Crime Drama TV

I have to say that this weeks visit to the world of ‘SVU’ was one of the most intriguing episodes that I have seen. This is one show that I would hate to have pushed into reruns by the writer’s union. Not that I have anything bad to say about the strike. Quite the opposite, actually I think that the creative minds behind our favorite tv shows are more than justified in this attempt to receive more money. They create the characters, the plot twists, and just generally make TV shows more than just reality TV. I’m sorry I guess I’m getting a little offtrack here. So two people stumble across a body stashed in an elevator shaft. It was this lady who had been dosed with GHB then strangled with her own pantyhose. The killer also cut her breasts off as a trophy. So they go to the victim, Tina Snow’s apartment to find out from her roommate that she was involved in something weird. They find a burnt piece of paper that, through modern forensics, has a location and a time. The detectives head to the location only to find some kind of weird adventure seekers. They say that the night she died they left her at the Hata Mari bar. The bartender, Cecilia, says she left with some guy later that night. After she gives a description to a sketch artist, she calls Detective Benson during which she is apparently attacked. When they get to the bar they find what appears to have been a struggle and a picture of the Venus De Milo painted in blood. After running the painting through the symbol recognition software at the precinct it turns up with hit on the serial killer Robert Morton who is currently serving eight life sentences. He is expertly played by Jared Harris. He was known for torturing women for exactly twelve hour before murdering them. This means that they have a limited amount of time trying to catch this copycat before he murders Cecilia. It turns out that he has quite the following outside of prison. After wading through a number of dead ends, they find that Tina’s murder was a mirror of the cover of a graphic novel made about Robert Morton. The comic basically explores the possibility of what would have happened if he wasn’t caught. They question the writer, but his alibi is confirmed. They find that the picture left at the bar was the cover of another issue of the comic. The comic says that the girl is killed in Robert’s childhood home. They arrive there to find Cecilia barely alive. She has been cut, but she is OK. At the precinct they receive a bomb hidden in a pizza box. After they evacuate the building someone comes up to Stabler and Benson saying that the girls wounds were self inflicted. So she turns out to be intimately connected to him through his lawyers. She ends up getting off on mental defect. Morton gets his though when he is transfered to a Supermax prison allowing no human contact. By the way check out my last post by clicking here.

I’m pretty sure that the episode that NBC played today was a rerun, but it was so good I’m still going to do a recap. Well this episode had an all star guest line up with guest star Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges playing our suspect on trail as well as cameo appearances by Nancy Grace and Star Jones. I personally don’t think that Nancy Grace has any right to be on TV after driving Mrs. Duck to suicide by brutalizing her with that interview about her missing son not to mention that Star Jones is scary looking anyway. I have to say though that Ludacris has some serious skills acting. When this episode starts up the case is already at trial. A confession has already been thrown out due to procedural errors, but they still have the murder weapon and his DNA. The ADA was having a very hard time getting his mother to testify and ends up having her charged with contempt. Throughout the trial the defense puts all the cops involved on trial systematically ruining their credibility particularly Detective Fin. I guess that this is also the episode where Adam Beach a.k.a. Detective Lake joins the cast permanently. So it all comes down to the line and whats the verdict, not guilty. By the way I want everyone to check out my last post by clicking here.

This week’s episode of ‘SVU’ was great with Aidan Quinn playing the maybe guilty husband. The episode starts out with Quinn circling the block in a taxi when his daughter runs out in the street covered in blood. He runs inside to find his wife beaten and bleeding to death. The daughter has a unique form of retardation that makes her developmentally slow but with a savant like ability with tone and pitch. The detectives hit the beat, and soon they discover that the husband actually did not go on a business trip. They try to confront him with this, but Homeland Security stops the interview saying that he works for them. They say that any information about his whereabouts are a matter of national security. The wife turns out to be pregnant and in a coma. They reinterview the daughter only to find that she heard someone else there that night. So it turns out the wife was having an affair with her friends husband. She wakes up but has retrograde amnesia meaning she doesn’t remember anything from the past six months. In a strange twist the daughter identifies the wife’s friend’s son as the killer. All in all it was a pretty wild episode. Hey check out my last post ‘NCIS’.

This week’s episode of ‘SVU’ was very good. This episode starts out with a kid named Shane going to the doctor. The doctor tells him that he has a STD. When he asks the Shane about it he says that his teacher gave it to him. So with Shane being a minor they go to arrest his teacher, who is played expertly by Melissa Joan Hart. When they pull her in for questioning she says that he raped her during a tutoring session. It seems to be a classic he said she said thing with no evidence pointing either way. When Benson and Stabler are forced to cut her loose she immediately proceeds to have an abortion. The police take the fetus as evidence that is later supressed in court. When the teacher’s husband finds out about the abortion he goes ballistic, and ends up punching Stabler in the face when he tries to calm him down. They had been trying to have a baby and that was why the husband was so angry. In an act of forgiveness he doesn’t charge him with assault. They tailed the kid only to find out he went to see a hooker. Ice T and Lake dig a little deeper to find that he has slept with over two dozen prostitutes always with a rape fantasy. Now that we know who is telling the truth it is time to build the case. His attorney pleads not guilty by reason of mental defect causing him to be under duress. The teacher asks for leniency on the kid so as not to ruin his life. Shane pleas out on the condition that he serves eighteen months in a juvenile sexual offenders rehabilitation clinic and that he stays out of trouble. Well on his first night there he gets raped with undertones of irony. Well they caught his rapist and shut the facility down. Check out my last link about the season premiere of ‘CI’.

