I watched the two newest episodes for Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Criminal Intent tonight. I was amazed by how much better the Criminal Intent episode was.
SVU has become histrionic. Really - see the definition for
Histrionic Personality Disorder. Not only did it rehash a previous SVU episode (which was, in its day, and in comparison, quite good) about a 28-year-old woman masquerading as a 16-year-old girl, jumping from foster home to foster home in a desperate attempt to stay 16 and loved, but it rehashed it in a way that made me laugh out loud several times. The girl was constantly in pigtails, was run into by a car, had her jaw wired shut at one point and just moaned in anger at the detectives when they accused her of being 28, and eventually defended herself in court on statuatory rape charges brought by her former boyfriends, in crutches and pigtails. Of course, the whole episode was histrionic - starting with the woman who's been convinced that a sex offender was behind her son's death for the past 10 years, then misidentifies the dead body as her son when she hasn't seen him in 10 years, leading the detectives to nearly arrest the sex offender - on that evidence alone. See what I mean? If they had stuck with the "extreme fighting" thing and allowed the teenage boy who killed his best friend during an attempt at "extreme fighting" to just say what he originally said: that he failed at everything that was rewarded at high school, and so he found extreme fighting, and in that he could be God - now, that would have made for a good point, and a point that I believe parents of high schoolers need to hear. The disenfranchisement and alienation of many teenagers nowadays, leading them to turn to outlets otherwise not acceptable in adult society, is very powerful. Instead, SVU managed to turn it into a scintillating soap opera about a grown woman who still looks 16 and sleeps with lots of little boys, like Mary Kay Letorneau or something. I was so disappointed.
Criminal Intent, however, has become personal and yet remains extremely cerebral. I actually only came in during the latter half of the episode, but the most important part was in the second half anyway. Basically, there was a serial killer - in his 60s. They found a bunch of photographs that he'd taken of women who he'd later raped and killed, spanning the decades, and were trying to identify the women from the pictures. In the end, naturally, they had to get the serial killer himself to identify them, though in exchange he wanted a delay in his execution. They find a new batch of photos at his summer house and as he's going through them, describing them, he talks about one of them as being from the same neighborhood as, and having the same family members as, Goren's mother. Goren's mother is still alive. He questions her about it, and then his older hobo brother. Both are a little schizophrenic and his mother is dying of cancer - there's indication that his brother has only shown up at her side at this late hour because he wants to make sure that he's in the will. He finds out that the serial killer was known to the family as Uncle Mark, the handyman, who would spend weekends with his mother while the father was away - and they had some kind of a "car crash" together that changed his mother (he raped her?). All this leads the captain to take Goren off the case, but Eames asks that he be put back on, promising to look out for him if he starts losing control, which he does, of course. He talks to the serial killer again and after realizing that his suspicions are correct, he tries to choke him in the brick prison tomb. The killer says, "Kill me, I know you can do it", but Goren stops. He then visits his mother in the hospital again, asking, "When did you see him? What about the year before I was born?" Becoming hysterical, his mother says, "Why do you have to bring this up?" and then, "I never knew, Bobby..." She was never sure who his father was - the absent husband, or the serial killer. She then dies. The serial killer is executed. Goren is clearly devastated, and for good reason - I can't imagine there are much things worse than having to disengage from one of your pillars - your parents - because they have turned out to be so bad.
I am, a) very glad that Criminal Intent has been renewed for a seventh season, because I think it does have a strong core audience of fans, and b) somewhat disappointed that SVU is so much more popular. I think SVU used to be much better - but popularity has gone to its head, as popularity has a way of doing, and has turned it into a show that is not worthy of the mighty Law & Order franchise, because it has lost its intellectual complexity. Criminal Intent has always been the most cerebral, explaining why it's the least popular (sigh), but it's also the most rational and level-headed, which makes the personal character developments all the more meaningful.
Yes, I know it's very shippy, but I think it's also fairly restrained and in-character... especially if you've read some of the Goren/Eames out-of-character fanfictions out there.
Oh yeah, I've decided that "What New York Couples Fight About" would be a great song for a Criminal Intent AMV. Somebody should go make it.
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