L&O: Criminal Intent 11x01-02, "Loyalty"

[arduinna]

So a new season of L&O:CI started up a few weeks ago. I'm not even sure why I'm still watching this show; I don't catch all the eps, and it started losing its appeal when it went from Goren-the-unabashed-Mary-Sue to Goren-the-tormented-emo!princeling, but eh, my tivo gets it for me when it can, so whatever, I watch.

The first two eps of the season were a two-parter called "Loyalty".



Extremely fast, vague plot summary: The captain was acting suspiciously, Goren and Eames, surprise surprise, got suspicious, and then wham, the captain gets fatally shot. Which was a little startling - it's been a long, long time since they actually killed off a character in L&O, maybe not since Cerreta in L&O:original.

So Goren goes off the rails, because that's all he does at this point. He could easily have made a case for Major Case being given their captain's murder to investigate, and instead he attacks a suspect in FBI custody and gets suspended. Because that's all he does now.

Things progress along, Nichols and Eames and some new chick do some investigating behind the FBI's back, Goren does investigating on his own (Eames: "I should talk you out of this." Goren: "But that never works." Eames: "No it doesn't. *totally doesn't even try, just looks sadly resigned as Goren hares off to be an idiot*").

Various complications ensue, yadda yadda, turns out the captain was, for some bizarre reason, working undercover for the feds in some international terrorism sting operation (... I don't even know. It made absolutely no sense as a plot, or for the captain's character). Goren finds out, decides the only way to honor his murdered captain is to go along with the thing that got him murdered in the first place. He convinces Eames that he's right - because she will believe anything he says, anytime, without exception, and will back him no matter how stupid he's being. Eames backs Goren to Nichols and the new chick, to Nichols' dismay.

The plot resolves in a fashion I don't even entirely remember, although I know it involved Goren getting his way. But the details were driven out of my head by the "character development" bits that wrapped up the two-parter.

Eames, whose character has never been anything but a puppet nodding to Goren's string-pulling, gets offered the captaincy (more specifically, gets offered a chance to take the captain's exam, with the strong suggestion that of course she'll pass it, and she'll get the captaincy). Good lord! She has an actual opportunity! Of course, there's a price to pay, because police bureaucracy is nothing but politics: she has to fire Goren, who is a liability that the NYPD can't afford anymore.

(Sidebar: they've been saying that almost since the first season, and it used to be just that they didn't understand his wacky genius and weird methods. Now? It's utterly true. He's not wacky, he's a whackjob.)

So the second episode ends with Goren (in civvies, because he's still on suspension, despite having been completely involved in this case and being the driving force behind its conclusion) following Eames into the captain's office, and congratulating her. She looks unhappy, and says there was a price; Goren smiles and says "You have to fire me". She agrees, and Goren accepts it, and there's a goodbye scene during which she does most of the emoting, as usual. He walks away, no longer a detective.

Then Eames walks over to the captain's desk and picks up the phone to make a call, putting her gun and shield on the desk as she says, "Chief? This is Detective Eames. I won't be taking that captain's exam." And we fade out to credits.

And I am just.

Was it really truly absolutely necessary to make sure that this character never had a single moment's autonomy or personality? If there's no Goren, there can literally be no Eames?

The hell?

I mean, I shouldn't have been surprised. She's never had any agency. She got occasional good lines (I will forever love her snarky little "There they go: Ocean's Two" as Goren and Logan walk off, bonding over Rat Pack trivia), but she never got to be the smart one, or the clever one, or the right one.

Well, not unless it was girl stuff. She was allowed to know girl stuff, because that was either beneath Goren's notice, or too alien for him to comprehend. And y'know, the first time it happened, I was amused - Goren was talking his way through a crime in a public bathroom, and logically deduced that the woman using the stall had put her purse on the floor at her feet; Eames told him she'd hung it on the hook, and they went back and forth with Goren pointing out that that's illogical, a purse can be snatched from there, and Eames patiently repeating "She hung it on the hook. Trust me," until Goren finally wised up and said, in effect, "Ahhh - it's a girl thing. Okay, so she... hung it on the hook." It was cute, and good to see that he didn't know everything.

But the only other things Eames ever figured out first were things like "oh, those pants were designer things only available in 1996 - I had a pair" (girl thing!), and "Oh my god, what is wrong with you people, can't you see her water just broke? Some detectives you are!" - which is a paraphrase, but not much of one, as Eames shows off her womanly observation abilities in a room full of two male detectives, a male police captain, and a very pregnant female detective standing in a puddle of her own making, because that was a girly puddle that teh menz couldn't possibly understand.

So narratively, it makes perfect sense that of course her existence ends when Goren's does - she has no existence outside of his need for her validation of his ideas (that's the wrong word; he doesn't care if she validates him. He just wants an audience to show off to.).

But did they really have to do it like that? Pretend to be giving her power and authority? Make her pretend to have power and authority, just long enough to make things gentle and easy on Goren so he doesn't suffer one tiny little titch of abrasiveness, poor giant woobie, before she scuttles her entire career?

Arrrghh.

It's not even like I liked her - she was a cipher from day one, and I never cared about her at all as a result. But this - man, this is just insult on top of injury. WTF.

The more I think about it, the more I flail. She: did the brass's dirty work for them so they wouldn't have to; took responsibility for telling Goren and trying to make it as gentle and kind as possible, with hugs and kisses instead of the reaming out he deserved; didn't tell him she was quitting, so they can't even go have a freaking beer and commiserate about what bastards the brass are.

