OMGWTFBBQ, a Law and Order rant.
SOMEBODY PLEASE REMOVE JOHN MUNCH FROM MY BRAIN. PREFERABLY WITH A CROWBAR. AND A PROTECTIVE SUIT, BECAUSE HE MAY NOT SHOOT YOU, BUT HE WILL SNARK YOU TO DEATH.
Okay, now that that's done...
First time I'm using this icon for the base rather than the meaning.
Why I Didn't Like Law & Order: CI.
And it lies entirely in the dynamic between the lead detective, who I shall call Vincent because I don't remember his character name, and his partner, who I shall call Little Blonde Thing (henceforth LBT) because I don't remember either of her names.
Both of their characters bug me, as do the dynamic. Let's start with Vincent: I simply can not tell what they're trying to do with the boy. First off, he stammers all over the place, which could either be a slight speech defect or the director trying to make things look Naturalistic. I simply can't tell. I think at times that they're trying to make at times Crazy Cop--which would really be fun if they actually pulled it off. But he isn't presented as crazy, none of his associates treat him as crazy, so he just kinda comes off as weird. And not even in the good way, but in a way that seems to scream Vincent D'Onofrio is doing random silly shit in an attempt to make this character more interesting than the SVU cast, and, you know what? He's failing. And sometimes it seems like they're trying to pull off Geek Cop, but really, you simply can't top Grissom for Geek Cop. Grissom is beyond Geek Cop, really. He's the Meta Geek Cop. And he (along with Wesley, Giles, and Schieska) can live in my library anytime. But I digress.
So Vincent bugs me, just because he's all over the place and makes no sense--as opposed to being all over the place in a distinct and coherent way, which would then be highly entertaining. (Like Haruko. That's who the next Law & Order should star--Haruko, solving crime through the busy streets of New York on her trusty Vespa! Though who the hell could balance her out as a partner? Jack Sparrow?) Though I give him points for getting a distinctive physicality down pat--he points at things the same way every time, which lends a nice continuity, and he makes good consistent funny faces, although they do always remind me faintly of The Rock. And he is written as a very clever, laterally-thinking fellow, which I like. Maybe they were trying to go for Idiot Savante Cop? But they should have either gone all the way or not tried at all. Vincent is halfway on a lot of things, and it's distracting.
But then there's LBT. She's pretty. She's blonde. She's squeamish--as squeamish as a cop can be. She wears tight low-slung black pants despite not being a teenager. And all of those things could be excused if she had a character, but really, she doesn't. It's like they transplanted Catherine over from CSI and in doing so removed all her balls, all her personality traits, and let her make faces when her partner smells things. She even has the fanservicy habit of running around in tank tops on crime scenes--which I can forgive Catherine because she has a character, but again, LBT doesn't. (Though I do admit she has very nice arm muscles, but arm muscles do not a character make. Back muscles go further, but there's still more to Eliot and we should not take him as an example.)
Now, watching the little clips and ads USA keeps spewing all over the place, one gets the impression LBT is the keeper of this Crazy Cop Vincent. And if they'd actually done that, that would've been really, really cool. That was what made me actually sit down and watch an ep. or two of CI--I started thinking, okay, you got the guy who's smart but nuts, and you got his partner who liases, as it were, grounds him, asks the questions while he smells the suspect's hair or whatever. But she doesn't actually function that way in the show. He does all the talking. She has no memorable dialogue whatsoever. She doesn't approach people, she doesn't mediate between Vincent and reality. She stands at his side and looks pretty, and that's it. And it bugs the living fuck out of me. Especially since she's a woman and he's a man, and especially since this is after SVU and the sheer glorious mature kickassness of Olivia. Is this a tendency in big franchises, to eventually backslide not only on characterization but on gender portrayal? *pokes Not Star Trek: Enterprise* It's certainly a depressing one, y0.
I'll give her points for the hot arm muscles, as stated before, but that's all she gets from me.
One feels, watching it, almost as if they wanted to give Teh Vincent D'Onofrio his own solo detective show, but realized at the last moment they coudn't because, y'know, cops have partners and shit, and rather than bothering to work out a partner for him, they permanently contracted a cute silent blonde woman to hover in the vicinity of his right buttock while he continued to act like he had a solo detective show.
Now, admittedly, I've only watched a couple of episodes. But something like Law & Order is written on character formulas most of the time--it has to be, because the suspects are the focus of the story. (CSI gets to avoid this, because most of the suspects are provided from the props department, not from casting, and garner interest only by the amount of fake blood in their vicinity. But Law & Order doesn't.) The trick is whether the character formulas are discernable (which in CI they aren't), interesting (which in CI they barely are), and work together in ensemble and balance each other out (which in CI they don't).
