Crime Drama TV

I spent my whole New Year’s day and evening watcbing repeats of Law and order SVU. I love that show. How can anyone watch reruns upon reruns of the same show? Even the reruns started to repeat before the 24 hours was over. The only show I recall being able to watch without boredom is Perry Mason. So what makes this show so watch worthy?

1. Partner Chemistry.
Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson have amazing chemistry. Even Munch and Tutula have chemistry.

2. The zingers.
Those one liners that Lenny from the original Law and Order Franchise made so popular.
A few I love:
Olivia: “How is it like to sleep with a man who rapes other women?!”
Elliot: “When you are being brutalized by me, you’ll know it.”

Or this great conversation between Olivia and Elliot.
Benson and Stabler talking about passing genes to their children

Olivia: “Yeah well at least you and Kathy knew what kind of genes you’d be passing on. Mine is half drunk and the other half violent and cruel.
Elliot: “And look how great you turned out.”

3. They hit the pavement.
I like old fashioned investigation. Sure, other shows have gotten their props lately by featuring high tech forensics and crime lab sets (that we all know in the real world are way to expensive and don’t even exist for everyday crime. You know I’m referring to the CSI). These detectives investigate, interview, intimidate and interrogate. I love it.

4. They are passionate.
They show their feelings. They hate the crime, they can’t stand the perps and they voice it. And if they can get away with some well placed good old fashioned police beat down, they’ll do it. An example:

Perp: Honey, I’d like some mineral water, a little ice.
Olivia: Yeah, well, I’d like your balls in a blender, but ain’t life a [censored].
Elliot: Maybe you shouldnt’ve called her “honey”.

5. The plot twists.
A 5 year old boy goes missing from a kids party. He’s found later dead. The perp ends up being his 12 year old sociopathic neighbor. The victim’s father has an outburst in the courtroom when the 12 year old gets sentenced as a juvenile. The father, who is also a shrink pulls a gun from a courthouse guard and guns down the boy who killed his son. He gets off, then smugly admits to the DA that he did indeed plan the whole thing.

6. They put the bad guys behind bars.
By the time the investigation is complete and the DA’s office takes over, the partners have done their job. And for the most part, they win their cases. Hence the name Law and Order. That’s why I like watching. The bad guy goes to jail.

7. The Music.

There are two new episodes in my future. Tuesday night is for Law and Order!

Law and Order SVU, crime tv, CSI, elliot and benson

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.

law and order svu, csi, crime drama

No, I’n not talking about Mary Kay the cosmetics queen, I’m talking Mary Kay LeTourneau. Remember that high school teacher who made headlines by having sex with her 13 year old student? Well, it was sick then, and with an head-shaking Law and Order CI ending, it’s sick now.

What do you get when you mix an emotionally stunted high school teacher, the abusive husband of the high school teacher, an ego maniac plastic surgeon father who tapes and catalogs his sexual escapades and the teenage product of said father in one twisted plot? A murder, the likes of which you will only see on a Law and Order franchise.

That ever hunky Chris Noth, better known as renegade Det. Mike Logan is joined by yet another partner, short haired, boyish looking Det.Wheeler. To regress a moment, I loved the chemistry between Logan and Annabella Sciorra as Det. Carolyn Barek. And now Logan is breaking in another partner. The same disease seems to be making the rounds on all the Law and Orders right about now. Anyway, back to the episode.

These jaded detectives are stunned to find that a grown woman could find a 16 year old boy to be the most noble man she had ever met. The operative word here being man. Immediately after her conviction of rape and her part in the murder of her young lover’s father he could still professes his misplaced love for her. And this upon confessing to being pregnant by this boy’s father. Reminds me of Villi and Mary Kay. Married and living in the burbs of Seattle.

Law and Order. Ripped from the headlines crime tv drama.

mary kay letourneau, law and order ci, chris noth, underage sex with teacher

When checking out the Criminal Minds official website (doing my homework for this blog) I took their test to see if I had what it took to work in the BAU (Behavioral Analyst Unit) as a profiler. Take this nifty little quiz and check out your score. I scored a 26 out of 30, which makes means I have potential as a profiler.

