A year or so ago, one of my wonderful preschool families gifted me with an AMEX gift card. As I mentioned in one of my recent blog posts, I am so tightfisted with money that I will gladly walk around with holes in my socks so that I can buy something cool for one of my kids. Screwy, I know. But I finally decided, ENOUGH! I was going to have Criminal Intent, Season 3. So I used my year-old AMEX card to buy it. (Now would be the logical time to question why I didn't buy boots with it, but that's another story.)
Season Three arrived and I was thrilled! I examined the box, read every description, handled it as though it were made of china. I'm a nut, I know. After I read all the synopses, I realized none of my favorite episodes occur in season three! How was that possible??? I mean, I was well acquainted with all of the episodes, and I liked them all fine, but none of them were my favorites! Probably because half of the season features Samantha Buck in place of Kathryn Erbe, since Erbe was pregnant at the time in real life. Now the best thing about Samantha Buck is her hair. And I'm a woman, so that says something about her acting ability. I don't know how she got that role. Casting couch? Who knows? Does that count as slander? At any rate, she does have some very pretty red hair. If I was a redhead, I would like to have that red hair. But I'm not. And seven episodes of a red haired, snotty twenty-something who doesn't know how to carry a scene with Bobby Goren is MORE than enough. In her next to last episode, Goren frustratedly tosses a ball of paper at Eames' empty chair, then turns to Buck's character and announces the reason the perp is committing crimes is yearning--he's missing his partner. By that point, weren't we all? God Bless the fact that pregnancies inevitably end, and Kathryn Erbe came back. Alex Eames rocks. As much as I love D'Onofrio, he can't carry the show himself. Erbe's balance and chemistry with him makes for great TV.
So a week or so ago, I decided to use another gift card I had been given to complete my collection. Season Four was released on November 24th and shockingly, I had denied myself. Well NO MORE! Rebel that I am, I used my other gift card to purchase season four. (Again, why not boots? Mainly because Best Buy doesn't carry them!)
Oh. My. God. Season four has about all my favorite episodes EVER. I cannot WAIT to dig into it over the holidays. See, I can't do it YET because I have to work my way through season three. There must be a method to the madness! DVDs must be watched in a particular order. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're probably a reasonable person. Not me.
With the end of Criminal Intent arriving this spring--or the end in my mind, anyway, because what's the point of a series continuing when the stars of the show are no longer on it?--I think I can rest easily. Four seasons of amazingly brilliant acting, clever dialogue, intriguing plotlines are at my fingertips. I have been reading blogs that are keeping up with current projects of D'Onofrio and Erbe, and I'm pleased that the actors are clearly moving on and pursuing projects that are fulfilling to them. And quite honestly, as much as I will miss the magic these two actors brought to the screen together, nothing quite captured the spirit of Criminal Intent the way the first four seasons did. No brutally horrible soap opera-esque happenings in detectives' lives. No bopping between two teams of detectives and having to muddle through one set of detectives so that you can be treated to Team A the next week. No trying to rein in Goren's character, or making Eames pathetically stoic. Just two detectives working the job. Clever and unique and dark. Irony and sarcasm and psychopathology. That's what I love about the soul of that show.
Happy Holidays to myself. I can't wait to sit wearing my new boots and watching Goren and Eames bust yet one more idiot. Simple pleasures for sure.
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