Law & Order World Sport Competition

With all the excitement over the Olympic games in Beijing, did anyone even realize that that Law & Order equivalent, the “Law & Order Mount Olympus Games, ” were going on?

I didn’t think so. Here’s a video of the high points of the competition. It stars some of your favorite "faces" from the Law & Order franchise: Vincent D’Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe, Sam Waterston, Chris Meloni, Mariska Hargitay, Chris Noth, Julianne Nicholson, and Alana De La Garza.




Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information, here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

Elliot Stabler Gets A Mom - With Baggage

It’s been reported by several sources that Law & Order SVU character Elliot Stabler’s (Chris Meloni) mother will appear on an upcoming episode, being played by Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn.

More details on what this means for the Stabler family is below, from TV Squad. Do everyone’s parents in the Law & Order Universe need to have “issues”? Think of Bobby Goren’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) mom, Olivia Benson’s (Mariska Hargitay) mom, John Munch’s (Richard Belzer’s) dad, Mike Logan’s (Chris Noth) parents, Jack McCoy’s (Sam Waterston) dad…are there no normal parents out there?

Ellen Burstyn to guest on Law & Order SVU
by Allison Waldman


Recently, we told you about James Brolin appearing in a guest role on Law & Order: SVU, as a man from Elliot's past. Now, there'll be even more development for Christopher Meloni's character when Ellen Burstyn shows up on SVU to play Stabler's mother.

Oh, and she's not your button-downed, upright all together mom. She's bipolar, which is to say that she has a serious psychological disorder.

TVGuide.com reported that it learned that Ms. Burstyn's guest role will be very dramatic -- "explosive" -- and is slated for one episode. Thinking about what's been happening on SVU, the major storyline for Elliot has been revolving around his wife Kathy having another child.

The baby has brought the Stablers back together after a separation. Could Elliot's mother be coming to New York to see her new grandchild and something else go wrong? Hmm...

Oscar-winner Burstyn (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore) has been busy on the big screen as well as TV. She's a four-time Emmy nominee, including one this year as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for HBO's Big Love. She was great as Barb's mother, but I think she's likely to lose the Emmy to Cynthia Nixon, ironically, for a role she had on SVU in 2007, as a severely disturbed woman with multiple personalities.




Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information, here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

Law & Order Criminal Intent “Last Rites” Episode Information and Previews

Here is the episode information for Law & Order Criminal Intent “Last Rites”. It stars Chris Noth, Julianne Nicholson, and Eric Bogosian. There are no videos available as yet to embed here, but the link to the USA promo for the episode is below. I’ll add the preview clips if/when they become available.

This is Chris Noth’s final episode with Criminal Intent. Lets hope they give him an exit which allows for an opportunity to reappear on any of the franchise shows if/when he gets tired of being a big movie star. We will be glad to take him back!


“Last Rites” Air Date August 17, 2008
Logan questions the system after reopening a 16-year-old homicide case at the request of a priest (guest star, and Law & Order repeat offender Denis O'Hare).

The link to USA promo is here.

My recap and review of “Last Rites “ can be found here.



UPDATE August 13, 2008
Here’s an article from The Nashville Daily News that gives more information about the episode. Note: The episode time they mention is CENTRAL TIME.

TVISION: An era ends on ‘Law and Order’

Logan during the series first five years, and many fans still consider the pairing of Noth and the late Jerry Orbach one of the best (if not the best) investigative teams the show ever featured.

Over the past couple of years Noth has been appearing every other week on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. His final episode starts at 8 p.m., Sunday on USA Network.

In a sense history will repeat itself thematically. Logan’s first departure was triggered by a hot-tempered reaction to what he deemed a miscarriage of justice, and this time he’ll once again pick a fight he can’t win.

When Logan discovers a man is doing hard time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he decides to investigate. But that pits him against a District Attorney (Leslie Hope) determined that her high-profile conviction not be overturned. It’s an appropriate finale for Noth, whose character went from raging novice to seasoned veteran over the years.

A four-episode marathon of Logan’s toughest cases from this current season will be shown Saturday night on USA beginning at 6 p.m.




Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information, here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

Criminal Intent “Neighborhood Watch” Piqued My Interest

In this episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent, "Neighborhood Watch, " we saw a little bit of the old Mike Logan (Chris Noth), his dry humor, his sarcasm, his temper, and his plaid tie. It’s a shame that they took so long to bring some of his spark back, seeing that the next episode is his last with the series.

This episode opens with several people in a neighborhood posting photos of a sex offender that resides and works there. It seems everyone wants him out, and everyone seems quite verbal about it. Later, when a body turns up in the river, stabbed, missing his head, and with his fingerprints burned and almost melted off, Major Case detectives Logan and Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson) are called out because it’s initially believed to be a mob hit. Logan is skeptical, but says:

Logan: My interest is piqued.
Wheeler: Piqued?
Logan: It’s my new word for the week.

After Logan asks ME Rogers (Leslie Hendrix) to works some forensics slight of hand (so to speak) to help identify the body, they learn it’s none other than Kyle Jones (Darrin James Malone), the sex offender target by the Neighborhood Watch. Kyle had been found guilty of second-degree rape of a 15 year old girl, Nancy Williams (Halley Wegryn Gross). But is he really a sex offender? In going back and researching the rape charge in order to flush out a murder, Logan isn’t so sure and thinks that there was consent involved.

They also discover that Jones’ car appears to have been tampered with, and that he was possibly being harassed by Sergeant Whelan (Scott Sowers) in the form of repeated parking tickets. Jones’ employer, a video rental store owner and cousin of Kyle’s mother, says he was getting ready to let Kyle go because it was hurting his business. They talk with Bob Goodman (Victor Verhaeghe), store owner and driving force behind Neighborhood Watch, and he says he was working with Sgt. Whelan to help drive out Jones. When Sgt. Whelan I questioned, he said he saw Jones leave the video store early, and then he left as well.

But when they find that the ADA classed Jones’ crime as rape, Wheeler and Logan split up to talk to Nancy Williams and her father. The father is still angry over the rape but says he wouldn’t murder anyone, and the daughter admits a secret relationship with Jones. But, her parents were angry when they were told by Nancy’s doctor that she was not a virgin, and they moved ahead with the rape charge. Nancy also implies that from the questioning by the ADA, that it sounded like rape, and she agreed it must be.

Complicating matters is an appearance at One PP of Clete Dixon (Skip Sudduth), an old colleague of Captain Ross (Eric Bogosian), who seems to think that Kyle Jones’ murder is part of a suspected serial killer he’d been trailing as part of some cold cases. When ME Rogers examines Dixon’s files, she finds no evidence of a serial killer, and Logan and Wheeler deliver the news to Dixon. While he seems to accept their conclusions, Dixon is later seen on a TV talk show spouting that he was told by Major Case that it IS a serial killer. Ross fumes over it, and later is also seen talking on camera to a reporter debunking Dixon’s report. This doesn’t help much, as Dixon appears again on the Faith Yancy’s (Geneva Carr) talk show, this time with ADA Driver (Leslie Hope), who worked Nancy Williams’ case. ADA Driver appears to be only inflaming the situation by her comments. Ross asks the detectives to talk to her, be diplomatic, but get her to “dial it down.”

When Logan and Wheeler tell ADA Driver this was not the work of a serial killer, she says she is relieved. But when asked to issue a statement to deplore vigilante justice, she thinks that’s what she’s been doing, and refuses to minimize Jones’ crime. Logan, however, shows his annoyance with Driver by bluntly telling her that Jones got involved with the wrong girl, served his time in prison, and when he gets out he’s labeled as a sex offender, hounded, harassed, and murdered. Driver says he’s so angry, she’ll take his comments with a grain of salt.

