L&O: episodes 2 and 3
Oct. 6th, 2024 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyIn which I watch the second and third episodes of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. I think I will rate these episodes on how good the plot is, whether we learn anything interesting about any character, and most importantly, how Toronto the episode was.
So, my bad: The OG intro is so hardwired into my skull that I didn't realize that this series only deals with the cop side of the investigation, not the prosecutors, which is too bad because the prosecutor in this is funnier than the cops. (In general there are a lot of beats that feel like there should be a punchline, and there either isn't, or the punchline is terrible, so it's not a very high bar to be funnier than the cops.)
Anyway, did you know that Toronto was having a war on crime? It is, according to the opening voiceover!
Fun fact: In 2023, there were 73 murders in Toronto. In the first three episodes, seven people are murdered, accounting for just under 10% of all murders that happened in the city that year.
The second episode felt really generic, like someone fed a bunch of L&O scripts into ChatGPT and assembled the results. Four members of a Rosedale condo board are shot, which from what I know of condo boards, would make anyone not on the condo board but living in the building a suspect. However, the condo was being sold to a developer and the target of the murder was the one holdout in the sale. It turns out the murder had nothing to do with that, though, as the victim had helped his surgeon brother cover up the murder of a girl 20 years before.
The only specifically Toronto thing about this one is that even though all the condo owners are offered a few million dollars for selling their units, none plan to use the money to buy a place in Toronto, and the two that mention buying a place plan to do so outside of the city. This is quite realistic.
The only good thing about this episode is the girl's body is encased in concrete and buried in a flower bed, and it's a really cool prop. The worst thing about this episode is that the girl was a photographer and had an SLR (a Leica) and the photos, which are 4x6, are in colour. This would suggest they were taken to a developer rather than done in a darkroom, but there's a white border, which you wouldn't have typically seen in commercially developed film. I could be wrong—the 2000s were a long time ago.
This would have been better and more Toronto if the developer did it rather than the random surgeon brother.
Plot: No stars
Characters: No stars
Toronto: * (correct appraisal of the Toronto real estate market)
The third episode is a murder in the Toronto art scene. A (fake) award-winning abstract painter who also teaches at a (fake) art academy is stabbed to death, ostensibly by her failed printmaker ex-husband, who also works at the same academy, because she's dating her hot student. But wait! It turns out that the gallery owner who represented her killed her because she wasn't actually doing the award-winning paintings herself, it was a young ex-heroin addict that she was mentoring in art therapy, and the two of them were about to come clean. The gallery owner also kills the ex-addict before she gets caught. But oh no! They had a secret short film that they made together and attached to the secret art statement that they were going to release the night of the opening. This has absolutely no bearing on the plot and is not really evidence of murder. I have no idea why it's in here.
This one really could have been set anywhere. We don't have much of an art scene in Toronto—it's mostly migrated to Hamilton, where it is mostly being priced out due to the same gentrification that drove artists out of Toronto. The kind of high-end gallery shenanigans that are depicted here don't seem very realistic, but it's not quite my world. That said, art criticism is my world and most of the art depicted in this episode wouldn't get you into OCADU as an undergrad, let alone a downtown gallery.
I am at a loss to identify the building where the "Ontario Art Academy" is—it's one of many grey, generic, 5-floor buildings in Toronto. Neither the offices, studios, or auditorium look like they belong to an art school. (It's actually UofT Mississauga—I checked.)
Carlaw does get a mention, because that's where the ex-addict lives. I totally know those buildings!
The best part of this one is the guy detective, Graff, building a frame in the gallery as he monologues to the gallery owner that he figured out how she framed the ex-husband. Good visual pun.
The worst part is the language around the artist statement. The artist was getting the statement printed? At the printer? She works at an art school; she could print it herself if she wanted to keep it a secret. This feels like an old script that just got recycled.
