Tuesday Night TV

Great to have The Shield back. Highlight for spoilers:

• Law & Order: Criminal Intent: A doctor who performs cochlear implants turns up dead, and deaf groups angry at the whole concept are the chief suspects. An interesting idea, and I have no idea if it's true, that deaf people would find cochlear implants offensive. But not a very good mystery. I expect better from a Goren & Eames episode.
  
  
  The victim's redhead wife was quite the looker though. Shockingly, they showed an extreme closeup of a text message sent to Eames, but didn't show any kind of brand or service provider or anything.


• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A suburban girl drinks herself to death at a party in the city, and all the kids at the party take off to avoid trouble rather than try to help her.
  
  They try to charge the kids who were at the party, but can only get them on trespassing. But the kids kept getting into trouble. The kid who plays Silas on Weeds showed up early on but wasn't one of the ones charged, though he was chummy with them, so you knew he had to be important. And the nice, nerdy girl, played by Sarah Drew (I guess from Everwood, which I never watched, but I remember her as Jaye's clone girl from an episode of Wonderfalls), who tutors him is in for a surprise when she and the cops find out that her mother is doing Silas.
  
  The death of the girl early on becomes completely irrelevant, and the story is all over the place. Silas' character gets in a drunk driving wreck, killing himself and another girl. The nerdy girl is secretly an alcoholic. They use that to get her to turn on her mom. But it all wraps up with the slutty mom confessing for everything and wrapping things up.
  
  I liked that they called back to Stabler getting his daughter off on the DUI charge. That always bugged me, and I'm glad he now sees it as a mistake. The special message at the end seemed a little hokey though. I guess if it clues in some parents then that's great, but as a non-parent, it just looks goofy to me. And of course, I reprint it here, because the purpose of this blog is not to kill time or vent my pop cultural ramblings, but to save the lives of children.
  
  
  Random aside: the memorial service was pretty funny. "I can't believe I'll never play lacrosse with him again. The team will never take state now." Touching, dude.


• The Shield: I missed the hell out of this show... but in the time (I think a full year) since the last episode, I forgot all about where we left off. The previouslies caught me up mostly, I think.
  
  Kavanaugh and Dutch are working Lem's murder together. Kavanaugh feels guilty for providing Vic (so he thinks) with a motive to kill Lem, so he gets pretty desperate, and starts pulling the same stunts Vic pulls, breaking the rules to take down someone he knows is guilty.
  
  
  Speaking of guilt, Vendrell finds out he killed Lem based on bogus information. As a result, he's getting kinda reckless. Vic's still being pushed towards retirement, and is hard on Shane, figuring if he has to retire, Shane's the one left to do Vic's work.
  
  Random thoughts:
  
  • CCH Pounder is really awesome on this show. She's got an incredibly commanding presence without being hammy at all.
  
  
  • Good to see the lovely Officer Tina back, and Dutch's hilarious ploy to get in her pants via detective training.
  
  
  • Dick 'N' Granny
  
  
  • "I got leftovers older than you." "Yeah, but not as tasty."
  
  
  • The press calls Lem dirty, which seriously pisses Vic off. I mean, he's normally pretty angry, but this is crazy pissed.
  
  
  • Danny had her baby. I guess with many of them being sorta pudgy and bald, the baby's resemblance to Vic isn't surprising.
  
  
  • But wow, cat fight between Danny and Corrine.
  
  
  • At the end there was one of the nastier crime scenes I've ever seen on tv.
  
  

Still to watch: House.