Be Forewarned: The Following Post Contains Snide Bitchery (Yes, another CI Post)

I finally watched a new episode of CI just to see what I am missing, and wow.....apparently I am missing a whole lot of half-baked plots, dark, plodding atmosphere, and overall mediocrity. I went into it with an open mind, I didn't want to be one of those angry CI fans that refuses to move on -- anger requires a lot of energy. I'd rather spend it on other more worthy pursuits.....like drooling over Alexander Skarsgard.

Anyway, God and Insects wasn't completely horrible, the plot was a little far-fetched and stretched thin (especially with the Iraq war angle), the cliche of sending Stevens posing as an escort and coming back to the applause of the squadroom was cringe-worthy in its cliche-ness, but overall, it wasn't anything especially bad or wonderful either. So I give "2010 and beyond CI" ** out of ***** stars.

One of the things I ruminated over while watching it, is how much I like Mary Elisabeth Mastriantonio and the gentle grace she delivers as the captain -- this just stood in stark contrast to the fact that I don't love Nichols and Stevens as a team. I feel they lack the chemistry of Goren and Eames, as well as Benson/Stabler, Briscoe/Logan. Hell, they are not even on par with Falachi/Logan as far as I'm concerned. I think it's more a yin/yang opposites issue, since Stevens and Nichols tend to be like-minded. It's like having nothing but salt/salt, and this show is in desperate need of some pepper to spice things up and makes things interesting.

Another thing that is bothering me: I was reading another blog last week, and we were all bemoaning the loss of Eames, when another poster butted in and suggested that maybe, just maybe USA didn't think the show was "pretty" enough -- suggesting that they swapped Erbe for Burrows for these very reasons. I have to disagree. For all of the age talk, Erbe at 43 is not that much older than Burrows at 38, and also.......am I the only one who yelled out "Damn Africa what happened?! upon seeing Saffron not long ago? She used to be SO beautiful, and I don't know if she actually had plastic surgery, but obviously something is going on, and I am not sure what it is, and I don't think I want to know.

Alas, all of this bitching and mean-girling still does not bring back my favorite pocket-sized detective....

^She looked so lovely and regal, I had to screencap it from my crappy megavideo stream of Loyalty II

So yeah, not into Burrows/Stevens. Which leads me to another rant: I'm not into Nichols either. Nichols just seems a little too old school (and not in a good way) for my tastes. Like they transplanted him from the 70's or something. I remember in one episode from last year, he kept referring to a victim as "that black kid". Now, I'm not exactly crying racism, but it just brought me back to that episode where Goren and Eames are talking to an overprivileged witness and had this little exchange:

Random Girl: He was you know... really black.

Goren: You mean like obsidian?

That my friends, is the difference between Goren and Nichols. Whereas Goren is weirdly cool, Nichols is just....odd and old school. Plus, I prefer the working class backgrounds of Goren and Eames (here I go again with my Goren/Eames love...and I said I wasn't biased anymore! Pfft!) Plus, even when he was fat, Vincent D'Onofrio still brought the quiver. Goldblum? Sure, the laughs and fun, but the quiver? Uh...no.

So that was my experience with the Goldblumized CI. I still think they messed up big time, and I feel that Burrows is all wrong for the show. If they were going to incorporate her, they should have had her as the posh, slightly sexy new A.D.A. instead of a cop. Stevens is still a coldfish at this point, maybe they'll flesh her out, maybe they won't. Maybe Saffron will get better. Maybe she won't. In the mean time, Nichols is still missing a proper counterpart, someone to make him bearable. But really, Burrows is just more wrong, piled on top of a TON of wrong.