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bluecastleSo I've been doing these stream of consciousness recaps of the L&O:Criminal Intent episodes for an online friend across the ocean (and a CI board I'm on) and I don't have the energy to dig up the past ones I've done, but I thought I might post the ones for the last four episodes of season seven here.
I called this one Legacy -- or Why Prom is Always a Bad Idea...
OK, boys and girls... today at Manor Hill we have suicide, blackmail, murder, and Titian. :0)
We open on a city street... big black shiny car, boys in tuxes, green trees, park benches, hip-hop music.
The boys are IM-ing a girl trying to get her to strip on her webcam for them. {see... Donna Noble's mom was right, web cams are naughty :)}
The girl is getting ready for her Junior prom ... all ringlets and a pretty blue dress... she says no.
minutes later, another IM... her date Joe is dumping her. Says his friend Paul told him that she was a lesbian. No prom for Tessa.
shot of Paul -- awkward and wearing his dads tux to prom.
shot of Kiana at the prom, getting punch, she blows off Paul
shot of Kiana and Tessa at lacrosse practice in their Manor Hill team uniforms.
Paul goes jogging. Gets attacked by hoodie and goggle wearing girl gang (hoodie hoods?)
shot of Paul all bandaged up at his computer muttering "these bitches are going to pay"
Shot of Art History Class. Teacher talking about Titian's The Sacred and the Profane
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/titian/sacred_profane.jpg.html
all the kids cell phones go off. They all get an animated video showing Tessa and Kiana making out. Tessa runs out. Teacher follows. Teacher ends up going down stairway [stairwells are not good places to be in the L&O universe...]. Goes through door marked "restricted access" [red sign] into boiler room. Sees shadows... finds a boy (Paul) in a red tshirt hanging from those pipes...
and roll credits...
Goren and Eames and Detective-of-the-week Biaggi stroll across the Manor Hill campus. Goren says it looks more like a college. Eames says it costs that much to go there.
Interview the teacher -- Ms. Nobile (no-bee-lay she insists)
the vic, Paul, was "not popular" ... "the longer he stayed here, the less he fit in." {hmmm... not unlike a certain detective we know}
Goren peering intently at teacher. asks her to "spin around" ... mutters something about "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" [now Goren's getting too vague even for me to follow...] and he points out paint chips clinging to her top. She says they got on her when she tried to hold Paul up in the noose while she waited for help.
They meet up with the headmaster "Keifer Gates" who Biaggi terms a real CYA (Cover Your Ass). {sounded pretty realistic to me given the state of schools today}
They go down to the boiler room. Eames looks at the noose knot and terms it a "sailors knot." Goren looks at it and decrees "Bowline."
They are then off to interview Paul parents... [who seem in retrospect rather unmoved by their son's death] ... Dad sails. Paul gets seasick. They had left Paul alone home all weekend while they went to a regatta to try and "foster more independence" for him.
Goren notices Paul prom tux. notes stain. Dad flips at the kid ruining his tux, and then goes from mad to sad, and sinks down on the edge of the bed clutching tux jacket.
Mom confesses Paul was medicated, she gets g/e a list... he was being treated for depression... but she also fesses up that Dad's family has a history of schizophrenia so they were watching him for any signs.
Goren sympathetic, but doesn't seem overly squicked out about this piece of info.
Off to the ME. Death by asphyxiation... but the kid also had a fractured skull, so would have been out cold when strung up. Lots of other bruises, Goren goes to peek under the sheet, Rogers bats his hand away, and says to g/e "this kid literally got his ass kicked"
They discuss that the pattern of bruising is consistent with abusive relationships ... no bruises where it shows.
bring ross up to speed. Pauls backpack is still missing.
.5 nanosecond shot of Ritchie walking and then later another brief shot of him on the phone... :0)
Paul's dad is described as a "pit bull in pinstripes" [lovely that]
they find him at his club playing squash. he ends his game, sees the elderly black attendant for a towel and a cold drink [what century is this?]. They confront him about the bruises and possible abuse.
He asks Goren "are you nuts." Goren takes his glass from him [HA -- but no arm twisting this time]
Dad: "You have your nerve."
they grill him some more about his whereabouts over the weekend and during the time of the murder... he has alibis.
As he walks off he says "I thought MCS was an elite squad. So far I'm underwhelmed."
(g/e roll eyes...)
they decide they need to track down Paul's friends. Drag his friend Jack out of class. He's all nervous, they suggest they speak to him at his home.
So, onwards of Jack's Dad's red walled study [the amount of red in this episode is just unreal] ...[the Dad is so familiar, but I don't know if he's a repeater, or just someone I've seen on other shows.]
