And Now the Transformation is Complete

It's no longer Law & Order: Criminal Intent. It's just another cop show, which should have been a spin-off for Jeff Goldblum. To call it LOCI is criminal. And yes, I'm still harping on it because I'm THAT UPSET STILL.

So, let's recap here. No more Goren, Eames or Ross. Not even Wheeler will be returning. So we have the newest character, Nichols, introduced last year for eight- count them - whole episodes. We have a new female partner and a new female captain. Saffron Burrows (no offense personally to the actress as I do not know her and I'm sure she's just taking a job and has no idea of all the bullshit connected with it) steps into Julianne Nicholson's place as the newest nubile young woman to partner with the male lead detective (at least she's not a redhead). No idea what her name will be, don't care. She's a thirty-something actress so I guess they're looking for younger than Erbe who is now in her forties.

For captain, they needed maturity so they got Mary Elizabeth Mastriantonio (Sp?) who I last remember as a swordfish boat captain in The Perfect Storm (an excellent movie, IMO). Guess they wanted more women for whatever reason. Maybe they didn't like the way Ross and Nichols tended to clash a bit since Nichols pulls Gorenesque stunts and now we know why Ross kept telling Eames not to let her partner take her down with him because he sees Eames as his counterpart and Goren as Nichols from his own experience.

So what are they going for I wonder? Whatever it is, they really should have just ended LOCI and Wolf could have called this L&O: something else that's not LOCI. It's an insult to the collective intelligence of LOCI fans and especially to VDO fans.

Now, I happen to really like Jeff Goldblum. He's kind of an odd duck as a human being and he's rather endearing in most of his movies. I like odd ducks.

I loved Mary Elizabeth Mastriantonio in The Perfect Storm and The Abyss. Apparently she was Maid Marion in some Robin Hood movie, though which one escapes me as I think it may have been from the one that had that awful song by Bryan Adams, which marked the beginning of his power ballad phase and it made me want to puke. But that's what people are laughing at her for so I am assuming that was it. Oh well, one bad movie does not a career kill, IMO.

Saffron Burrows I have no clue about. I recall she was on Boston Legal as an Alan Shore love interest but apparently she wasn't memorable enough for me to remember. Again, nothing against her as I don't know much about her and she's just taking a job along with the other two.

Despite all this, I'm just so disappointed that they are reinventing the show and keeping the name in the hopes that the name of the show can attract an audience. And I hate the way they treated the departing actors. It's especially disturbing the way Kathryn Erbe was treated from the news that has been leaking out on the situation.

All of it is enough to make me hate the show. I'm not watching the season premiere. I feel sorry for the actors taking over as really, they're not at any fault here. An acting job is an acting job and if it wasn't going to be any of them, it would have been someone else. However they seem to be sharing in the animosity and it's too bad. All that hate should be directed at the network and Dick Wolf.

Let's certainly not forget Dick Wolf. A man who thinks actors and characters are expendable because he seems to view all his shows as the same thing and that is so not true. Maybe the mothership can lose characters left and right, but SVU and LOCI are more character driven. Especially LOCI. SVU has a larger base of characters so maybe it could survive the departure of either Stabler or Benson, but LOCI had Goren and Eames all the way through. That's it.

Now, not only do we not have our main reasons for watching the show, we don't even have any of the peripheral characters like an ADA Carver or a Captain Ross who has more history with the show than Detective Nichols. WTF???

This show is so dead. It annoys me that USA and Wolf Productions have the nerve to call it LOCI. Cancellation would have been painful but understandable. In one of my letters to USA, I did tell them if they couldn't afford the show, they shouldn't have renewed it. I'd rather see it canceled outright than bastardized into something unrecognizable.

So if I don't learn for sure who dies in the finale (and yes, despite the fact that it's called the season premiere, it really is the finale) before hand, someone who watches it needs to tell me. I won't watch them kill off Eames. It would break my heart just like it broke my heart to see Frank Pembleton have to arrest Tim Baylis for murder in the finale of Homicide: Life on the Streets. In my mind it never happened. Lt. Giardello didn't die in my mind either.

And just like Homicide ended for me with the departure of Frank Pembleton, LOCI will end with Goren being 'set free' by his insane mentor, Declan Gage, with Ladies Man as an epilogue to show us Detective Goren almost recovered and back to his old self. I'm really good at watching tapes and DVDs of my favorite shows without watching the bad parts.

Okay, hopefully this will be the end of the rant. It's just difficult when I see things to remind me of the change and sets off another round of ranting and raving and an incredible feeling of disgust through me. Just when I think I'm in full acceptance, another little news item hits and it reminds me of just how much I will miss this show.

Last week at work a co-worker mentioned Burn Notice - a show we both like - and I mentioned I wouldn't be watching. He asked why and I told him. Also told him not to get attached to the show because once it's been on long enough, if the actors cost too much they're going to dump them and bring in new ones. He was surprised they would even keep the title LOCI since - and he doesn't really watch the show - it seemed to be about that 'big guy detective.' lol He only sees promos and maybe watched an episode or two and even he knows what LOCI has always been about.

So, who is going to end up watching LOCI? Well, I don't know. I bet the season premiere will get big numbers because it's the departure of Goren and Eames. But after that if even casual viewers think the show is supposed to be about Goren, I bet they won't stick around for long either.



[NP: Foo Fighters - DOA]