Vincent D'Onofrio Puts Criminal Intent's Goren on the Couch
Watching Vincent D'Onofrio's Det. Robert Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Sundays at 9 pm/ET, USA) is a deliciously unsettling experience. We love the awkward mannerisms, the halting yet penetrating speech, the craned neck bend he performs when grilling suspects. He's brilliant, insightful, riveting. But, frankly, he seems a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you know what we mean….
For example: In "Untethered," D'Onofrio's last episode before the writers' strike, Goren went undercover in a mental ward to expose prisoner abuse. Instead, he fell prey to the sadistic mind games and emerged from the ordeal near-catatonic. In the first post-strike episode, "Purgatory," the suspended Goren got reinstated, but we never witnessed the psych evaluation that was required to get his shield and gun back. This was no acci