Lost Children of the Blood

by Courtney Hilden

This latest episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent follows Nichols (Jeff Goldblum) and Stevens (Saffron Burrows) as they solve the case of a young co-ed murdered in her own dorm room bed. The episode combined every "dark" thing the writers could apparently think of: blood, Goths, vampires, Jung, and cults. The Goths or vampires (the distinction between the two never being clear in this episode) were all either bad guys or incredibly easy to manipulate by the bad guys. Goths and vampires (as either of these subcultures will tell you) are similar but not the same, and dislike being meshed together. Suffice to say, the episode reeked of sensationalist tabloid fodder more than it did of serious crime solving. Goldblum and Burrows bring a similar D'Ofrino/Erbe dynamic.