Somebody at NBC must have issued an order to punch up Criminal Intent’s openings, because two weeks in a row, they’ve come out swinging. Last week’s cops-and-fireman brawl was definitely a "what the?" moment, and this week’s was equally shocking – and twice as disturbing. For me, that wide-eyed little kid with spaghetti sauce (?) smeared all over his mouth evoked not one but two Sixth Sense characters – precocious-yet-creepy Haley Joel Osment (who these days doesn’t even see mailboxes) and the couldn’t-keep-a-meal-down Mischa Barton (who these days...on second thought, never mind). Suffice it to say, the kid was disturbing enough, but when he led the cops into his parents’ bedroom and they pulled back the sheet to reveal his mother curled up with the corpse of his way-dead father – well, that’s just feel-good TV right there.From there out, they kept my interest by turning nearly every member of this twisted clan into a suspect (...
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Having missed the second episode of this season – which apparently introduced new detective Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson) and Law & Order vet as her partner, Logan – last night was time for me to play a little catch up.My first impressions of the new team? Big success. Though Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio) was usually the most interesting part of CI, after a couple seasons of his nervous ticks and crime-solving-through-encyclopedia-memorization technique, I was ready for a little break from all those idiosyncrasies.And, from what I saw last night, Logan and Wheeler are the perfect Yin to the old pair’s Yang. You see, Logan is what they apparently call “old school” on the mean streets of NYC. So whereas Goren indulged his predilection (some might say fetish) for playing twisted mind games with suspects and perps, Logan doesn’t hesitate to hammer out a back-alley deal or just take a couple swings.And he took a bunch of them last night. My jaw was on th...
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