Law & Order: Criminal Intent (TV Series) Palimpsest (2010) User Reviews

Agatha Christie style

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 12 July 2016]

This is an unusual Criminal Intent story in that Jeff Goldblum narrates it to a female shrink he's having an afternoon in London with. We know that Goldblum had an unusual upbringing and this concerns a family he hung out with. Which is why he never should have caught the case. He's getting something in the will of the deceased.

The deceased was an eccentric millionaire who collected antiquities and it's one of those antiquities that is the McGuffin. Besides his daughter who is schizophrenic the deceased had a lot of people hanging around him with some sordid motives. But one of them really isn't who he says he is.

I guess because of the London setting Goldblum and Saffron Burrows solve this one Agatha Christie style with all the dramatis personae present when all is revealed. The perpetrator has one beaut of a motive.

My father did force the alphabet on me. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta

[Mrpalli77 · 6/10 · 13 October 2017]

At the beginning we see Nichols meet an old friend in London Town, talking to her about a book and a case that has just been solved. Back in the Big Apple two dealers killed each other in a sword fight dying from severe blooding. A first glance it's enough for Nichols to figure out everything was staged: one victim, an old man in his seventies, was very close to him and the detective knows he suffered from a nerve damage that unable him to hold a sword. The man who found the bodies, the caretaker, was the prime suspect, together with the dealer's daughter, who is sick due to schizophrenia (she lives her life trapped in her twenties, in a sort of groundhog day); she was once attached to Nichols and that causes some trouble in him.

This storyline mixed up Hitchcock movies (the butler presence), Agatha Christie's book and a little "The da Vinci Code". Too much in a single episode where Jeff Goldblum isn't at ease to play the part. Stevens' acting involves just few line.

A very special episode...

[toddeverett · 7/10 · 8 November 2022]

Unusual for any episode of the Law & Order franchise, this is a parody of Agatha Christie-style mysteries, set in the dusty mansion of an antiquarian book collector, and climaxing when Nichols has the butler gather all the suspects for a revelation of the...well, of what happened.

Among the red herrings are the executor of the collector's estate, various shifty-looking relatives, and the victim's daughter, who and her father have a connection with Nichols.

Other than the principals, the actors ham it up like a vintage melodrama which I found rather off-putting until I figured that it was all intentional. With luck, you'll catch on earlier than I did.

This ain't your daddy's "Criminal Intent"

[ween-3 · 9/10 · 8 July 2010]

This episode provides a complete departure from the tried-and-true procedural boilerplate that we've all come to know and love on "L&O". Here we delve into the realm of Agatha Christie. A game of "Clue" with a London setting, period costuming, and enough red herrings floating around to cater a Slavic brunch. Plop Jeff Goldblum into the midst of this milieu, and you got yourself some real fish-out-of-water fun. Mili Avital, playing the the central character of this set piece, seems to be channeling her inner Ophelia, and gets the most out of a few precious lines of back story with Goldblum. Best of all, nobody watching this episode will ever again get stumped at the spelling bee on the word "palimpsest". Hell. You'll even be able to use that word in a declarative sentence, amazing your friends and winning all sorts of bar bets. A neat little piece of writing and acting by all concerned parties.

Out of the past

[TheLittleSongbird · 4/10 · 30 September 2021]

When it comes to talking about the previous seasons of 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent', Seasons 1-4 were very good as an overall whole, the weakest episodes still being decent and the best being absolutely outstanding and 'Criminal Intent' high points. From Season 5 onwards, the show became a lot less consistent, the best episodes were still outstanding but the worst episodes were real misfires (two of which being in this season).

One of them being this episode "Palimpsest". Of the two, "Gods and Insects" being the other, this is marginally worse. As although that episode was heavily flawed and indicative of 'Criminal Intent' running out of ideas, it didn't make the mistake of not feeling like a 'Criminal Intent' episode or even not feeling like an episode of any of the 'Law and Order' shows. "Palimpsest" makes this mistake. If there was a bottom 10 of the worst episodes of the show, this for me is down there and am not sure how much of a popular opinion that is going to be.

"Palimpsest" is not a complete disaster. The production values are fine, have always liked the photography's intimacy and grit and the look of the show has come on a good deal over-time (and it was good to begin with). The music doesn't intrude and has a haunting quality, have not always remembered to say that the theme tune is easy to remember and holds up.

Jeff Goldblum tries his best with what he has, though the performance he gives is below his usual standards (at least he tried) and Mili Avital remarkably manages to give a nuanced performance that also unsettles, those facial expressions.

That is sadly pretty much it when it comes to the praise. "Palimpsest" is an example of a change of pace episode. That is not a bad thing just to say, there are many changes of pace for many shows (including all three of the major 'Law and Order' shows, this, the original and 'Special Victims Unit') that are simply brilliant and fare brilliantly as episodes in their own right. At least though in spirit they felt like they belonged in their respective shows, whereas "Palimpsest" could have passed for something else entirely. If anything it felt like a strange mix of Agatha Christie (one of my favourite authors just to say) at her dullest and most derivative and a very toned down 'Clue' without the broad humour and colourful characters.

For me, "Palimpsest" was a dull and silly episode, with no tension, suspense or a single original thought as well as one of the show's most contrived and melodramatic denouements. Stevens is severely under-utilised and Goldblum tends to over-compensate. This is one of the few episodes of 'Criminal Intent' where the acting is really not good from almost everybody, except Avital and with Goldblum having his moments. Nichols' personal life is too heavily focused upon and is both bland and forced. The dialogue is overripe and sounds awkward and less than taut this time.

Overall, very underwhelming episode. 4/10.

Thanks for Re-re-re-re-re-reruns!!!

[v_danilovic · 5/10 · 11 September 2020]

I always welcome a chance to revisit episodes of CI. To my eye and ear, Christopher Noth and Annabella Sciorra are the most dramatically satisfying pairing; but there's something appealingly out-of-sync about Jeff Goldblum / Saffron Burrows. This episode is clearly a "vehicle" for Goldblum. I'm not entirely sure he's up to it. The plot was probably conceived as an homage to the masters of mystery, but it falls flat and is merely derivative.

Speaking of derivative, it can't be a coincidence that Mili Avital's character shares the name of Edgar Allan Poe's great, unreachable love - Lenore. A detail that had escaped notice on previous viewings is Avital's brilliantly subtle control of facial expression. She and Jodie Comer in Killing Eve (especially the first season) are among the best ever. Compare to Angie Harmon's Abbie Carmichael in Law & Order who has precisely three faces, which she switches switches between with all the grace and subtlety of a heavy truck changing gears.