NOTE: Last week, Law & Ordocki referred to Richard Belzer as “the world’s greatest sex machine”. This was incorrect; in fact, Kris Kristofferson is “the world’s greatest sex machine”. Richard Belzer is “Connecticut’s greatest sex machine, 1973-1978, 1980, 1983″. We apologize for the error.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent is easily the least self-assured of Dick Wolf’s children. While Law & Order and Law & Order: Rapeity Rape Rape have their fair share of terrible episodes, never do you think to yourself “wow, they forgot what they were even supposed to be doing”. This show sort of began as Law & Order with scenes from the criminals’ perspective, which largely was abandoned because it was terrible and not at all insightful. Vincent D’Onofrio’s character was the breakout, a Columbo with the serial numbers filed off, with Kathryn Erbe as the only female inmate at Osw…I mean, his dry partner who makes sure he doesn’t swallow his own tongue in the middle of an interrogation. This worked fine until D’Onofrio’s body rebelled against him and “exhaustion” (read: bloating like the inflatable pig Peter Frampton got at Pink Floyd’s yard sale) brought on a secondary set of detectives who’d alternate every week. For about three years this consisted of “let’s make nice with Chris Noth” and a revolving door of pretty women who weren’t particularly good at acting. Seasons 8 and 9 featured Jeffrey Hollingsworth Goldblum as the co-lead (8) and then lead detective for the series, since eventually D’Onofrio was Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau. A pity it’s when the writing went from “bad” to “really, how did anyone approve any of this?”. Oh, and after its sixth of ten seasons it moved from getting shitty ratings at NBC to getting good ratings at USA Characters Welcome. Criminal Intent is the red headed stepchild (non-redheaded stepchildren are, of course, to be lauded for their maturity in grappling with changing family dynamics) of the franchise to be sure. At least Law & Order: Los Angeles was humanely shot in the head after a season instead of shambling on at Telemundo for a few years, forcing Corey Stoll to reshape his mustache into a tilde.

That’s one lonely as fuck cast “walking together pretending they’re friends” scene.

Season 9’s “Disciple” features Jeff Goldblum as Zack Nichols (never name a main character of anything ‘Zack’) and Saffron Burrows as the Stan Lee alliterative Serena Stevens. Yes, each character had a limited number of episodes to them (24 for Nichols, 15 for Stevens), but they may as well have been a pair of “you” in a Choose Your Own Adventure Book. Nichols’ characterization rests entirely on Jeff Goldblum’s acting tics whereas Saffron Burrows was faced with a dilemma regarding her character. Burrows is British, and her skill set gave her two options: keep the accent at bay or develop Serena Stevens into something. Guess which one she picked. If you expect more out of her than saying words without lapsing into chimney sweep, might as well exit now. Anyway, the major case the Major Case Squad handles this week establishes “major case” for the writers means “whatever the fuck crime we feel like writing about”, as Nichols and Stevens investigate a dead guy in a car who was killed after a blowjob. After Giuliani wiped out most crime by busing all the homeless and Death Wish street toughs to a garbage barge, I guess Bloomberg felt the next step was cracking down on post-blowjob homicides.

“Dear God, I found the rest of the season’s scripts!”

This connects to the first scene of “Disciple”, in which Stevens goes to Illinois to witness the execution of a serial killer named, ugh, Elvis. Yeah, there’s also later an “Elvis has left the building” gag and I fucking hate it. Before the Hong Kong cocktail takes Elvis’ life, he tells the assembled he was innocent of the last murder attributed to him and the real killer’s out there. Stevens assured Grieving Mother Actress #452 that “it’s not true, he’s evil”. Well, that settles it. It connects to the not at all major case in that the prostitute who blew the dead guy is found dead, you see, with all the trademarks of an Elvis kill. It involves thigh hickeys, let’s leave it at that. I like how the detectives briefly entertain that the killer’s a Son of Sam copycat, with mention made that his next parole hearing is in a month, then dismiss it in favor of Elvis. I want the alternate version where Jeff Goldblum proves David Berkowitz was innocent the whole time. So what if has no relation to reality? Hasn’t stopped Dick Wolf before.

I’d like to know what denotes a “special collectors edition” of Nookie Magazine. I know Desmond Tutu used to write opinion pieces for it…

Serial killers perform community outreach, mentoring kids, as established in a scene that utterly wastes special guest star Lorraine Bracco, whose character doesn’t receive a name. Foster home mother = perfectly cromulent name. If this were SVU she’d be revealed as den mother to a team of serial killers that somehow tied into Shirley Sherrod’s speech or whatever. Criminal Intent is, at least in this episode, essentially Criminal Minds as written by idiots whose first language is English. Elvis mentored some kid named Dale in the art of gardening and murdering prostitutes, and in adulthood Dale has combined the two into Fargo. Except for when he decides “fuck it, I’ll leave a body”, he’ll turn his dead ladies of the evening/friends of the road into mulch. Circle of life and all that. He has a wife and son (Little Elvis FUCK OFF, CRIMINAL INTENT) and takes great interest in helping out an employee who suffers from Rain Manism. I couldn’t tell if he was meant to be on the spectrum or it was a combination of bad acting and bad directing. More importantly I didn’t give a fuck. The “mystery” of “Disciple” is pretty terrible, considering all it takes to connect the dots is finding a Dale dumb enough to name his small business after a serial killer.