Hmm, I wonder will that skill work on the opposite sex?

Take the quiz. I’d love to hear how you scored. On the quiz…

criminal minds, quiz, profiler, fbi, profiler test

I had my first dose of Criminal Minds last night, and my goodness, I didn’t know I would be in for such a great crime drama. Fast paced, good (though implausible) plot, and enough blood spatter to keep me sated until next week. I was eating my dinner but had to quickly put it down because five minutes into the show, there was bloody torture (no, that’s not an British adverb) and murder. Unlike Law and Order where you see the aftermath of the crime, on this show you see the crime happen. So that torture and my dinner definitely did not mix.

Back to the show, a repeat entitled Secrets and Lies. CIA agent Summers rescues a woman and her children. Takes them to an undisclosed location. He is subsequently tortured and murdered. The murder is then covered up and staged to look like a suicide. Call in Special Agent Jason Gideon, the FBI’s top Behavioral Analyst and his crew. They quickly take up residence in CIA headquarters on a two-fold mission. One, solve the murder of Summers. And two, find the missing woman and her children.

Since they know the leaks are from within, the BAU team is out to find the mole within the CIA. Each member of the team targets a CIA team member, profiling them and trying to force their hand. During the process another agent is murdered on CIA territory. Hmmm, they must be getting close to the source. Being a veteran of crime TV, you know that the mole has to be someone who has a lot to gain. And indeed it is, to the tune of 20 million dollars. It’s Gideon’s long time colleague and friend.

I found the show to have a sufficient number of twists. Definitely enough to keep me watching for the entire hour. The gory beginning drew me in, I have to admit. And had I known that Shemar Moore was on the show, I would have started watching a long time ago. And given that the acting was decent and I’ll be back for another round.

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Aaron, a fellow TV blogger, www.watchingtheoffice.com came up with the first entry to this category.

Says Aaron, my favorite Horatio-ism:

“Well that’s because he’s dead, and you’re not.�?

I think this guy is going down with Yogi Berra for all time “‘isms”.

If you have a favorite Horatio-ism, please do tell! We are going to build an empire here of sayings from super sleuth Horatio.

horatio, csi miami, sayings, horatioisms.crime tv

So when does Miami crime solving move to Rio de Janero? Only on CSI Miami. Horatio is seeking justice in the murder of his wife and he has to follow the trail to Rio. The scumbag Riaz who killed H’s wife on their wedding day is back in Rio and on the loose. Horatio and Delke are bent on revenge. Oh, excuse me JUSTICE, so they are on his heels.

Horatio checks in on his brother and his brother’s beautiful wife for leads. Unfortunately, his brother ends up dead and his nephew a mule for drugs. Horatio makes this horrible discovery when snooping in his nephew’s backpack and finds latex gloves with the fingers cut off. The packers put the heroine in the fingers and the mules swallow it. Yuck. Here are a few, fresh from the belly of a Brazillian youth.

So Horatio and Delke run around Rio averting danger and looking for Riaz. Because where Riaz is, there the nephew is. In the meantime Delke finds Riaz. Unfortunately he finds himself on the wrong end of of a knife belonging to Riaz. But who should appear in the nick of time. None other than the big H. He gets to blow the bad guy away and save his partner in one fell swoop. Like that would ever happen on foreign turf.

Back to Miami. The Dynamic duo manage to track down the nephew Ray Jr., who is under the impression that his father is still alive and has a gun pointed at the Matos, the Miami drug connection. Horatio again get’s to blow away another bad guy. His nephew is reunited with his mom and goes back home to Rio.

I’m not sure where the high points were on this episode. Was it when they showed what a mule’s body looks like when the heroine explodes and is absorbed, or Horatio’s cool demeanor when taking out a bad guy? Both pretty bad.

