Sunday Night Criminal Intent and In Plain Sight Blogging

***MAJOR SPOILER WARNING FOR LAST NIGHT’S LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT AND IN PLAIN SIGHT***

I watched Law & Order: Criminal Intent and In Plain Sight last night and decided I have a pathological need to share my down-and-dirty, unpolished impressions with all of you.

• L&O:CI

  Goren is officially back on Major Case, but Eames is playing cold. Then again, I probably would be too if I came dangerously close to shooting my partner because he was working a case undercover and failed to tell me.

  Right from the beginning of the episode we see that Eames is still more than just a little miffed at Goren’s actions in “Purgatory”. If she doesn’t have to talk to him she’s flat out ignoring him and you can see that he’s both puzzled and hurt by the whole thing. I gotta say: awesome. I’m really sick of shows that have a certain emotional tone in one episode and then, as if by magic, it’s all back to normal in the next episode, especially when we’re dealing with weighty issues like having the person you’ve spent the last seven years trusting implicitly lie to you about being in an extremely dangerous situation. They don’t have to be lovers to care deeply enough about each other to feel betrayed. Heck, if I’d worked that closely with somebody for seven years and we ended up facing each other with guns because they were undercover and didn’t tell me about it I’d be downright furious.

  Then there’s Captain Ross, who showed a major weakness I hope we won’t see again when he essentially ordered his detectives to leave a possible suspect alone. This of course blows up in his face and hopefully teaches him a valuable life lesson: Even your friends will use you if they’re trying to get out of a whole heap of trouble and you’re in a position to help them.

  By the end of the episode Goren and Eames are getting back into their vibe, but they aren’t quite there yet. I image Eames is going to hold onto Goren’s slip-up for a long time and I wouldn’t put it past her to throw it back in his face if he angers her enough in the future.

  As far as Goren’s appearance is concerned, I think he’s looking better than he did at the end of “Untethered”, but I’m seriously hoping he drops the beard (and the weight) sometime soon. It seems like he’s slimming down a bit, but it’s hard to make comparisons when he’s not dressing like he used to much to my chagrin (what can I say, I love a man in a suit). My guess is that the weight will eventually come off since the word is that Vincent D’Onofrio gained it intentionally for a role he was playing. I actually think it also helped with the Goren character, because people going through hard times tend to have major weight fluctuations and Goren had definitely been getting the short end of the stick.

• In Plain Sight

  Last night was the fourth episode of In Plain Sight and we were treated to our first very blatant display of major crushing between our two favorite Deputy U.S. Marshals. Of course, this is going to be going on for a while because even though it’s obvious to us viewers, it’s never obvious to the characters in the series (for example, Mulder and Scully of The X-Files).

  Marshall is a man of hidden depths. He went into medical speak and I was positively giddy because a) being a medic myself I understood exactly what he was talking about, and b) he got that exasperated look on his face everybody gets when they’re talking about something they think everybody should know but it’s obvious the person they’re talking to doesn’t get it. Poor Mary is worried sick and he’s making faces at her and passing out.

  Dave Foley was an oddly inspired choice to play a harmless looking man with connections to several contract killings committed by an assassin named “Lola”. He was incredibly narcissistic which I find Foley can pull off well, I don’t know why, but he does. Maybe it’s because he’s a comedic actor and comedy just doesn’t work right unless you’re paying attention to what’s causing the funny.

  At the end of the episode I was rather surprised to see Mary break down sobbing at the hospital while waiting for Marshall to come out of surgery. My curiosity is peaked as to just how far down this rabbit hole the writers and producers are going to go before they cool off the Mary-Marshall crushfest. I wonder only because Mary’s breakdown is probably one of the single most honest reactions to a horrible situation I’ve seen in a long time and I find it interesting. BTW, no, I’m not making up some love link between Mary and Marshall, you can find the actors, writers, and others involved talking about it in various interviews on the net.

I know those aren’t really polished, but as stated above they are my down-and-dirty impressions.