L&O season 3: Episode 1
Apr. 15th, 2026 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyHEY PALS I'm back with more trashy copaganda from Canada, oh yes it is the return of Law & Order Criminal Intent: Toronto.
An aspiring model from Elmira, Ontario, is found dead in a landfill during Toronto Fashion Week. Graff and Bateman quickly figure out that this is likely a serial killer and find two other bodies of young women in the same landfill. While the initial suspect appears to be a photographer who posted nonconsensual nudes of her to his website, the investigation eventually leads to a billionaire fashion mogul, who also ran a sketchy stem cell clinic in Honduras.
I do not like this. Well, I liked parts of it. It was a relatively interesting episode, plot-wise. But of course I know a little too much about the real stories behind this episode and so it ended up infuriating me.
American friends will immediately think, "oh they're doing Jeffrey Epstein" but this is actually a combination of two Canadian cases, that of Peter Nygard (warning that if you click that link, you will immediately see the grinning visage of a man who couldn't look more like a sex pest if his name were Jimmy Savile), and Jeremy Skibicki (warning that clicking that link or anything about the case will lead to the most traumatic shit you can possibly read). Nygard for the eccentric rich fashion designer who preys on young women, Skibicki for the whole serial killer dumping his victims in landfills, one of which went unidentified for years. If you dare to read up about both of those cases, you'll read that their crimes were enabled by the inaction of the cops—in the case of the former, because they were uninterested in pursuing an investigation against a rich and famous guy, in the case of the latter, because the victims were all Indigenous so the cops were mainly offended at a serial killer doing their job for them.
In this episode, though, the cops are. So. Nice. To the families of the victims. They immediately search the landfill, no questions or complaints or "it's too dangerous," no trying to shut down a blockade of protestors begging for the landfill to be searched. They just do it. When the question of the murderer's wealth and power comes up, Graff goes on a big rant about how the law applies to everyone and billionaires can't keep assuming they're above it. It's a very nice speech, and maybe it's made a little bit more plausible by three out of four of the victims being white, but I still don't buy it.
There's a fairly interesting bit about the stem cells and anti-aging, which I liked and thought really spoke to the motivation of fascist billionaires being largely fear of death, but it's undercut by the revelation that the killer forced one of his enablers/victims to have an abortion and used the stem cells of her fetus to change his DNA (meaning when he willingly supplied a cheek swab, he knew the DNA wouldn't match the blood found on the victim). It's a little ick. It's a lot ick, in fact.
An aspiring model from Elmira, Ontario, is found dead in a landfill during Toronto Fashion Week. Graff and Bateman quickly figure out that this is likely a serial killer and find two other bodies of young women in the same landfill. While the initial suspect appears to be a photographer who posted nonconsensual nudes of her to his website, the investigation eventually leads to a billionaire fashion mogul, who also ran a sketchy stem cell clinic in Honduras.
I do not like this. Well, I liked parts of it. It was a relatively interesting episode, plot-wise. But of course I know a little too much about the real stories behind this episode and so it ended up infuriating me.
American friends will immediately think, "oh they're doing Jeffrey Epstein" but this is actually a combination of two Canadian cases, that of Peter Nygard (warning that if you click that link, you will immediately see the grinning visage of a man who couldn't look more like a sex pest if his name were Jimmy Savile), and Jeremy Skibicki (warning that clicking that link or anything about the case will lead to the most traumatic shit you can possibly read). Nygard for the eccentric rich fashion designer who preys on young women, Skibicki for the whole serial killer dumping his victims in landfills, one of which went unidentified for years. If you dare to read up about both of those cases, you'll read that their crimes were enabled by the inaction of the cops—in the case of the former, because they were uninterested in pursuing an investigation against a rich and famous guy, in the case of the latter, because the victims were all Indigenous so the cops were mainly offended at a serial killer doing their job for them.
In this episode, though, the cops are. So. Nice. To the families of the victims. They immediately search the landfill, no questions or complaints or "it's too dangerous," no trying to shut down a blockade of protestors begging for the landfill to be searched. They just do it. When the question of the murderer's wealth and power comes up, Graff goes on a big rant about how the law applies to everyone and billionaires can't keep assuming they're above it. It's a very nice speech, and maybe it's made a little bit more plausible by three out of four of the victims being white, but I still don't buy it.
There's a fairly interesting bit about the stem cells and anti-aging, which I liked and thought really spoke to the motivation of fascist billionaires being largely fear of death, but it's undercut by the revelation that the killer forced one of his enablers/victims to have an abortion and used the stem cells of her fetus to change his DNA (meaning when he willingly supplied a cheek swab, he knew the DNA wouldn't match the blood found on the victim). It's a little ick. It's a lot ick, in fact.
Plot: *** (The murderer was pretty obvious but the DNA trick was neat)
Characters: ** (Graff's speech is quite good)
Toronto: *** (It's fairly subtle, but we do get some good locations. The victim lived in a high rise on Donlands, which looked reasonably like the buildings there, the fashion studio was at Carlaw, which is where it would be, and Fashion Week is correctly on Adelaide. It loses a point for a scene at the Brickworks where the camera is pointed the wrong way, so why set it at the Brickworks at all?)
Murder count: There are at least four victims but only one was killed during the show's timeline. So far this year, there have been 5 homicides in Toronto, so the first episode represents 20% of all murders in Toronto.
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Date: 2026-04-16 12:18 am (UTC)Skibicki… ugh. Don’t need any refresher on that one.
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Date: 2026-04-16 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-16 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-16 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-16 01:37 am (UTC)yess recap time
Date: 2026-04-16 02:21 am (UTC)Manitoba had to get a new fucking premier ffs
Have you considered doing a recap podcast, where the middle-sized bucks are
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Date: 2026-04-16 04:53 am (UTC)Well you DID warn me.