Wolcott vs. Wolf
James Wolcott unloads on Law & Order in his newest post, and lands some vicious uppercuts on the latest modifications to Criminal Intent. In my medical opinion, the best thing about this show is that it ISN'T like Jerry Bruckheimer's awful CSI, so this analysis is mildly disconcerting...
"The new openings for Law & Order: Criminal Intent are dismaying. L& O took a triple whammy in the offseason--losing Jamey Sheridan, Courtney Vance, and Annabella Sciorra--so it's understandable that the series would be tempted to overcompensate to prove it's still in the game. Apparently afraid of having lost a Zeitgeist step or on all the forensic shows tunneling Fantastic Voyage-like into cadavers, L & O: CI has C.S.I.-ized its murder enactments, utilizing fancy zoom-ins, spazzy jumpcuts, and a battery of audiovisual noir effects capped with a gruesome fillip (such as last night's needlessly showy impaling of a motorcyclist on a spiked fence). What's wrong with this Bruckheimerization?
For one thing, its hopped-up hyperbole is out of key with the rest of the show, which goes for an urban realism rooted in location shooting, laconic authenticity in bit roles, and at least a semblance of plausibility. The black comedy of the L & O intros comes from the intrusion of mayhem into everyday New York routine. It's as if no one can run a simple errand without wandering into a crime scene. One second a Typical New Yorker is walking a dog along Riverside Drive or picking a kid up from pre-school, only to find an arm dangling from the dumpster, or the body of a tranny hooker draped over the hood of a gypsy cab. The reason the L & O franchise wears so well in reruns is because it doesn't try to upstage the city in which it's set. The new openings, with their extra order of relish, are noisy concoctions that seem to have leapt straight from the storyboard. In their desire to be hip (or at least hipper than L & O's regular fare), they end up looking derivative and dated, because this is now how every forensic show slices and dices its victims on the chopping block as TV edges into Hostel/Saw vio-porn. The moral dimension to L & O: CI is being subverted by shock-value technique that's lost its shock and value.
Last week's L & O premiere was a seesaw affair, the gesticulating hamming of John Glover as a genius profiler neatly offset by the shrewd, wary underplaying of Martha Plimpton as his daughter. The scene in which D'Onofrio's Goren got her to confess by chatting with her outside the interrogation room as if torture-murder were just an interesting hobby she happened to take up was a nifty piece of writing, acting, staging.
Last night's ep, which introduced Noth's new partner (played by Julianne Nicholson, who was lavished with closeups as if she were a cute snowcone with sprinkles), was a complete miss, and a total mess. The actors playing of the teacher/student lovers went haywire overdoing their distraught passion, and the subtle, subverbal messaging that marked Noth-Annabella Sciorra's partnership was replaced here by a lot of explicit exposition every time Noth and Nicholson got in/got out of a car together. L & O tends to go light on the history of its characters, spooning it out in dribs and drabs as the partnership evolves; here it was dumped into the dialogue in awkward lumps as if trying to get everyone, including the cast, up to speed. And so far the writers haven't coined any wicked lines equal to the sarcastic, incipient sneer on Eric Bogosian's face. He always looks as if he's about to launch a devastating comeback, only to deliver a mundanity like "Keep me in the loop."
Bum bum! doo doo doo doo doooo doooo
I tried watching L & O: SVU afterwards, which is now the franchise's ratings winner, but was defeated by the reliably bad acting of the male ensemble: Richard Belzer just seems to be hanging around like an undertaker awaiting corpse delivery; Ice T still says every line as if he bore it a minor grudge; Christopher Meloni is down to one sulky bearing the etch of bitter experience. I know a lot of people like this series, but what's to like?"
One more L & O tidbit, from the Free Press:
"CAST: On NBC's "Law & Order," Chevy Chase. He'll guest-star as a celebrity who spews religious epithets after being pulled over by police for drunken driving. The episode, titled "In Vino Veritas," is scheduled to air Nov. 3."
"The new openings for Law & Order: Criminal Intent are dismaying. L& O took a triple whammy in the offseason--losing Jamey Sheridan, Courtney Vance, and Annabella Sciorra--so it's understandable that the series would be tempted to overcompensate to prove it's still in the game. Apparently afraid of having lost a Zeitgeist step or on all the forensic shows tunneling Fantastic Voyage-like into cadavers, L & O: CI has C.S.I.-ized its murder enactments, utilizing fancy zoom-ins, spazzy jumpcuts, and a battery of audiovisual noir effects capped with a gruesome fillip (such as last night's needlessly showy impaling of a motorcyclist on a spiked fence). What's wrong with this Bruckheimerization?
For one thing, its hopped-up hyperbole is out of key with the rest of the show, which goes for an urban realism rooted in location shooting, laconic authenticity in bit roles, and at least a semblance of plausibility. The black comedy of the L & O intros comes from the intrusion of mayhem into everyday New York routine. It's as if no one can run a simple errand without wandering into a crime scene. One second a Typical New Yorker is walking a dog along Riverside Drive or picking a kid up from pre-school, only to find an arm dangling from the dumpster, or the body of a tranny hooker draped over the hood of a gypsy cab. The reason the L & O franchise wears so well in reruns is because it doesn't try to upstage the city in which it's set. The new openings, with their extra order of relish, are noisy concoctions that seem to have leapt straight from the storyboard. In their desire to be hip (or at least hipper than L & O's regular fare), they end up looking derivative and dated, because this is now how every forensic show slices and dices its victims on the chopping block as TV edges into Hostel/Saw vio-porn. The moral dimension to L & O: CI is being subverted by shock-value technique that's lost its shock and value.
Last week's L & O premiere was a seesaw affair, the gesticulating hamming of John Glover as a genius profiler neatly offset by the shrewd, wary underplaying of Martha Plimpton as his daughter. The scene in which D'Onofrio's Goren got her to confess by chatting with her outside the interrogation room as if torture-murder were just an interesting hobby she happened to take up was a nifty piece of writing, acting, staging.
Last night's ep, which introduced Noth's new partner (played by Julianne Nicholson, who was lavished with closeups as if she were a cute snowcone with sprinkles), was a complete miss, and a total mess. The actors playing of the teacher/student lovers went haywire overdoing their distraught passion, and the subtle, subverbal messaging that marked Noth-Annabella Sciorra's partnership was replaced here by a lot of explicit exposition every time Noth and Nicholson got in/got out of a car together. L & O tends to go light on the history of its characters, spooning it out in dribs and drabs as the partnership evolves; here it was dumped into the dialogue in awkward lumps as if trying to get everyone, including the cast, up to speed. And so far the writers haven't coined any wicked lines equal to the sarcastic, incipient sneer on Eric Bogosian's face. He always looks as if he's about to launch a devastating comeback, only to deliver a mundanity like "Keep me in the loop."
Bum bum! doo doo doo doo doooo doooo
I tried watching L & O: SVU afterwards, which is now the franchise's ratings winner, but was defeated by the reliably bad acting of the male ensemble: Richard Belzer just seems to be hanging around like an undertaker awaiting corpse delivery; Ice T still says every line as if he bore it a minor grudge; Christopher Meloni is down to one sulky bearing the etch of bitter experience. I know a lot of people like this series, but what's to like?"
One more L & O tidbit, from the Free Press:
"CAST: On NBC's "Law & Order," Chevy Chase. He'll guest-star as a celebrity who spews religious epithets after being pulled over by police for drunken driving. The episode, titled "In Vino Veritas," is scheduled to air Nov. 3."
posted by Tommy Lasorda at 10:29 AM
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