**edited: someone pointed out on the board this morning that it's the squicky dad from the eggcup episode
Jack rats out Paul for making video sent to all classmates. Identifies the two girls in it as Tessa Nobile (daughter of the teacher) and Kiana Richmond.
g/e back to school after some negotiontions with school's legal department to search Tessa and Kiana's lockers. RED lockers. Students stand around in a pack filming it all on their cell phones [reminiscent of tru love, but better and more logical here] They open lockers, and get each girls laptops. Teach mom grabs Tessas and says to come back with a search warrant. Goren says ok. Kiana (who is just full of ghetto attitude, despite being more park avenue than the projects) says they are free to look since they've already "Guantanamoed" her locker [note new verb] ...
{Somewhere there was a scene where Kiana was showing her gal pals how to wipe files from their computers. Hence her confidence now.}
Enter Ira {I LOVE HIM} he found the video Kiana thought she'd erased... it's the pack of hoodies attacking Paul. [Goren looks tired here, but doesn't impact anything, so just an aside]
Eames is the savant in this episode {She does a LOT more these days...} Says the attackers were holding their hands the way you hold a lacrosse stick. Says her cousin played lacrosse. Says the forward line in lacrosse is called the "attack men"
{of course I wondered how the hand positions in lacrosse can be differentiated from other team sports with sticks (a la field hockey)... but one doesn't want to be asking those types of questions when Eames is all brainy kickass)
So... Kiana gets brought into MCS (Ross' office) with her lawyer father (another familiar face from the world of TV) Kiana denys she is on the attack video. calls it 'racial profiling'
g/e figure all the lacrosse team will lawyer up asap, but since tessa's mom is a teacher she becomes the weakest link.
Mom talks about the boyfriend Joe (screename Luv40) tennis team... Mom casts doubt on Kiana...
Kiana in interrogation with Dad. g/e confront him with lesbian video.
Dad: "my daughter is neither a murderer or a lesbian."
Eames: "Which one scares you more?"
Kiana casts doubt on Ms. Nobile... Kiana says she knew about the video...
cut to scene of Jack in Ms. Nobile's office telling her he wants revenge for Paul's death. Says "if Tessa was involved, she's going to pay."
g/e/r at g/e desks. signs are pointing to the mom now. ross asks why she wasn't considered in the first place.
Eames: "she was a renaissance art scholar and a mom"
ms. nobile has quite a cv... curator a the Frick... instructor at RISD...
took the job at Manor Hill to get her daughter a full scholarship.
Ross says to go back and search her office, and tell her if she resists, they have a warrant and a half-dozen paparazzi there by noon.
Eames: "that would be a bluff, right?"
Ross. "Right."
well well well... what is Paul's backpack doing in her office?
Mom fesses up that she was being blackmailed to resign. Tessa was the scapegoat.
They start honing in on the mystery boyfriend. Joe Cardinal. {red again????} goes to Bristol Academy in Connecticut.
g/e/r/ira check out his "friendpost" page (aka Facebook) It has been taken down but Ira the Invincible uses the wayback machine (an ACTUAL application and not just an old segment from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon!!!!!) to pull up archived copy. Ross inserts hip techno-savy jargon. They look at him. He reminds them he has teenage sons... :0)
so off to CT and the Bristol Academy g/e go. The woman they talk to is way cranky... but they are told no Joseph Cardinal is a student, and they are handed a course schedule. The pictures were taken using models... and there is pretty boy Joe on the front cover.
dum dum dum... 39 minutes into the episode, MCS finally figures out what we've known all along... that Joe is fictional. what no one knows is who created him.
back to MCS and they discuss how Joe was created to be Tessa's tailor made boyfriend... but that her humiliation might have merely been a means to an end.
ross lays out timeline... hoax. beating. murder.(ah... the L&O trifecta ;0) says it's "Lord of the Flies" at that school. [fulfilling his Ross role of inserting his regularly scheduled literate comment of the week]
students didn't like ms. nobile. she gave out c's and instituted community service. [damn rich little brats]
so... they decide to lay a trap... they promote Teach to head of the Ethics department [someone has a sense of humor] and then wait in her office to see what happens.
small swot knocks on door in his blue blazer and school tie [where is Mr. Chips when a kid needs a good talking to?]