She is nothing but womanly sacrifice, here.

Christ.

Comments

[cereta]

I had very much the same feelings. I actually did like Eames (I think I saw a bit more in her character than you did, although who knows, I could have been projecting ;). I wish they'd kept the stuff where she knew more about computers and technology than he did, but that sort of went off the rails as Bobby became more and more tortured and her superpower became keeping him in line. I still have fits over the "are you a Goren fan or a Nichols fan?" commercial, as if the only reason I could possibly like this show was because of the quirky male geniuses.

But dammit, making her captain would have worked. She could have stayed on the show, brought her experience to bear, and been interesting. And maybe the actress wanted to leave, who knows, but then why put that storyline there anyway? Just to have one more moment where Eames, the second generation cop, who married another cop, is nothing more than Goren's sidekick? ARG.

[arduinna]

It isn't that I disliked Eames, I was just largely indifferent to her. And for the most part during the series I was fine with her, taking her for what she was.

I realized thinking about it more today that the thing that actually caused me to go flaily was the bait and switch; when they offered her the captaincy my first thought was "oh, of course she's not taking that, she always puts Goren ahead of everything". That's just what she's like. But then! She'd taken it! She was firing Goren, she was actually putting herself and her career ahead of him! YAY!

Except no, she wasn't. Again. And wow, that was a slap in the face to me - how dare they get me invested in her to that degree, just to yank her away again?

And the worst of it is, I'm sure they think that this was an awesome ending for her.

But dammit, making her captain would have worked. She could have stayed on the show, brought her experience to bear, and been interesting. And maybe the actress wanted to leave, who knows, but then why put that storyline there anyway? Just to have one more moment where Eames, the second generation cop, who married another cop, is nothing more than Goren's sidekick? ARG.

I know, right? It could have been really awesome - she could totally have come into her own. Argh.

[klia]

I guess because I'm sadly familiar with L&O's MO re: most female characters, and knew the show centered around Goren and his weird genius, I've been watching a very different show than you have from the beginning, and was very attached to both Goren and Eames. That's not to say I loved the two-parter, because it was very WTF for me, too, but I didn't recoil as much as you did. And I can't say I liked that the writers basically tortured Goren in practically every way possible for the past few seasons, and turned him into a total nutbar, so it's almost a relief that that's over, but as they tend to do, they made his parting extremely unpleasant. I would've loved to have Eames as captain, though. And I miss Logan and Wheeler a lot.

I do like Nichols, though, and I'm trying really hard not to have high hopes for Stevens and Callas, who are both smart and competent, because this is L&O, after all. And it's nice to have another female boss, since apparently Van Buren will be off the original show after being boss there for 17 years.

[arduinna]

I actually like several other female L&O characters - I adore Van Buren (omg that news makes me sad :( - she's seriously one of my favorite characters on tv), and I like Benson and Olivet, and some of the ADAs. But Eames just never made it out of Goren's shadow for me, and I accepted that; she wasn't why I started to drift away, it was emo!Goren.

But as I said to cereta, I figured out today that the problem for me was the bait and switch they pulled; I was completely used to Eames being the sidekick, and when they offered her the captaincy with the price of firing Goren, my first assumption was that of course she'd turn it down - she'd tell them to do their own dirty work and walk away, saying something about going to see her partner.

But dammitall, the writers had me believing, for two short minutes, that she'd actually managed to stand up for herself instead of for Goren, and I was so happy - it would have been so cool, having her as captain! She could totally pull it off, out of Goren's shadow. But then they yanked that rug right out from under me, and wow. Flailiness enough to have to post. *g*

I miss Logan and Wheeler, too - I adore Mike from way back (and I was loving seeing how he'd started turning into Briscoe - oh, Lenny <3 ), and I really liked Wheeler's sharpness.

Nichols I'm iffier on; Jeff Golblum is hard for me to take a lot of the time (his speech and mannerisms are too distinctive, and I imprinted on them when he played New Jersey in Buckaroo Banzai. It's really really hard to take him seriously when in my head he's always wearing stupid furry chaps and a giant ten-gallon hat *g*). If I wind up liking his new partner, I'll be okay; if she's not a draw for me, I'll probably wind up drifting away.

I am glad there's a female boss coming in, though - that's a nice change, after all this time.

[klia]

I like Benson, but SVU tends to squick me, so I haven't watched many eps. I adore Van Buren, too, but aside from her and a few secondary characters like Olivet and Rodgers (the M.E.), I haven't been terribly impressed with the female characters, or the ways most of them were written.

You can't watch Goldblum? How did you get past all of D'Onofrio's crazy roles? It took me quite a while to even watch CI because of characters like Pooh-Bear in The Salton Sea and the guys he played in Men in Black and The Cell. Meep.

[arduinna]

I avoided SVU for the first several seasons, after the pilot episode squicked me horribly. But I seem to have adapted to it over the years. And oh, I forgot Rodgers! <3

Believe it or not, CI was the first thing I ever saw D'Onofrio in, or at least the first thing I connected him to. So my problem with him goes in reverse. *g* (Although honestly, for the first year or two I watched CI, I didn't even know the character's name - to me [and therienne], he was "Not-Grissom", because we were just boggled at how very not-Grissom-y he was. So much fun, though, in those early years!)

[klia]

So much fun, though, in those early years!

Yeah. *sigh* I think things went downhill when they decided to turn his personal life into some sort of freak show. Btw, they never explained his "niece," did they? WTF?