Plot: No stars
Characters: * (Graff's frame thing is kinda funny, and the hot student is very hot)
Toronto: No stars, everything Toronto-related is made up except that a lot of artists do live in that building on Carlaw.
So, my bad: The OG intro is so hardwired into my skull that I didn't realize that this series only deals with the cop side of the investigation, not the prosecutors, which is too bad because the prosecutor in this is funnier than the cops. (In general there are a lot of beats that feel like there should be a punchline, and there either isn't, or the punchline is terrible, so it's not a very high bar to be funnier than the cops.)
Anyway, did you know that Toronto was having a war on crime? It is, according to the opening voiceover!
Fun fact: In 2023, there were 73 murders in Toronto. In the first three episodes, seven people are murdered, accounting for just under 10% of all murders that happened in the city that year.
The second episode felt really generic, like someone fed a bunch of L&O scripts into ChatGPT and assembled the results. Four members of a Rosedale condo board are shot, which from what I know of condo boards, would make anyone not on the condo board but living in the building a suspect. However, the condo was being sold to a developer and the target of the murder was the one holdout in the sale. It turns out the murder had nothing to do with that, though, as the victim had helped his surgeon brother cover up the murder of a girl 20 years before.
The only specifically Toronto thing about this one is that even though all the condo owners are offered a few million dollars for selling their units, none plan to use the money to buy a place in Toronto, and the two that mention buying a place plan to do so outside of the city. This is quite realistic.
The only good thing about this episode is the girl's body is encased in concrete and buried in a flower bed, and it's a really cool prop. The worst thing about this episode is that the girl was a photographer and had an SLR (a Leica) and the photos, which are 4x6, are in colour. This would suggest they were taken to a developer rather than done in a darkroom, but there's a white border, which you wouldn't have typically seen in commercially developed film. I could be wrong—the 2000s were a long time ago.
This would have been better and more Toronto if the developer did it rather than the random surgeon brother.
Plot: No stars
Characters: No stars
Toronto: * (correct appraisal of the Toronto real estate market)
The third episode is a murder in the Toronto art scene. A (fake) award-winning abstract painter who also teaches at a (fake) art academy is stabbed to death, ostensibly by her failed printmaker ex-husband, who also works at the same academy, because she's dating her hot student. But wait! It turns out that the gallery owner who represented her killed her because she wasn't actually doing the award-winning paintings herself, it was a young ex-heroin addict that she was mentoring in art therapy, and the two of them were about to come clean. The gallery owner also kills the ex-addict before she gets caught. But oh no! They had a secret short film that they made together and attached to the secret art statement that they were going to release the night of the opening. This has absolutely no bearing on the plot and is not really evidence of murder. I have no idea why it's in here.
This one really could have been set anywhere. We don't have much of an art scene in Toronto—it's mostly migrated to Hamilton, where it is mostly being priced out due to the same gentrification that drove artists out of Toronto. The kind of high-end gallery shenanigans that are depicted here don't seem very realistic, but it's not quite my world. That said, art criticism is my world and most of the art depicted in this episode wouldn't get you into OCADU as an undergrad, let alone a downtown gallery.
I am at a loss to identify the building where the "Ontario Art Academy" is—it's one of many grey, generic, 5-floor buildings in Toronto. Neither the offices, studios, or auditorium look like they belong to an art school. (It's actually UofT Mississauga—I checked.)
Carlaw does get a mention, because that's where the ex-addict lives. I totally know those buildings!
The best part of this one is the guy detective, Graff, building a frame in the gallery as he monologues to the gallery owner that he figured out how she framed the ex-husband. Good visual pun.
The worst part is the language around the artist statement. The artist was getting the statement printed? At the printer? She works at an art school; she could print it herself if she wanted to keep it a secret. This feels like an old script that just got recycled.
Plot: No stars
Characters: * (Graff's frame thing is kinda funny, and the hot student is very hot)
Toronto: No stars, everything Toronto-related is made up except that a lot of artists do live in that building on Carlaw.
