December 5, 2006: Proud Flesh
While it was good to see some Goren and Eames after a couple weeks of the Logan/Wheeler team - even if it was in a repeat - this episode left me kind of cold. A pair of whimpering, greedy sons concerned more with losing their radio-magnate daddy's trust money and saving face than trifling matters like human life and ethics? We've seen those characters too many times before - on this show, and on a million others.
That said,
Malcolm McDowell - who pretty much earned a career-long free pass with his brilliantly deranged turn in the late, great
Stanley Kubrick's
A Clockwork Orange - was in fine form here. The slow revealing of his character's heartless, steely core was well-executed, taking his complicity in the murder of his alcoholic son from out-of-the-question at first blush to perfectly logical by the closing trial debacle.
The understated humor and bizarre plot points also kept this one interesting, even when its story line didn't feel particularly fresh or compelling.
[
Mom, if you're reading this, just skip over the next paragraph. Really, it's for your own good.]
This was a rare episode in which
Kathryn Erbe stole the show from
D'Onof - mainly thanks to outrageous lines like: "Maybe he died with his freak on" and "sissy slut training." Though
she may have been upstaged by that painted-on latex bodysuit and the snarky dominatrix whom Goren may or may not have been checking out. You could almost hear the
Criminal Intent writers saying, "We'll show you kinky,
CSI."
Goren did get one particularly funny exchange in the Chinatown pawnshop, when after greeting the proprietor in her native tongue, she laughingly said, "He speaks Cantonese like my little dog." It's rare to see someone unimpressed by the OCDetective's seemingly limitless knowledge, so it's fun to see him taken down a peg every now and then.
Next Week: Another repeat, this one the season's second episode and the Logan/Wheeler duo's first. So, was it love at first wisecrack for
Peter Pan and
The Noth? I didn't jump back into
Criminal Intent until week three, so I'm looking forward to finding out.