Logan admits to Wheeler that he is frustrated, and decides that while they are in the neighborhood, they will investigate outstanding petty warrants to see what they can flush out. The find that a group of kids were talking big about the murder, as if they knew who did it, and a bar owner says one of them came in trying to use someone else’s ID. It point them back to Jake Lally, who finds that his ID was taken while these kids were in his house for a party his sister Brenda (Dreama Walker) had while his parents were out of town. Brenda says it was “Jamie, Ricky, and Lew” but it was Jamie (Michael Drayer) that she saw coming out of Jake’s room. They question Jamie, who insists he refused to help them disable Jones’ car, but was just supposed to be a lookout. He says Ricky and Lew bragged that “the deed is done” and that they’d be heroes.

In questioning Ricky (David Call), his mother says he was home with him all night – and Ricky emphasizes: every night. But when they look at Ricky’s and Lew’s (Lucas Papaelias) records, and find Ricky has a 1998 minivan, they decide to find a reason to get the van on a traffic violation so they can search it. They do so, and find that the van has luminol present, Logan giving them the bad news that the luminol can even show that bleach was used. They find luminol on Ricky and Lew’s shoes as well, with what looks like traces of stains. They take the two in for questioning, and search the garage at Ricky’s mother’s home. They decide to check the garage drain for blood, and suspect a hacksaw is missing, but a locked freezer turns up nothing but a large pot roast.

At One PP, Lew buckles under questioning, and says that it was Ricky’s idea because he wanted to impress Brenda Lally. Brenda, now also at One PP, says that Ricky and Lew hinted that they had killed Kyle, and had been talking about killing someone since junior high school, and that Ricky would even show her the head.

Wheeler puts the pressure on Ricky, getting him to admit that they brought Kyle to his house, gave him some beer (Kyle cut his hand on the bottle) and they smoked dope and popped some pills. She also tells him they checked his computer and found he’d looked up driving directions to where the body was dumped. Logan enters, and tells Ricky that Lew said Ricky did it, and told him where the hacksaw was put, but not the head. Wheeler continues to taunt Ricky, by saying the Brenda didn’t believe him, that he was a loser, and "all talk". But after Logan hits him with one final insult, Ricky folds and says he’d already murdered before Kyle, that he’d done the other sex offenders in the reports. Logan and Wheeler appear stunned, but they question Ricky further to flush out that Ricky is only talking big, and that he only killed Kyle. Ricky admits it, and after his bluff that he did it in self defense fails, he seems disappointed that the one murder won’t make him famous. But Logan still has some doubts about parts of the crime when Logan asks Ricky if he knows where the fuse box is on a Civic, and Ricky shrugs as if he doesn’t know or care. Logan goes back and questions Sgt. Whelan, who, after some cop-to-cop banter, seems to admit he took out the fuse, but didn’t know that Kyle’s time was up.

Back at One PP, Logan asks Wheeler to join him for a drink, but she begs off and introduces Logan to her fiancé, Colin (Nicholson’s real-life spouse, Jonathan Cake). So Logan joins Ross in his office, watching ADA Driver seemingly taking credit for cracking the case, while they sip drinks. Logan commiserates over his first case, and Ross over the current crime. As Logan reflects that Ricky “didn’t even enjoy it,” the episode closes.

I really enjoyed this episode primarily because it appeared that we got to see more of the “old” Mike Logan persona than we saw all season. He seemed brighter and more energetic, yet he also seemed to be less resistant to showing his annoyance when needed. Mike Logan finally seems to have come back, but I’m sad that they finally have gotten it right with him right, before his final episode.

The case also had the right amount of red herrings that actually added to the drama. The most interesting was when Ross’s colleague Dixon decides to make a name for himself and go on a talk show with his version of the case, and later Kyle’s killer Ricky uses that information in his attempt for serial killer fame. For a minute, he almost had me going, especially with the look of surprise on Logan and Wheeler’s faces. But their surprise was probably more indicative of how stupid they thought that Ricky was when they tore apart his claim.

I also thought that we saw some glimpses into Mike with his reaction to the rape accusation. This seemed like the Mike we knew from his early seasons on Law & Order, where he expressed his concern that if what Kyle did was really a crime, or it was just a case of a kid meeting up with the wrong girl with the wrong parents.

