has plot, the story you thought was happening if you weren't paying attention, and the story that's actually been going on.
trois. that's because you were looking at the wrong cop
Criminal Intent is supposed to be the more "cerebral" of the shows (and if you read that to mean "boring" you...would not always be wrong). The plots focus much more on psychological motivation than the other two, and the victims and suspects are often poets, playwrights, museum owners, and college professors. The episodes typically end with the perp breaking down under psychological intimidation/trickery, endings which production seriously does refer to as "arias". No...comment?
As advertised and discussed by, like, actual critics, Criminal Intent's story is about the detective who usually does the breaking down: Robert Goren, a tortured genius and brilliant detective with an encyclopedic mind. CI is a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes myth, with Goren's partner, Alexandra Eames, as the supportive Watson figure, and the beautiful, deadly Nicole Wallace standing in for Professor Moriarty.
Except not really. CI is interesting to me because the story itself changes depending on how closely you read the text, how much of the past scraps of character information you retain when you watch.
My dad used to watch CI with me, and I remember a particular conversation we had. He liked the show for Goren, the brilliant detective. I mentioned how much I liked Eames:
Dad: But she hardly does anything!
Me: *brief facepalm* You have to watch her.
Dad: But--
Me: Just watch her.
The next episode we saw together contained this scene:
Goren and Eames are tossing the office of a prison warden. Goren is clearly impatient with whatever they're doing.
Eames: *snaps her fingers, gestures to the side* Books!
Goren: *shuffles over to the bookcase*
Dad: Oh.
Alex Eames is not the Watson. She drives the car, she is the senior partner, when they bust down a door she is always the first one inside. Despite her diminutive stature, she is the one you would not want to meet in a dark alley; it is made clear, through drips and drops over years, that she runs pass interference between her partner and literally the entire world, that she is brave and clever and awesome all on her own; and I have seen many a casual viewer miss this entirely, because it's all done underhanded, in single lines, shared glances and metaphor, and a metric tonnage of snark. While Goren is Goren-ing it up all over the joint, there's Eames, quietly rolling her eyes, the other half of the clockwork. A bigger gesture conceals a smaller one, the magicians say.
Criminal Intent isn't a story about a single detective, it's a story about a partnership, and if CI was originally set up to mirror the Holmes story, then it's spent years deconstructing the shit out of it, and it's mostly because: Alex Eames is not the Watson.
Which is why catching up with the last couple seasons of CI has been so interesting, because they finally brought all that stuff out into the open. It is made obvious several times over that Goren, without Eames, equals bad things happening. Very, very bad things. In one episode, all the trappings that made Goren the wunderkind detective figure: his Moriarty, his mentor, his tortured family, are completely obliterated. The only significant person left? Alex, who he earlier almost loses, ironically, in a desperate bid to get back to her. And, Goren's mental health is both questioned and questionable. In short, he loses the infalliability we associate with Sherlock Holmes. Dude goes over Reichenbach Falls, he ain't coming back up.
Robert Goren is not Sherlock Holmes, and Alex Eames is not Dr. Watson. And I think we're all clear on this now, because even a casual viewer couldn't have missed what they did.
So season eight is boring but interesting, because they spend it circling warily around what happens next.
Remember "Lady's Man"? You know, that one? The one when Goren asks Eames if she slept with that creepy bad guy? When Goren later throws that guy over a desk and hands his cuffs over to Eames all: "Look, I brought you a present!" Where there was, to be frank, quite a lot of Looking going on?
quatre. did you sleep with him?
That, I think, is the beginning of a different story.
Did I seriously just write all of that, oh, my goodness.
In my defense, it's Sunday. (Also, meet my new iTouch! It's AWESOME.)
(aj, this is somehow all your fault, FYI.)
un. you're starting to remind me of someone...
Rewatching CI: like visiting the grandparent that doesn't have dementia. I watched season eight sporadically, and then watched most of it in a marathon a couple weeks ago (thanks, USA), and, let's be honest, it was not great. However. For the sake of fairness, this is a list of the production issues the CI crew had to deal with during last year's filming: the introduction of a completely new character to the show; Julianne Nicholson's pregnancy; a new showrunner who got fired two episodes into filming, which I'm sure fucked everything up quite nicely; and then they shot out of sequence just for the pièce de résistance.
Compared to the clusterfuck of SVU's season ten, which was operating concurrently at full cast and crew strength, there isn't even a choice as to the better show. As for the storylines, I will take two seasons of ANGST and one season of blaaargh over the five seasons and counting of bullet train mandolin spin cycle giraffe juice on offer from the folks at SVU.
And as for characters, okay, Elliot and Olivia are barely recognizable as people anymore, let alone characters with consistent anything. and while I would prefer it if Goren would stop rambling around crime scenes like a big, sad mountain bear, it's not like any of it's not justifiably the result of the ANGST seasons, and then there's Eames, dear, snarky, practical Eames, partnered with Nichols in the season finale and still recognizably and very much herself. I am making a heart in the air with my hands, is how I feel about THAT.