In short, I'm sticking to my SVU, baby!
Okay, now that that's done...
First time I'm using this icon for the base rather than the meaning.
Why I Didn't Like Law & Order: CI.
And it lies entirely in the dynamic between the lead detective, who I shall call Vincent because I don't remember his character name, and his partner, who I shall call Little Blonde Thing (henceforth LBT) because I don't remember either of her names.
Both of their characters bug me, as do the dynamic. Let's start with Vincent: I simply can not tell what they're trying to do with the boy. First off, he stammers all over the place, which could either be a slight speech defect or the director trying to make things look Naturalistic. I simply can't tell. I think at times that they're trying to make at times Crazy Cop--which would really be fun if they actually pulled it off. But he isn't presented as crazy, none of his associates treat him as crazy, so he just kinda comes off as weird. And not even in the good way, but in a way that seems to scream Vincent D'Onofrio is doing random silly shit in an attempt to make this character more interesting than the SVU cast, and, you know what? He's failing. And sometimes it seems like they're trying to pull off Geek Cop, but really, you simply can't top Grissom for Geek Cop. Grissom is beyond Geek Cop, really. He's the Meta Geek Cop. And he (along with Wesley, Giles, and Schieska) can live in my library anytime. But I digress.
So Vincent bugs me, just because he's all over the place and makes no sense--as opposed to being all over the place in a distinct and coherent way, which would then be highly entertaining. (Like Haruko. That's who the next Law & Order should star--Haruko, solving crime through the busy streets of New York on her trusty Vespa! Though who the hell could balance her out as a partner? Jack Sparrow?) Though I give him points for getting a distinctive physicality down pat--he points at things the same way every time, which lends a nice continuity, and he makes good consistent funny faces, although they do always remind me faintly of The Rock. And he is written as a very clever, laterally-thinking fellow, which I like. Maybe they were trying to go for Idiot Savante Cop? But they should have either gone all the way or not tried at all. Vincent is halfway on a lot of things, and it's distracting.
But then there's LBT. She's pretty. She's blonde. She's squeamish--as squeamish as a cop can be. She wears tight low-slung black pants despite not being a teenager. And all of those things could be excused if she had a character, but really, she doesn't. It's like they transplanted Catherine over from CSI and in doing so removed all her balls, all her personality traits, and let her make faces when her partner smells things. She even has the fanservicy habit of running around in tank tops on crime scenes--which I can forgive Catherine because she has a character, but again, LBT doesn't. (Though I do admit she has very nice arm muscles, but arm muscles do not a character make. Back muscles go further, but there's still more to Eliot and we should not take him as an example.)
Now, watching the little clips and ads USA keeps spewing all over the place, one gets the impression LBT is the keeper of this Crazy Cop Vincent. And if they'd actually done that, that would've been really, really cool. That was what made me actually sit down and watch an ep. or two of CI--I started thinking, okay, you got the guy who's smart but nuts, and you got his partner who liases, as it were, grounds him, asks the questions while he smells the suspect's hair or whatever. But she doesn't actually function that way in the show. He does all the talking. She has no memorable dialogue whatsoever. She doesn't approach people, she doesn't mediate between Vincent and reality. She stands at his side and looks pretty, and that's it. And it bugs the living fuck out of me. Especially since she's a woman and he's a man, and especially since this is after SVU and the sheer glorious mature kickassness of Olivia. Is this a tendency in big franchises, to eventually backslide not only on characterization but on gender portrayal? *pokes Not Star Trek: Enterprise* It's certainly a depressing one, y0.
I'll give her points for the hot arm muscles, as stated before, but that's all she gets from me.
One feels, watching it, almost as if they wanted to give Teh Vincent D'Onofrio his own solo detective show, but realized at the last moment they coudn't because, y'know, cops have partners and shit, and rather than bothering to work out a partner for him, they permanently contracted a cute silent blonde woman to hover in the vicinity of his right buttock while he continued to act like he had a solo detective show.
Now, admittedly, I've only watched a couple of episodes. But something like Law & Order is written on character formulas most of the time--it has to be, because the suspects are the focus of the story. (CSI gets to avoid this, because most of the suspects are provided from the props department, not from casting, and garner interest only by the amount of fake blood in their vicinity. But Law & Order doesn't.) The trick is whether the character formulas are discernable (which in CI they aren't), interesting (which in CI they barely are), and work together in ensemble and balance each other out (which in CI they don't).
In short, I'm sticking to my SVU, baby!