There was another sub story going on back home im Miami that didn’t amount to much. Pretty much like the whole episode. Thank goodness Law and Order SUV is on tonight.

[tags]crime tv,horatio,csi miami [tags]

Well, since I’m blogging about Crime Drama TV now, I guess I’ll check out CSI Miami. Anyone who knows me, knows I just can’t stand that guy with the red hair. So much so that I refuse to remember his name. Help me out here. At any rate, I’ll be back with a wrap up of the show later on.

Oh, I just remembered. His name is Horatio. Boy is he an odd duck. Does anyone really talk like that in real life? And I’ve been to Miami. I have’t even seen anyone dress like him ANYWHERE in that city. What’s up with that. I guess I’ll have to start a Horatio watch now. Or maybe an ongoing list of famous Horatio quotes. Let’s call them Horatioisms.

If you are a CSI Miami viewer, come on. Tell me your favorite thing Horatio has said. Come on, speak up. Don’t be shy!

crime tv, csi miami, csi, horatio, tv blog

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.

crime tv, law and order, law and order svu, benson and stabler, bob sagat, tv blog

I had a feeling he would end up being the killer - it was one of those different roles that you just knew had to happen.

If you missed this week’s episode of Law and Order SVU, a woman was poisoned. Her husband seemed like a likely suspect as he was having an affair with another woman. That other woman’s husband, Bob Saget, claimed not to have known about the affair, but you just knew he did it. So the show wasn’t surprising, but it was entertaining seeing Bob Saget take on a darker role!

It’s been really busy. I’m in the final day of having month long guests, and I already know I’ll miss them!

I caught a new show last night on BBC America - After Life. It’s not bad, but I can’t say it is something I’ll watch repeatedly. The show revolves around a female psychic who many feel is a fraud. She hears voices and sees spirits and rather wishes she didn’t have her abilities at all. Last night, she came into the life of a young woman whose father and mother attempted to kill their children and themselves with the car’s exhaust. The young woman is now grown up and she is the only survivor.

Someone recently made a comment elsewhere about how I’d been slacking on this site. In all honesty, I like to pretend I live in a world where judgments are made with at least some inkling of the situation involved, but I realize that’s not the case. For this reason, I’ll delve into my current personal life and offer some insight.

I’m not going into a ton of details because there is filed complaint that is still undergoing investigation by the state in which this occured… but in a nutshell I have been really busy. I have requested that this site be turned over to another writer, not sure how that is going, so I can’t say when a transition might be made.

Right before Halloween, my best friend called up and asked me if I could house her and her one year old for a couple of weeks. She’d been forced to quit her job after discovering that the daycare she was using was neglecting, possibly abusing, her son. Since that time, the daycare has been shut down and the state involved is looking to see if it was truly neglect as the daycare states and not outright abuse, but this left her in a tight spot because no other daycare in her area could take a 1 year old. Her boss offered her a new job but it required two weeks of training in my homestate and not the state she lives in. We figured with two weeks that things would be fine - I could handle my normal freelance jobs writing for a tourism site and then work on the blog at night.

Unfortunately, her training began involving 12 hour work days and was then expanded to over a full month instead of two weeks. They are currently asking her to stay here for another two weeks at least, but she’s turned them down so far because she figures moving into another person’s home is hard enough, going over a month is pushing it. With her currently workload, she isn’t getting home until at least 6:30pm, some nights 10pm. So I began to fall behind in most of my writing jobs and watching TV has become a thing of the past for now. Realizing that something has to go, I opted to give up the job that requires the most time. It is that simple. So while I may not have the time necessary to dedicate to this site, they are looking for a replacement. I do what I can, but for me the most important thing right now is making sure the baby is safe and happy.

Bob Saget guest stars? I would laugh if he plays a serial killer type! It’s the last thing anyone would ever see him cast as, and I bet he’d do very, very well in such a role.

I find I am trying to avoid Fox shows now. If you do watch Prison Break, the show’s first “season finale” occurs tonight. They will pick up the other half of the season next late-winter/spring.