Of course you’re good with numbers. If the autistic didn’t have some hidden skill, be it numbers, counting cards or whatever the hell it was in Mercury Rising, they’d be put to sleep!

The creators designed the show’s interrogations as something to set it apart from the other procedurals. They cap the episode and provide a measure of closure, given the courtroom sequences evaporated over the course of the seasons. It worked well for the series, as D’Onofrio can take those scenes for a fucking walk, using his weird energy and off-putting physicality to create memorable, somewhat disturbing scenes in which he mindfucks the criminals into confessing. Here it doesn’t work so well because you don’t know who the fuck these characters are and why anyone should care. Goldblum doesn’t sleepwalk, but it’s clear he is not going to rework what’s on the page into a compelling character. He probably needed to renovate a deck or a solarium and once that gets covered, zoom, he’s gone. The episode uses a common shortcut to mask incompetence at establishing stakes by making the case important for Saffron Burrows. Elvis was the first case she made back in Chicago! You can tell it’s personal based on the amount of time Burrows yells at the suspect. Her arc in “Disciple” involves her grappling with the possibility she fucked up the case and Dale did it, calling into question her whole career, but then it turns out Elvis did do it. It’s like the episode of The X-Files where Mulder thinks maybe this serial child killer was responsible for his sister’s disappearance, only without the laser pointer dreams or any quality. In the end, the interrogation fulfills the desired objectives because the script says it happens. They have enough forensic evidence and a confession to make an interrogation superfluous; they only make Dale talk about an unrelated Illinois murder to make Saffron Burrows feel better.

I liked the guy better when Boyd blew his brains out in the first episode of Justified.

The show understands a few more things than SVU does, but that’s not saying much. For example, Stevens and her old partner/mentor/bartender in Pulp Fiction worry about the current case jeopardizing the conviction made in the Courtney Gunderson murder. Criminal Intent seems to comprehend Illinois and New York are different jurisdictions, and maybe Illinois cops should deal with possibly reopening an Illinois murder instead of Jeff Goldblum, but eventually it’s a lot of “fuck it”. Sure, THE REAL KILLER would relocate to New York right after Elvis died to continue killing, or a copycat would continue in New York, hoping Major Cases doesn’t have a detective from Illinois who knows the signature by heart. The same “fuck it” allows detectives to just fly off halfway across the country to interview two people. Telephones, Skype, perhaps you’ve heard of them? Given Dick Wolf created Chicago Fire and Chicago PD, both of which exist within the Law & Order universe, maybe Illinois is just 50 miles up the road of New York City. Might as well go Elseworlds with everything. Again, “fuck it”.

I want to know who thought “dramatic push in on photo of victim doing laundry” was a good choice.

Fun fact: for the USA seasons of CI, the original theme is replaced by the one from the one and done “we’re fucked cause Jerry Orbach is dead” series Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Come on the fuck on, you do that, you’re actively wanting the series to circle the drain. “Well, uh, we thought with the network switch Criminal Intent could change its premise to My Mother The Car‘s.” The show at one point did fit into the mission statement of the USA Network insofar as the cases and mysteries didn’t matter to the extent Vincent D’Onofrio’s Robert Goren’s life unraveling did. Character over plot, which is the antithesis of the original series incidentally. I’ll go into the catastrophic, hilarious melodrama of Goren’s life into more detail in another column, but I’ll give you a taste: his mentor decided to kill his brother, his nemesis and himself so Goren won’t be encumbered by his personal life. The Flash’s villain Zoom did something similar in a comic book about a man who can run really fast because a lightning bolt hit him and some beakers of chemicals. By Season 9, though, characterization took a backseat while the focus became filling time. You cannot describe Jeff Goldblum’s character in a sentence without using Jeff Goldblum’s name. For Stevens, she, uh, lived in Chicago before living in New York. A single moving day encapsulates her whole life.

It says a lot about how weak and tiresome Criminal Intent became in its later years that the one bright spot of my viewing experience came from recognition that Leslie Hendrix showed up as the medical examiner Elizabeth Rodgers. “Oh, hey, a recurring character from the franchise universe who was in good episodes years ago said some lines of exposition. Always nice to see a familiar face push the shitty plot along.” Otherwise, like I said, it resembles Criminal Minds without the things that make that program great (transcendentally atrocious writing, gratuitous violence, irksome bumper scenes that may as well be called “baby’s first character writing”, Thomas Gibson’s gerbil face) and with the things that make you dumber for having experienced it. I’d take latter day Special Victims Unit over this shit any day.