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Law & Order: Criminal Intent returned for a second season without any cast changes—and without missing a beat from the .nightsandweekends.com/articles/08/NW0800287.php>first season. As in the show’s first season, the detectives still start by investigating a murder, and it often leads to another crime—sometimes one that involves more than murder. The show is focused on Detectives Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Eames (Kathryn Erbe), but it seems that Captain Deakins (Jamey Sheridan) and ADA Carver (Courtney B. Vance) add more insight and guidance to the detectives.
The season’s biggest changes come in the relationship between Goren and Eames. Goren is still brilliant and knowledgeable, but he doesn’t know everything, and he still needs to go to the library to learn more about certain evidence. This season, though, there seems to be a more concerted effort to show that Goren and Eames are partners. Goren doesn’t do all of the talking, and Eames often asks serious questions and brings important information to the investigation.
Season two has some of my favorite episodes. I liked “Probability,” in which a man with Asperger’s Syndrome (played by Mark Linn Baker) is linked to 15 homicides, and the detectives must discover the man’s obscure patterns to catch him. I also liked “Graansha,” where a murdered social worker who comes from a family of “travelers” is killed because of her involvement with outsiders. The detectives’ use of the “divide and conquer” strategy is particularly interesting. They need the killer’s family to side with them, so they slowly peel away the layers of protection until a senior member of the family gives them permission to arrest the killer. It’s one of my favorite episodes in the series.
I also really liked the season’s introduction of Goren’s nemesis, Nicole Wallace (Olivia d’Abo). If Robert Goren is a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, then Nicole Wallace is his Professor Moriarty. The detectives even meet her at an educational institute. She’s just as smart and as manipulative as he is. She’s also accused of multiple killings and identity theft. Nicole is featured in two episodes, and her confrontations with Goren are some of the season’s best scenes.
On the other hand, I didn’t really like “The Pilgrim.” It was too soon after September 11, and an episode about the threat of another terror attack by Muslim extremists seemed a little over the top and unnecessary at the time. It felt like the show’s creators were exploiting a sensitive topic before allowing the necessary time to give the situation some perspective.
The second season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent continues to build on the themes of the first season. There’s more character development for Goren and Eames, and there seems to be an attempt to get the detectives out of the interrogation room. There are confessions in a wide variety of places including a recording studio, a church entrance, a city park, a family picnic, and the District Attorney’s office. These locales add to the drama, but they seem, more often than not, to be used to ambush a suspect in the place where they feel the safest.
Instead of having a sophomore slump, Criminal Intent found a formula that worked and managed to hit its stride in its second season. Some of the show’s best episodes are included in season two, and fans of the series will find that the deleted scenes included in the DVD set help to give some of the episodes even more context.
