Okay, so maybe I'm sorta paying attention
I know most everyone's excited about G & E being back and I sorta am. I'm glad they're more in character and that the writing isn't completely flat and dead and oh I forgot my heart medicine, but I still feel something lacking, which is why I mostly check out while watching and just look at VDO and KE and go oooh, shiny. The motives are still murky and sometimes down right nonsensical, which just disappoints me to no end because the thing that was so awesome about early CI was it's (Rene Balcer's) ability to create this little play with these guest characters that was poignant and that made you care for or at least find interesting these characters who in most cases have done something horrible to someone else. The brilliance in Want is how it gets the audience to feel empathy along with Goren for this pathetically lonely man who found himself driven to do this monstrous thing to try to remedy that loneliness. Or the nun in Acts of Contrition (one of my top five eps and probably one of the most overlooked) who has turned her life around and is giving back to her community, but who once was a part of this horrible thing and who still has so much to answer to despite all of her work since then. There's just all of these beautiful grey areas that make people question what their watching and it was brilliant. When a writer can trick you to where you're going poor guy and then taking a step back going, oh, wait... that's good writing. It's like the end of Oldboy that is just perverse to our American mentality but yet is also in many ways a very stereotypical the hero gets the girl ending and it completely tricks you into wanting that "happy" ending. Brilliant, but I'm getting off topic.
I have not seen an episode since probably season 5 that truly envelopes you into the plot of that episode and where the crime story is well thought out and developed and makes you think. I miss that and while this writing team is vastly better than the last and actually seems to have, you know, seen an episode of CI, I'm disappointed that the crime stories are not enticing me they way I'd like. Also, and this sounds petty, but their incessant need to write the title of the episode into the dialogue as many times as possible drives me crazy. "Boots on the Ground" had me completely glassed over and the resolution made no sense to me- how was Jeri Ryan culpable for his death? And I miss Captain Ross. EB was awesome and while I have liked Jay O. Saunders in other things I find him...I don't know...like he's doing a bad impression of someone.
Now, The Last Street in Manhattan, I have to say this was probably one of the more provoking episodes so far this season, though my CI text buddy D totally called it during the opening credits. But it was nice to see Goren empathize again, because it was such a big part of who he was in the earlier episodes that I think got lost somewhere. It always annoys me when people write Goren in such a one sided way because what makes him interesting is how conflicted he can be in his pursuit of these criminals. In episodes like Sliver Lining you see an almost appreciation for what the thief is capable of and the same in Anti-thesis when he figures out who Elizabeth Hitchens is. Goren's one of those characters I have a hard time articulating how I see him as a character because there's so much going on there and some of it hits closer to home than I'd like to admit.
But back to last nights episode, I loved seeing them interact with Eames's father. It was an interesting choice to have Goren stationary and Eames the one fretting around and that gesture alone spoke a lot to her relationship with her father. I would have liked some clarification about her mother, who I'm assuming is dead now...maybe we are to take the comment from In the Dark as meaning her mother died from her stroke or assume with in the last 4 years died of another stroke or other complication??
But this episode at least held my attention and I liked how it went back to being a story about nobody or an Everyman sort of character who was both a victim and someone at fault for what had happened. I thought it would end up being the matchmaker since it seems like ever since they moved to USA everything has to be so flashy and obvious in it's "ripped from the headlines" story and I'm just saying I can see that Hollywood matchmaker from Bravo snap one day and stab one of those snobs in the eye.
Well I've bored you enough. I'm going to go sweat now since my A/C is just blowing out barely cool air. yay.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.