I was quite impressed by the opening episode for the season. The writing was very witty and concise. I personally think that the addition of Adam Beach was a great idea. You may remember him from the feature films “Windtalkers” and “Joe Dirt”. Detective Lake is great addition to the already daunting crime fighting force of the ‘SVU’. Cynthia Nixon was chilling in her portrayal was Janis as well as the two other personalities. The performance in this episode really shows that her range as an actress goes far beyond the realm of comedy and can delve deeply into drama at will. If you haven’t seen the episode I won’t ruin it for you, but I will say that this episode is the reason I watch ‘Law and Order’. Above is a behind the scenes photo of the building of the cave set. They tried unsuccessfully to locate an adequate cave for the cave scene. So they did the next best thing they built one. The picture below is the second step in the procedure. They spray foam to give the cave texture. Finally comes the painting of the set. By using different shading techniques they give the illusion of depth. By the way check out my last couple of blogs: ‘Tonight is the Night’ and ‘Brushing up’.

Tonight is the premiere of season 9 of ‘law and order SVU’. I’m very excited to see what’s in store for us. For a while season 9 seemed to be in doubt when Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay entered into negotiations for more money. All the disputes have been settled. Now the ninth season promises to be more exciting than ever before. With strong story telling, the already superb cast, and tons of new guest appearances this season I’m prepared to be in awe. I have always thought that the formula of ‘SVU’ and ‘CI’ was a successful one. Keep your eyes here for the episode recap as well as information on upcoming episodes as well. In other ‘law and order’ news ‘CI’ returns on October 4 with their new season. Actress Julianne Nicholson will be on maternity leave as the season starts. It is going to be interesting to see how they write Detective Wheeler’s temporary departure from the show. Her temporary replacement will be the accomplished actress Alicia Witt as Detective Nola Falacci. Her acting credits include the films ‘Two Weeks Notice’ and ‘The Upside Of Anger’. Make sure to check out my other latest posts Brushing Up and Coming Monday.

I was suprised by my lack of knowledge in the SVU-realm-try your luck!

Stabler agrees to hear the dying confession of a cancer patient named Judson Tierney (Brian Dennehey), but first he and Benson do some digging into what possible crime Tierney’s guilty of and come up with an unsolved case that goes back 47 years. However, according to Tierney, that is merely “The tip of the iceberg.”

And the iceberg just keeps melting and melting.
Dennehey is at the center of several crimes. On the outset, we are lead to believe that he is a creep who molested his daughter. Hence, the reason she refuses to have contact with him. A Box full of greeting cards, each stuffed with $100 bill give rise to yet another crime.

But rather, Judson Tierney is an old geezer, who was a bank robber and a murderer. He manages to confess on his deathbed, allowing a man who was convicted of another murder to go free. His daughter learns why their family was so distant and at the last moment decides to see her father. Too late, he took his last breath.

What I loved about this episode:
Stabler keeps digging.
Twist upon twist.
Multiple crimes being solved.

The major flaw:Oliva Benson getting soft.

Great show with a superb cast.

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The Law and Order and CSI franchises have certainly made their mark on Crime Drama TV. While Law and Order is the older of the two, CSI continues to outrank Law and Order in the ratings. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation holds the number 2 spot for the week of December 18-24 and CSI: Miami and CSI: New York come in tied at fourth. My favorite (and far better show) Law and Order SVU is 19th.

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Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry. That’s what Benson and Stabler have got. Thank god that on last nights episode (11/28/06), they were reunited as partners. I’ve seen my share of shows get messed up by adding romance into the storyline of a good gritty crime show. But fortunately, Mariska Hargitay came back from marternity leave just in time to save Stabler from going down that wrong path with his last partner, Dani Beck.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against romance. It just doesn’t belong on “ripped from the headlines” crime TV. That kiss between the two of them made me utterly nauseous. (previous episode) Plus, I just didn’t like that Dani chick anyway. She never followed orders from Lt. Cragen; she was sort of a loose cannon. She has this hard exterior, yet she couldn’t take the job at special victims unit. That just didn’t play for me. (Plus that accent, where the heck was she from?) She was violating the whole partner code thing – no romantic involvement with the partner! Solve the crimes, take care of business, bust a suspect in the jaw, get pissed with each other, get in trouble with the captain– that’s what we are tuning for. That’s crime TV.

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Can you believe what a sick and twisted character Bob Sagat played on last night’s Law and Order SUV episode? (11/28/06)I mean, we are talking that all American goody goody dad from Full House. The guy with the lame jokes from America ’s Funniest Home Videos. He went from mediocre comic to full fledged psychopath who murders in the name of love. What an awesome about face.

In an episode that should have been all about the reuniting of Stabler and Benson, Sagat stole the show with his geeky, control-freak character who murders the wife of the man who his wife was having an affair with and almost murders his own wife as well. (That was a mouthful). This guy went to great lengths to subtly poison a woman, set up her husband, inject his wife with some high tech tracking device, only to profess his undying love to his wife by giving up a kidney to save her life. (Or was it part of his liver?)

Back to the return of Benson. What was up with Casey? She was so hard and not at all welcoming to Olivia. She basically blamed Olivia for ruining the case at hand, and had an overall bad temperament. Maybe her caseload was too heavy. Even Elliot didn’t seem all that excited over the return of his old partner. I hope he wasn’t pining away for that other chick. I rather like the conflicted Stabler, the one who punches holes in the walls and knocks perps around rather than deal with his feelings.

Yes, this whole episode brought to mind an old Peaches and Herb song. “Reunited and it feels so good”. Stabler and Benson. Partners in Crime. Excuse, me. I mean Partners in Crime Solving.

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