Post by jeffan on Jun 21, 2011 22:35:24 GMT -5
LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT “Icarus” Review
A week after the Tony Awards (which were, by the way, the best awards show I’ve seen in recent memory, thank you Neil Patrick Harris) comes this timely episode about a perfectionist director of Broadway musical featuring various elaborate stunts and wirework and the star of her show Icarus (with the ugliest poster I’ve seen in recent memory-okay, that’s not true. I saw X-Men: First Class last weekend. Yowza), a sitcom actor who dies in a freak accident in the middle of a preview performance. Goren and Eames are on the case, venturing into a world of alcoholic fuelled eulogies in Times Square and maniacal producer seeking accolades and glory.
It was an interesting episode which, for me, didn’t quite gel. This did not mean it did not work or that someone other than me might enjoy it, but if you know the myth of Dedalus and Icarus (and thanks to Saturday mornings watching Disney’s cartoon of Hercules and some mythology classes in college, I am up to scratch in my Greco-Roman mythology) then a lot of this episode is sort of clumsy exposition, the kind you’d find in the opening hundred pages of a bad fantasy novel.
Particularly, the scene where Goren goes to his academic friend was pretty bland. Icarus is one of the most famous Greek myths and the way the actress played the scene was akin to Goren asking a comic book nerd physicist whether they thought it possible to obtain superhero powers.
This episode is very topical, and topical is not something I care about in my weekly procedurals, not, at least, when it is dealing with mindless gossip. Julie Taymor and Spiderman references were sprinkled throughout the episode, which I thought was a little mean spirited. Calling Spiderman the laughing stock on Broadway is fine in a blog post, but to immortalize it in a fictional television series takes too much joy out of an artists’ attempts to create something magnificent and daring gone very publicly awry. It’s like the Aaron Sorkin episode of The Good Wife, and as much as I love that show, that episode made me feel very uneasy. Now, a mockery of The Book of Mormon, I’d like to see.
The main plot itself was as convoluted as you’d expect from a Law and Order. It didn’t feature the charm of, say, the Criminal Intent episode Trophy Wine, but it was still entertaining to see a bunch of creative folk hissing at each other. From a producer with daddy issues to his partner in crime with a serious lick ass problem, the whodunnit was predictable-even the partnership was obvious. Law and Order: Criminal Intent, like Criminal Minds, shows you the criminal before the police catch up to them. While this is fine, it means that the episode had better be pretty entertaining as a psychological show.
Goren’s therapy scenes continue to be weird, but in a kinda good way. It gives his character some depth and adds some dangerous layers to him which are absent from his smug detective work. The subtle connection between Eames and the director the play Icarus was nicely done.
www.daemonstv.com/2011/06/20/law-and-order-criminal-intent-icarus-review/
A week after the Tony Awards (which were, by the way, the best awards show I’ve seen in recent memory, thank you Neil Patrick Harris) comes this timely episode about a perfectionist director of Broadway musical featuring various elaborate stunts and wirework and the star of her show Icarus (with the ugliest poster I’ve seen in recent memory-okay, that’s not true. I saw X-Men: First Class last weekend. Yowza), a sitcom actor who dies in a freak accident in the middle of a preview performance. Goren and Eames are on the case, venturing into a world of alcoholic fuelled eulogies in Times Square and maniacal producer seeking accolades and glory.
It was an interesting episode which, for me, didn’t quite gel. This did not mean it did not work or that someone other than me might enjoy it, but if you know the myth of Dedalus and Icarus (and thanks to Saturday mornings watching Disney’s cartoon of Hercules and some mythology classes in college, I am up to scratch in my Greco-Roman mythology) then a lot of this episode is sort of clumsy exposition, the kind you’d find in the opening hundred pages of a bad fantasy novel.
Particularly, the scene where Goren goes to his academic friend was pretty bland. Icarus is one of the most famous Greek myths and the way the actress played the scene was akin to Goren asking a comic book nerd physicist whether they thought it possible to obtain superhero powers.
This episode is very topical, and topical is not something I care about in my weekly procedurals, not, at least, when it is dealing with mindless gossip. Julie Taymor and Spiderman references were sprinkled throughout the episode, which I thought was a little mean spirited. Calling Spiderman the laughing stock on Broadway is fine in a blog post, but to immortalize it in a fictional television series takes too much joy out of an artists’ attempts to create something magnificent and daring gone very publicly awry. It’s like the Aaron Sorkin episode of The Good Wife, and as much as I love that show, that episode made me feel very uneasy. Now, a mockery of The Book of Mormon, I’d like to see.
The main plot itself was as convoluted as you’d expect from a Law and Order. It didn’t feature the charm of, say, the Criminal Intent episode Trophy Wine, but it was still entertaining to see a bunch of creative folk hissing at each other. From a producer with daddy issues to his partner in crime with a serious lick ass problem, the whodunnit was predictable-even the partnership was obvious. Law and Order: Criminal Intent, like Criminal Minds, shows you the criminal before the police catch up to them. While this is fine, it means that the episode had better be pretty entertaining as a psychological show.
Goren’s therapy scenes continue to be weird, but in a kinda good way. It gives his character some depth and adds some dangerous layers to him which are absent from his smug detective work. The subtle connection between Eames and the director the play Icarus was nicely done.
www.daemonstv.com/2011/06/20/law-and-order-criminal-intent-icarus-review/