Goren looms in, kid raises his hands and says "lawyer" {ack}
Kid keeps saying he's "not a rat" [i'm actually getting tired of that phrase] [I wonder if the creator of the "desk lion" thread over on the nbc board a zillion years ago will pick up on the one in the office here]. [Writer(s) obviously payed attention in alliteration and rhyming class. They work in "Scouts and Scholars" and "Jack's Pack."]
the second shot of the Coke machine. Ross gets soda, drinks (less obnoxiously than in the past). They drag in three classmates...
first is Eric Nessing. tells them the thing with Paul and Tessa was just a Cyrano thing. "The last two picks finding true love" Asks what's wrong with trying to get rid of a teacher who gives out c's and requires community service? [see above reference to rich brats]
Eames: "loyalty or yale. your choice." kick ass eames again!!
student number 2 (they are all running together) gets interviewed, and claims "Eric was the Picador, Jack was the Matador." {Extra points for the bullfighting references.}
back to Jack's dad's red study {bullfighters... red capes surrounding them... red study walls surrounding Jack. ha.}
Jack refuses to "rat everybody out." {PLEASE get a new phrase}
Jack and his dad spar ... dad thinks son no good. son mad dad doesn't see his potential... Goren subtley controls the conversation. Lets the kid dig his own grave.
tells Jack it's ok that he doesn't want to rat out his friends, that "that's what cops like. People who won't turn on their friends."
{Hmmm... Bobby learning lessons? Regardless it is old Bobby using what's going on in his life to empathize with a suspect just like old times.}
dad calls jack a "moron" ... we watch the kid snap ... {quite lovely that moment actually}
tells his Dad that he'd have liked Joe. That the great thing about his plan was that only the less desireable people would get hurt. Calls Paul a "suicide waiting to happen" -- Tessa a "freeloader" -- Kiana "trading on being black to get her into Wellesley". Says in a few years the Manor Hill yearbook will look like the front cover of National Geographic. {yea writing. this is good snark}
Jack admits to orchestrating the whole thing, while standing in the red study in his blue blazer, tattersal shirt and striped tie -- the proto-perfect-preppy {I should know, I have the handbook}
Jack is one smug bastard. calls his plan "...so Darwinian..."
Eames cuffs him. Goren says 'H. Jack Walker III you are under arrest..."
Jack, as he's being led out turns to his dad who has just offered to bail him out and says "You still don't get it, do you? You can't fix it this time."
Ouch. Very fathers and sons angst. son brings himself down to bring down his father...???... zowee.
next week... Logan and Wheeler get a dead rapist. Suspicions of a serial killer.
Logan. "My interest is peaked..."
ha. love him. two more episodes for mikey logan...
I called this one Legacy -- or Why Prom is Always a Bad Idea...
OK, boys and girls... today at Manor Hill we have suicide, blackmail, murder, and Titian. :0)
We open on a city street... big black shiny car, boys in tuxes, green trees, park benches, hip-hop music.
The boys are IM-ing a girl trying to get her to strip on her webcam for them. {see... Donna Noble's mom was right, web cams are naughty :)}
The girl is getting ready for her Junior prom ... all ringlets and a pretty blue dress... she says no.
minutes later, another IM... her date Joe is dumping her. Says his friend Paul told him that she was a lesbian. No prom for Tessa.
shot of Paul -- awkward and wearing his dads tux to prom.
shot of Kiana at the prom, getting punch, she blows off Paul
shot of Kiana and Tessa at lacrosse practice in their Manor Hill team uniforms.
Paul goes jogging. Gets attacked by hoodie and goggle wearing girl gang (hoodie hoods?)
shot of Paul all bandaged up at his computer muttering "these bitches are going to pay"
Shot of Art History Class. Teacher talking about Titian's The Sacred and the Profane
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/titian/sacred_profane.jpg.html
all the kids cell phones go off. They all get an animated video showing Tessa and Kiana making out. Tessa runs out. Teacher follows. Teacher ends up going down stairway [stairwells are not good places to be in the L&O universe...]. Goes through door marked "restricted access" [red sign] into boiler room. Sees shadows... finds a boy (Paul) in a red tshirt hanging from those pipes...
and roll credits...
Goren and Eames and Detective-of-the-week Biaggi stroll across the Manor Hill campus. Goren says it looks more like a college. Eames says it costs that much to go there.
Interview the teacher -- Ms. Nobile (no-bee-lay she insists)
the vic, Paul, was "not popular" ... "the longer he stayed here, the less he fit in." {hmmm... not unlike a certain detective we know}
Goren peering intently at teacher. asks her to "spin around" ... mutters something about "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" [now Goren's getting too vague even for me to follow...] and he points out paint chips clinging to her top. She says they got on her when she tried to hold Paul up in the noose while she waited for help.
They meet up with the headmaster "Keifer Gates" who Biaggi terms a real CYA (Cover Your Ass). {sounded pretty realistic to me given the state of schools today}
They go down to the boiler room. Eames looks at the noose knot and terms it a "sailors knot." Goren looks at it and decrees "Bowline."
