Law & Order: Criminal Intent (TV Series) Offense (2007) User Reviews

How many players have NFL potential?

[Mrpalli77 · 9/10 · 1 October 2017]

Traci, a young waitress of Chinese descent is dead after being pushed down the stairs in her condo. She had a party with the local football players where she was the special guest with her friend Carla (big breasted Elena Hurst) to perform striptease. Shortly after, the party girls filed a lawsuit pretending to be raped by the guys, who were all but one rich white brats. Anywhere Logan and Fallaci find out Traci is a virgin due to a oath made for religious issue with her evangelical boyfriend. So it has been just a game in which someone wanted to set up the football team; anyway the real perp who pulls the strings in this homicide is a piece of work not so poor as presumed at first by the detectives.

Nice performance for the mixed-race football player (Kenneth Franklin), who has everything to lose from this trial. The ADA is a real dumb.

An almost perfect episode, with one bad detail

[mkelly54 · 9/10 · 4 February 2021]

Offense is a well thought episode, with a lot of twists and turns to the story and good acting by the entire cast. That being said, there is a flaw. During the college football practice scene, the quarterback rolls out and throws the ball like a middle school player. On any level of college football, the QB would have a more fluid motion. This isn't the first time a TV show or movie production team made bad choices for athletes. Many of the baseball players in A Field of Dreams had terrible throwing skills. Again, it's a small detail, but it always makes production teams look like a group of sandlot players.

Strange offense

[TheLittleSongbird · 5/10 · 15 April 2021]

"Offense" is a "ripped from the headlines" type of story. The 'Law and Order' franchise often did very well to brilliantly with these types of stories when they had cases based on real life cases and crimes. Especially in the earlier seasons of the original 'Law and Order'. This kind of story can either be very intriguing and a harrowing watch or be too derivative, lacking tautness and feel exploitative. Most in the franchise are thankfully in the former category.

Sadly, "Offense" is not one of those in the former category while not being entirely in the latter one. It is not a terrible episode, at the same time it is not a great or particularly good one. It's a bit of a strange mixed bag that starts off decently but goes off the boil too early, and a couple of the usual good things with 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent' uncharacteristically don't work completely here. Which is a shame. Season 7 was a pretty inconsistent season and for me "Offense" was a lesser effort.

There are good things with "Offense". There are times where the production values are decent. Sometimes, they are suitably slick and gritty, with photography that is reliant on close ups that have an intimacy without being too claustrophobic. The music is didn't come over as too melodramatic or like it was emphasising the emotion too much.

Chris Noth is without issue, he has actually always been one of the redeeming qualities of his episodes for 'Criminal Intent' and brings everything that made him such a great character in Seasons 1-5 of the original 'Law and Order', such as dry humour, edge and natural instinct. The script has tight and intelligent moments, there is some nice wit with Logan and Falacci's chemistry not seen before, Eric Bogosian does a lot with a role that always was on the limited and one-dimensional side and the episode starts off intriguingly.

However, the story too often is too thin, could have had a lot more energy and gets too over-complicated. Its one standout is the knockout final twist that one doesn't see coming and even Logan seems floored by it, but even that could have had more time to fully digest it. Alicia Witt still doesn't do it for me as Falacci, she comes over as too affected and tries too hard. Never really warmed to Falacci when she was on the show (apart from one episode), her negative characteristics were always too exaggerated which made her annoying and something that Witt always overdid.

While Andrew McCarthy gives his all in his role, the character is like a bizarre cartoon and everything with the prosecution is borderline idiotic. The script at other points came over as not always flowing and melodramatic. "Offense" is a rare case of a 'Criminal Intent' episode at this stage of it to be patchy in the production values. Some of the episode had a rushed look and the direction was not always very focused and seemed erratic.

In conclusion, was very mixed on this odd episode. 5/10.