Law & Order: Criminal Intent certainly had a ready made audience with the success of the two previous Law and Order series. Still when it came out the producers were treading on some thin ice by making the detectives as quirky as they were. The original Law and Order series had cops with personalities, but were generally all business.
Vincent Donofrio's Robert Goren was all business, but he was totally consumed by the job. He certainly had a few issues as we later learned concerning his mother, Rita Moreno who was in a few episodes, but his lack of involvement with the rest of the human race may have made him more detached and able to ferret clues with the skill of Adrian Monk. Not even the remotest kind of pass was ever made at the beautiful Kathryn Erbe who partnered with him for the first half of the series run.
Law And Order fans already knew Detective Mike Logan and all of his good and bad points that Chris Noth brought for the CI series. Still it was great to see a more mature Logan, doggedly honest work through his caseload on alternate weeks. His run in actual life years given a bit of time before the original Law and Order series debuted was about the working life of a police detective.
One thing I didn't like was the dropping of Courtney B. Vance's character of ADA Ron Carver. We only got to see him on trial pitted against defendant Rob Knepper in one of my two favorite Criminal Intent episodes. He was outstanding in that one. I presume the producers and writers wanted to concentrate more on the cops than on him and he was dropped. But if I were the producers I'd work him into either of the other series somehow and pay him whatever he wants. Vance is worth it.
Now we have Jeff Goldblum who has the unusual background of having a psychologist dad and he combines that training with police training. Goldblum seems to have found his own character and like Donofrio and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, you can see the little gray cells at work all the time.
Not as factually based as the original series, but CI has a great set of writers to come up with some novel stories every week.
Vincent Donofrio's Robert Goren was all business, but he was totally consumed by the job. He certainly had a few issues as we later learned concerning his mother, Rita Moreno who was in a few episodes, but his lack of involvement with the rest of the human race may have made him more detached and able to ferret clues with the skill of Adrian Monk. Not even the remotest kind of pass was ever made at the beautiful Kathryn Erbe who partnered with him for the first half of the series run.
Law And Order fans already knew Detective Mike Logan and all of his good and bad points that Chris Noth brought for the CI series. Still it was great to see a more mature Logan, doggedly honest work through his caseload on alternate weeks. His run in actual life years given a bit of time before the original Law and Order series debuted was about the working life of a police detective.
One thing I didn't like was the dropping of Courtney B. Vance's character of ADA Ron Carver. We only got to see him on trial pitted against defendant Rob Knepper in one of my two favorite Criminal Intent episodes. He was outstanding in that one. I presume the producers and writers wanted to concentrate more on the cops than on him and he was dropped. But if I were the producers I'd work him into either of the other series somehow and pay him whatever he wants. Vance is worth it.
Now we have Jeff Goldblum who has the unusual background of having a psychologist dad and he combines that training with police training. Goldblum seems to have found his own character and like Donofrio and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, you can see the little gray cells at work all the time.
Not as factually based as the original series, but CI has a great set of writers to come up with some novel stories every week.