It was also amusing when Wheeler introduces her fiancé, and it’s none other than her real life husband. It was a funny touch that may have been missed by the casual Criminal Intent viewer. I also liked that they seemed to give Bogosian some better dialog which allowed him to emote more. This is the second week in a row that I actually enjoyed Bogosian - a world record for me.

The case itself was interesting, showing very well how sometimes labeling someone as a sex offender can have on a neighborhood. Personally, I always think it’s good to know when someone who is a registered sex offender moves in to my area, but I don’t always agree that zealous persecution of them by a neighborhood is the right answer.

This episode left me wanting to see much more of the Mike Logan that worked this case, sadly, it won’t be happening.



Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information, here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

SVU’s Chris Meloni in "Gym Teacher The Movie"

In a break from my normal Law & Order content, I thought I show the trailer for Law & Order SVU’s Chris Meloni and his new Nickelodeon movie, “Gym Teacher The Movie.” In one part of the clip, Chris is sporting an Afro. It must be seen to be believed.

The show is set to air on September 12, on Nickelodeon.







Link to Nickelodeon web site trailer here. Much better quality, but you have to sit through a commercial.



Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information,
here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

Law & Order: And Now For Something Completely Different

Viewers in the US are well accustomed to the themes and opening credits for the various shows in the Law & Order franchise. But, just to stir things up here, I’ve collected some of the themes and title credits for some of the Law & Order, Criminal Intent, and SVU shows as they appear in the United Kingdom. (I had already posted the SVU UK version back in April, here, but I also included it below just to have all of them in one place.)

No offense to Mike Post and his U.S. theme versions…but I really like the choices made for the UK themes, and the manner that the characters - such as Sam Waterston, Vincent D'Onofrio, Chris Noth, and the others - are presented in the opening credits.


Law & Order Criminal Intent Theme
Season Five, UK Edition
Vincent D'Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe, Chris Noth, Annabella Sciorra, Cortney Vance, Jamey Sheridan



Law & Order Criminal Intent Theme
Season Six, UK Edition
Vincent D'Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe, Chris Noth, Julianne Nicholson, Eric Bogosian




Law & Order
Season 13 UK Edition
Sam Waterston, Elisabeth Rohm, S. Epatha Merkerson, Fred Dalton Thompson, Jerry Orbach, Jesse Martin


Law & Order
Season 16 UK Edition
Sam Waterston, S. Epatha Merkerson, Jesse Martin, Dennis Farina, Fred Dalton Thompson, Annie Parisse


Law & Order
Season 17 UK Edition
Sam Waterston, S. Epatha Merkerson, Fred Dalton Thompson, Jesse Martin, Milena Govich, Alana De La Garza




Law & Order SVU
UK Edition
Chris Meloni, Markisa Hargitay, Richard Belzer, Ice-T, Dann Florek, Diane Neal



Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information,
here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

Law & Order SVU Filming in the Meat Packing District

Several bloggers and web sites caught Law & Order SVU stars Chris Meloni, Mariska Hargitay, and guest star Luke Perry filming the season premier in the Meat Packing District in New York City. Here are some of the pictures. Check out the sleeveless shirts Meloni must wear under those hot suits.

Above photos from Tressed Out Celebs

Luke Perry and Chris Meloni (Splash News)

Splash News

Below, from Starpulse

Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information, here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.

Law & Order Criminal Intent “Neighborhood Watch” Episode Information and Previews

Here’s the episode information and previews of Law & Order Criminal Intent episode “Neighborhood Watch”, starring Chris Noth and Julianne Nicholson. This week, USA seems to have released the video clips quickly, much to my delight.

“Neighborhood Watch” Air Date August 10, 2008
The case of a mutilated body found in a creek produces a whole neighborhood of suspects when the investigation reveals the man was not welcome in the community.

USA Promo

Law and Order: Criminal Intent – “Neighbor Watch” ...
Uploaded by USANetwork

USA Preview Clips

Law and Order: Criminal Intent – “Neighbor Watch” ...
Uploaded by USANetwork

Law and Order: Criminal Intent – “Neighbor Watch” ...
Uploaded by USANetwork

Check out my blog home page for the latest Law & Order information, here.

Also, see my companion Law & Order site,These Are Their Stories.