(She's my favorite. It's like her and Mike Cutter, giant gap, everyone else.)
deux. these are their stories
So, it's really easy to watch Law and Order in any of its permutations on American TV (How to find L&O, a comprehensive guide -> Turn on TV. Wait.) but I think not really easy to get into in any sort of fannish sense, because they're pretty strict procedurals, each with a very specific formula that the plot (usually) adheres to (although in the case of SVU, the plot formula is basically "crazy time") Character stuff is lightly sprinkled in with the plots, the idea is that the viewer learns about the characters in the course of watching them do their jobs. A casual viewer tunes in to see someone reliably murdered or robbed or raped, the investigation that follows, the crime solved or not. Characters leave and are replaced with little fuss. Lather, rinse, repeat for twenty years.
But if you're not a casual viewer, then the three shows have two parts, the plot and the story. On original Law and Order, the plot is the murder of the week, but the story last year was the Lawyers, Mike and Connie and Jack McCoy, versus the corrupt New York governor, and it was pretty awesome, parceled out in tiny increments week by week for the entire year and wrapped up nicely in the season finale. On SVU, the plots are at least supposed to do with sex crimes, and how terrible they are, but the story for years and years has been about Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson, both separately and together. What broke SVU wasn't really the plotting (which was and is completely terrible) but that the writers took Elliot and Olivia to a certain place in their development and just left them there. For years. They broke the story with inattention, and the show itself feels tired and worn out because it keeps twisting back in on itself and not moving forward.
And then there's Criminal Intent. Which has plot, the story you thought was happening if you weren't paying attention, and the story that's actually been going on.
trois. that's because you were looking at the wrong cop
Criminal Intent is supposed to be the more "cerebral" of the shows (and if you read that to mean "boring" you...would not always be wrong). The plots focus much more on psychological motivation than the other two, and the victims and suspects are often poets, playwrights, museum owners, and college professors. The episodes typically end with the perp breaking down under psychological intimidation/trickery, endings which production seriously does refer to as "arias". No...comment?
As advertised and discussed by, like, actual critics, Criminal Intent's story is about the detective who usually does the breaking down: Robert Goren, a tortured genius and brilliant detective with an encyclopedic mind. CI is a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes myth, with Goren's partner, Alexandra Eames, as the supportive Watson figure, and the beautiful, deadly Nicole Wallace standing in for Professor Moriarty.
Except not really. CI is interesting to me because the story itself changes depending on how closely you read the text, how much of the past scraps of character information you retain when you watch.
My dad used to watch CI with me, and I remember a particular conversation we had. He liked the show for Goren, the brilliant detective. I mentioned how much I liked Eames:
Dad: But she hardly does anything!
Me: *brief facepalm* You have to watch her.
Dad: But--
Me: Just watch her.
The next episode we saw together contained this scene:
Goren and Eames are tossing the office of a prison warden. Goren is clearly impatient with whatever they're doing.
Eames: *snaps her fingers, gestures to the side* Books!
Goren: *shuffles over to the bookcase*
Dad: Oh.
Alex Eames is not the Watson. She drives the car, she is the senior partner, when they bust down a door she is always the first one inside. Despite her diminutive stature, she is the one you would not want to meet in a dark alley; it is made clear, through drips and drops over years, that she runs pass interference between her partner and literally the entire world, that she is brave and clever and awesome all on her own; and I have seen many a casual viewer miss this entirely, because it's all done underhanded, in single lines, shared glances and metaphor, and a metric tonnage of snark. While Goren is Goren-ing it up all over the joint, there's Eames, quietly rolling her eyes, the other half of the clockwork. A bigger gesture conceals a smaller one, the magicians say.
Criminal Intent isn't a story about a single detective, it's a story about a partnership, and if CI was originally set up to mirror the Holmes story, then it's spent years deconstructing the shit out of it, and it's mostly because: Alex Eames is not the Watson.
Which is why catching up with the last couple seasons of CI has been so interesting, because they finally brought all that stuff out into the open. It is made obvious several times over that Goren, without Eames, equals bad things happening. Very, very bad things. In one episode, all the trappings that made Goren the wunderkind detective figure: his Moriarty, his mentor, his tortured family, are completely obliterated. The only significant person left? Alex, who he earlier almost loses, ironically, in a desperate bid to get back to her. And, Goren's mental health is both questioned and questionable. In short, he loses the infalliability we associate with Sherlock Holmes. Dude goes over Reichenbach Falls, he ain't coming back up.
Robert Goren is not Sherlock Holmes, and Alex Eames is not Dr. Watson. And I think we're all clear on this now, because even a casual viewer couldn't have missed what they did.
So season eight is boring but interesting, because they spend it circling warily around what happens next.
Remember "Lady's Man"? You know, that one? The one when Goren asks Eames if she slept with that creepy bad guy? When Goren later throws that guy over a desk and hands his cuffs over to Eames all: "Look, I brought you a present!" Where there was, to be frank, quite a lot of Looking going on?
quatre. did you sleep with him?
That, I think, is the beginning of a different story.
Did I seriously just write all of that, oh, my goodness.