This has probably been the most bizarre episode of Criminal Intent, not so much for what happens, but for the fact that the whole whodunnit aspect of the show is completely non-existant. From the very outset - the pretitle sequence - we are shown the crime and those that commit it. In fact, for most of the first third of the episode we are sitting around waiting for Logan and Folacci to catch up with us and arrest the criminals. When they finally get hold of those that caused all the problems, they discover that they can't arrest the ringleader because he terrifies his cronies so much they refuse to finger him (in the judicial sense of the word).
I usually bitch and moan about episodes of CI that stray too far from the formula, but to be fair this is quite a good episode as it's pretty clear from the outset that the episode is really about the struggle Logan has in dealing with a criminal who is..well, simply put he's evil. He virtually has no reason for his killing, aside from something that could either be a hearing disorder or a mental disorder or simply paranoia. When Ross asks Logan if they are seriously dealing with a murderer who has killed two people for no reason, Logan confesses that this seems to be exactly what they are dealing with. It's a scary idea. Criminals who commit crime for the sake of committing crime, possessing, as it it were, a two-dimensional personality, were very big in the fifties and the sixties. By the time the eighties came around, people demanded real reasons for crime occurring. A villain doesn't just want to take over the world - there has to be a reason for wanting to do that. By the norties, are expectations of motivations are far more refined, but the truth is that there are people - agents of chaos as it were - who will commit crime for no reason other than to cause havoc. When we are confronted by those people, they are far scarier than the average schmo who is keen to make sure his wife will never cheat on him again.
For those who aren't in the know, this is the final episode for Alicia Witt and Det Folacci. Witt hasn't had much of a chance to be a fully developed character, appearing in only five episodes, she actually has had less screen time than Goren's temporary partner, Bishop, in season three. That said it was interesting to put the hotheaded Logan in a partnership with an even more hotheaded character like Folacci, and although the Logan/Folacci relationship doesn't work as well as the Logan/Wheeler one, it was quite interesting for what it attempted to acheive.
Good luck Folacci, enjoy your transfer.
"B"
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