They are then off to interview Paul parents... [who seem in retrospect rather unmoved by their son's death] ... Dad sails. Paul gets seasick. They had left Paul alone home all weekend while they went to a regatta to try and "foster more independence" for him.
Goren notices Paul prom tux. notes stain. Dad flips at the kid ruining his tux, and then goes from mad to sad, and sinks down on the edge of the bed clutching tux jacket.
Mom confesses Paul was medicated, she gets g/e a list... he was being treated for depression... but she also fesses up that Dad's family has a history of schizophrenia so they were watching him for any signs.
Goren sympathetic, but doesn't seem overly squicked out about this piece of info.
Off to the ME. Death by asphyxiation... but the kid also had a fractured skull, so would have been out cold when strung up. Lots of other bruises, Goren goes to peek under the sheet, Rogers bats his hand away, and says to g/e "this kid literally got his ass kicked"
They discuss that the pattern of bruising is consistent with abusive relationships ... no bruises where it shows.
bring ross up to speed. Pauls backpack is still missing.
.5 nanosecond shot of Ritchie walking and then later another brief shot of him on the phone... :0)
Paul's dad is described as a "pit bull in pinstripes" [lovely that]
they find him at his club playing squash. he ends his game, sees the elderly black attendant for a towel and a cold drink [what century is this?]. They confront him about the bruises and possible abuse.
He asks Goren "are you nuts." Goren takes his glass from him [HA -- but no arm twisting this time]
Dad: "You have your nerve."
they grill him some more about his whereabouts over the weekend and during the time of the murder... he has alibis.
As he walks off he says "I thought MCS was an elite squad. So far I'm underwhelmed."
(g/e roll eyes...)
they decide they need to track down Paul's friends. Drag his friend Jack out of class. He's all nervous, they suggest they speak to him at his home.
So, onwards of Jack's Dad's red walled study [the amount of red in this episode is just unreal] ...[the Dad is so familiar, but I don't know if he's a repeater, or just someone I've seen on other shows.]
**edited: someone pointed out on the board this morning that it's the squicky dad from the eggcup episode
Jack rats out Paul for making video sent to all classmates. Identifies the two girls in it as Tessa Nobile (daughter of the teacher) and Kiana Richmond.
g/e back to school after some negotiontions with school's legal department to search Tessa and Kiana's lockers. RED lockers. Students stand around in a pack filming it all on their cell phones [reminiscent of tru love, but better and more logical here] They open lockers, and get each girls laptops. Teach mom grabs Tessas and says to come back with a search warrant. Goren says ok. Kiana (who is just full of ghetto attitude, despite being more park avenue than the projects) says they are free to look since they've already "Guantanamoed" her locker [note new verb] ...
{Somewhere there was a scene where Kiana was showing her gal pals how to wipe files from their computers. Hence her confidence now.}
Enter Ira {I LOVE HIM} he found the video Kiana thought she'd erased... it's the pack of hoodies attacking Paul. [Goren looks tired here, but doesn't impact anything, so just an aside]
Eames is the savant in this episode {She does a LOT more these days...} Says the attackers were holding their hands the way you hold a lacrosse stick. Says her cousin played lacrosse. Says the forward line in lacrosse is called the "attack men"
{of course I wondered how the hand positions in lacrosse can be differentiated from other team sports with sticks (a la field hockey)... but one doesn't want to be asking those types of questions when Eames is all brainy kickass)
So... Kiana gets brought into MCS (Ross' office) with her lawyer father (another familiar face from the world of TV) Kiana denys she is on the attack video. calls it 'racial profiling'
g/e figure all the lacrosse team will lawyer up asap, but since tessa's mom is a teacher she becomes the weakest link.
Mom talks about the boyfriend Joe (screename Luv40) tennis team... Mom casts doubt on Kiana...
Kiana in interrogation with Dad. g/e confront him with lesbian video.
Dad: "my daughter is neither a murderer or a lesbian."
Eames: "Which one scares you more?"
Kiana casts doubt on Ms. Nobile... Kiana says she knew about the video...
cut to scene of Jack in Ms. Nobile's office telling her he wants revenge for Paul's death. Says "if Tessa was involved, she's going to pay."
g/e/r at g/e desks. signs are pointing to the mom now. ross asks why she wasn't considered in the first place.
Eames: "she was a renaissance art scholar and a mom"
ms. nobile has quite a cv... curator a the Frick... instructor at RISD...
took the job at Manor Hill to get her daughter a full scholarship.
Ross says to go back and search her office, and tell her if she resists, they have a warrant and a half-dozen paparazzi there by noon.
