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Law and Order: Criminal Intent on NBC

With the cancellation of its flagship show Law and Order, NBC has decided to rely upon the program’s more sensational and hyperbolic spinoffs – Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Law and Order: Criminal Intent – to anchor the networks’ line-up of crime procedurals. Not only are the latter shows more graphic and explicit in nature, the crimes typically involve some type of sexual deviance. And in the case of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, the fact that original episodes air on cable before they are shown on broadcast television may explain why the content is more provocative. But knowing this, why did NBC decide to air a disturbing episode about a rapist/serial killer at 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. Central/Mountain) on Sunday, July 11^th? The sexually charged violence garnered the episode the title of Worst TV Show of the Week. 

The episode opens with a young girl and her drug-dealing boyfriend at a nightclub. When a rival dealer roughs up her boyfriend, the girl attempts to intercede. “Stay back, little bitch,” the rival screams as he backhands her face, cutting her deeply on the cheek.

At the emergency room, the girl reveals that she’s a recent transplant from Iowa to New York. Her nurse, Maya, brings the young girl back to her apartment and plies her with alcohol. The nurse invites her boyfriend over. When he enters, we see him in the background, presumably raping the girl. Later, her body is discovered in the gutter. She has been made up to look like a prostitute.

The coroner provides gruesome detail: “We're waiting on toxicology, but it's rather remarkable.  Raped and sodomized, but no semen, blood, or anything that might give DNA.  Every surface, every orifice, scrubbed and flushed.”

A second victim emerges. She too is thoroughly cleaned post-mortem and staged to look like a prostitute. Both victims are linked by the fact that they were treated at the emergency room by Maya prior to being killed. During a break between murders, Maya and her firefighter boyfriend, Damon, have sex. She tells him, “Touch me the way you touch them.” He straps her wrists to handcuffs attached to the bed. He kisses her all over her body and presses himself against her as her legs are spread.

Detective Nichols uncovers Damon’s checkered past, as well as Maya’s complicated history with her deceased father. Nichols states, “Damon and her father have similarities, don't they?  They're both working-class, and physical. They have issues with sex. Damon had a felony rape charge in 1999. The victim was drugged, raped, tied up, and sodomized.”

The detectives learn that Maya used to hunt with her father, and they surmise that she’s repeating the pattern of helping a dominant male figure stalk prey and clean up after his conquest.

Oddly, given the evidence of sexual abuse, these cases normally would fall under the purview another show – Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. But clearly, in order to heighten the gruesomeness of the storylines, the themes from both shows are dovetailing. This is regrettable news for families hoping for wholesome content on Sunday nights. Perhaps NBC should consider programming less Law and Order and more peace and quiet.

For airing disturbingly violent sexual content in the Family Hour, Law and Order: Criminal Intent has been named Worst TV Show of the Week