Crime Drama TV

Last night was a poker/beer night for me, so I didn’t catch Close To Home.  Instead, I’m going to back track to Wednesday night.  The show of the evening for me was Law & Order’s Criminal Intent.

The show starts with Mike Logan and Megan Wheeler at an NYFD location where they get into a huge brawl that involves many cops and leaves Mike relatively well battered.  Why they battled is not apparent, but the show really starts when they backtrack and give the explanation.

A NYFD member is dead, brutally stabbed to death, and Mike and Megan are assigned to the case.  They follow what little evidence they have and from all signs it points to a murder of sheer rage/passion.

Interviewing the wife, they find her protected by other FDNY members, especially one bulldog who seems to the be one with the biggest issue with Mike and Megan doing their job.  It appeared to me that he might be guilty…

After talking to the wife, they learn that the victim was gone a few nights a week and that she had confronted him about ending whatever affair he was having the night he died.  Turns out she’d just found out she was pregnant.

Now comes the spoilers:

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The fireman (victim) was actively involved in a group protesting the effects of 9-11 and how the firemen were exposed to more risks that day that the government isn’t admitting to.  During one heated debate, one of the officials makes a gesture that suggests he supports the fireman even though he works for the city.  Mike and Megan question him for as much information as they can get.

 They also learn that the fireman had broken up an attack by a gang of youth.  The fireman had smashed the glasses and cut the face of one kid who in turn mimicked shooting the fireman, so they track down those kids in Central Park who are in the process of beating a new victim with a baseball bat.  They arrest the kids but are unsure if that kid truly did the stabbing.  The kid swears he is innocent.

So they start tracking the victim’s moves and find he’d been frequenting a gay bar-he was gay and having an affair.  So this leads them in a new direction. As it was a crime of passion and the fireman/victim had broken up with his lover that same night, a gay partner would have had the strength and anger to stab this man dozens of times.

The case progresses and it means that they have to go ask questions about the firefighter being gay.  This is what leads to the brawl that opened the show.  Those firefighters will not believe or allow a cop to state their “brother” was gay.

As they continue searching the different suspect’s backgrounds, they learn that the guy at the 9-11 meeting that works for the city is gay and is linked to a man who was attacked and killed another lover almost a dozen years earlier.  Same situation, the wife became pregnant and went to end the affair.

Catching him is trickier.  They ask a favor of the bulldog-like firefighter.  He comes to the police station and proceeds to confess to the murder while the real murderer watches from behind a hidden mirror/window.  The real killer cannot believe that his lover was having an affair with another man and that that’s why he broke off the affair.  This leads the real killer to confess.

The show wasn’t bad, though I felt the ending was a little too tidy.  I can’t see a killer who got away with another murder for almost 12 years turning around and quickly confessing rather than admit his lover could have had another gay lover.  Perhaps it is so, but he was slick and I can’t see him so easily confessing.

My bigger issue with the show is that I am a big fan of Vincent D’onofrio.  I just don’t like Chris Noth (Mike) as much.  He doesn’t tap into the killer’s mind the same way that D’onofrio does.