Eames: "that would be a bluff, right?"
Ross. "Right."
well well well... what is Paul's backpack doing in her office?
Mom fesses up that she was being blackmailed to resign. Tessa was the scapegoat.
They start honing in on the mystery boyfriend. Joe Cardinal. {red again????} goes to Bristol Academy in Connecticut.
g/e/r/ira check out his "friendpost" page (aka Facebook) It has been taken down but Ira the Invincible uses the wayback machine (an ACTUAL application and not just an old segment from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon!!!!!) to pull up archived copy. Ross inserts hip techno-savy jargon. They look at him. He reminds them he has teenage sons... :0)
so off to CT and the Bristol Academy g/e go. The woman they talk to is way cranky... but they are told no Joseph Cardinal is a student, and they are handed a course schedule. The pictures were taken using models... and there is pretty boy Joe on the front cover.
dum dum dum... 39 minutes into the episode, MCS finally figures out what we've known all along... that Joe is fictional. what no one knows is who created him.
back to MCS and they discuss how Joe was created to be Tessa's tailor made boyfriend... but that her humiliation might have merely been a means to an end.
ross lays out timeline... hoax. beating. murder.(ah... the L&O trifecta ;0) says it's "Lord of the Flies" at that school. [fulfilling his Ross role of inserting his regularly scheduled literate comment of the week]
students didn't like ms. nobile. she gave out c's and instituted community service. [damn rich little brats]
so... they decide to lay a trap... they promote Teach to head of the Ethics department [someone has a sense of humor] and then wait in her office to see what happens.
small swot knocks on door in his blue blazer and school tie [where is Mr. Chips when a kid needs a good talking to?]
Goren looms in, kid raises his hands and says "lawyer" {ack}
Kid keeps saying he's "not a rat" [i'm actually getting tired of that phrase] [I wonder if the creator of the "desk lion" thread over on the nbc board a zillion years ago will pick up on the one in the office here]. [Writer(s) obviously payed attention in alliteration and rhyming class. They work in "Scouts and Scholars" and "Jack's Pack."]
the second shot of the Coke machine. Ross gets soda, drinks (less obnoxiously than in the past). They drag in three classmates...
first is Eric Nessing. tells them the thing with Paul and Tessa was just a Cyrano thing. "The last two picks finding true love" Asks what's wrong with trying to get rid of a teacher who gives out c's and requires community service? [see above reference to rich brats]
Eames: "loyalty or yale. your choice." kick ass eames again!!
student number 2 (they are all running together) gets interviewed, and claims "Eric was the Picador, Jack was the Matador." {Extra points for the bullfighting references.}
back to Jack's dad's red study {bullfighters... red capes surrounding them... red study walls surrounding Jack. ha.}
Jack refuses to "rat everybody out." {PLEASE get a new phrase}
Jack and his dad spar ... dad thinks son no good. son mad dad doesn't see his potential... Goren subtley controls the conversation. Lets the kid dig his own grave.
tells Jack it's ok that he doesn't want to rat out his friends, that "that's what cops like. People who won't turn on their friends."
{Hmmm... Bobby learning lessons? Regardless it is old Bobby using what's going on in his life to empathize with a suspect just like old times.}
dad calls jack a "moron" ... we watch the kid snap ... {quite lovely that moment actually}
tells his Dad that he'd have liked Joe. That the great thing about his plan was that only the less desireable people would get hurt. Calls Paul a "suicide waiting to happen" -- Tessa a "freeloader" -- Kiana "trading on being black to get her into Wellesley". Says in a few years the Manor Hill yearbook will look like the front cover of National Geographic. {yea writing. this is good snark}
Jack admits to orchestrating the whole thing, while standing in the red study in his blue blazer, tattersal shirt and striped tie -- the proto-perfect-preppy {I should know, I have the handbook}
Jack is one smug bastard. calls his plan "...so Darwinian..."
Eames cuffs him. Goren says 'H. Jack Walker III you are under arrest..."
Jack, as he's being led out turns to his dad who has just offered to bail him out and says "You still don't get it, do you? You can't fix it this time."
Ouch. Very fathers and sons angst. son brings himself down to bring down his father...???... zowee.
next week... Logan and Wheeler get a dead rapist. Suspicions of a serial killer.
Logan. "My interest is peaked..."
ha. love him. two more episodes for mikey logan...
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Law and order Criminal Intent
Date: 2008-11-07 06:47 am (UTC)Re: Law and order Criminal Intent
Date: 2008-11-07 03:25 pm (UTC)One of two LO:CI episodes featuring Jim Gaffigan, although he was the mortuary owner in "Dead"... not the killer!