These are Their Stories?

Law & Order: Criminal Intent may be the most ironically named show on television, not for its title but for its subtitle.

If you haven't had the pleasure, the show, a spin-off from the original Law & Order series, follows two detectives from New York's "Major Case Squad" as they investigate high profile crimes. Unlike the original L & O, Criminal Intent styles itself less as a courtroom drama than as a Sherlock Holmes-inspired cat and mouse game between the detectives, Bobby Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe), and their prey, taking you inside the mind of each week's criminal super-geniuses as they plot their dastardly deeds and scheme to cover their tracks. Both in its title and in its conception, the show claims to take you into the mind of the beast, offering a window into the human psyche by exposing its base extremes. Goren, the ersatz Holmes, discerns not just every practical detail of his crime scene (e.g., the specific metal used in ceiling tacks for high end condos), but also the secret motivations that drive mad minds. Ya see, he himself is part genius, part craaazy. As the show's tagline says: "Where intellect defies evil."

The problem? I don't think I've ever seen them depict a criminal with an even halfway plausible motivation. Take last night's episode as a good example. Bernard, an aging playboy (Michael York) who actually grew up in a Thai prison, travels the world with his haram of rich, blond Manson-girls; in NY he runs a party-planning business, finding pretty people to populate socialite soirees, just as one of his nymphs, a real-estate agent, sizes up wealthy marks who can be wined, dined, and drugged out while their apartments are stripped to the bone, before they are eventually left for dead via herion OD. Bernard also hires an aspiring writer to chronicle his "heroic" life but is shocked when the guy depicts him as a sexually insecure psychopath. Imagine that. Well, long story not-so-short, Bernard has a male lackey chop the guy's head off, and they accidentally leave it in the fridge of an apartment they've stripped. Oops. As payback for the stupidity, Bernard has his newest nymph strangle the drug-paralyzed lackey with his own necktie while the other nymphs stare on in admiration. Bernard finally gets his when, after making bail (!), he's stabbed with a syringe by a former nymph who has gone solo--and lesbian--and who is the show's recurring psycho-ette (Olivia D'Abo). I'd describe other episodes but they make even less sense. OK, OK, did I mention the racist billionaire (Malcolm McDowell) with the young Vietnamese wife who killed his own son so that his other son wouldn't move to Seattle? You get the point.

In other words, the show which purports to be full of psychological insight into "criminal intent" is really just a trashy melodrama. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it ain't exactly the cold realism you'd expect from the title. I do have to laugh at lines like these, however, from Wikipedia: "Criminal Intent plots and characterization are notably more complex and subtle than the original Law & Order, indicating that the series is aimed at a more sophisticated audience." What the show really is is an attempt by NBC to hang with CBS's similarly surreal cop noir, CSI. Where the one takes you inside the sinews, the other takes you inside the synapses. Both offer the illusion of insight, either scientific or intuitive, while instead giving you malevolent mannequins. In both CSI and CI, each show starts off with an interesting set up only to unravel with a final act filled with cackling, scenery-chewing villains and sloganeering, morally indignant officers. Although I often watch CI (and sometimes even CSI), I typically end up longing for the days of cop show plausibility: the gritty realism of NYPD Blue or Homicide: Life on the Street. In those shows, the bad guys were usually just stupid, confused, or overwhelmed, but at least they seemed recognizable: the "banality of evil" to namecheck Arendt.

Of course, those dramas thrived in a more realistic era--the 1990s. Today, we like our Snidely Whiplashes painted in bright, psychotic colors, just in case we're the ones who are confused.