Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent episode 2 review

SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent Season 1, Episode 2.

Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent hits its stride with the second episode, which dials back on the quirks and presents the CW audience with a straightforward murder case done right. There’s still a theatricality to the Canadian import, but in “Good Neighbours” it’s more understated and the storytelling is easier to follow.

Detectives Henry Graff and Frankie Bateman wonder who killed four members of a condo board, and their first suspicion is that it has to do with the planned sale of the building to a high-end developer. Of course, viewers know that the first suspect in any Law & Order episode is almost never the right one. The shady business part is a placeholder, but it’s still interesting because the script adds the wrinkle of the condo board president going so far as to plant a noise machine in the victim’s building. She’s not the killer either, but that gives all of this back and forth meaning until the real plot emerges.

At that point, Law & Order Toronto executes a slow but effective bait and switch. The viewer finds out that their victim is himself a murderer, having buried a body in his rooftop garden. “Good Neighbours” makes the audience believe that Dennis Embers got his just desserts, with a lot of collateral damage. His brother Carl is presented as the good sibling: he’s a doctor, after all! But it’s Carl who actually killed 16-year-old Maeve Waters, and Dennis helped him cover it up. When Dennis grew a conscience decades later, then Dennis also had to go.

This is not a shocking plot twist; crime dramas routinely play with the good character turning out to be the bad guy. But “Good Neighbours” does so in an efficient way that builds up suspense. Viewers don’t see the dark side of Carl until it’s clear in the narrative that he’s a suspect, and then there’s the scene of him intimidating another doctor. And the payoff scene when Graff and Bateman confront Carl is also handled very well. Instead of a big show piece as in the series premiere, they just put Maeve’s camera down in front of him and slowly chip away at his facade. It’s quieter, simpler but also fits this particular storyline better.

Law & Order Toronto still has to distinguish itself from the American version, but this episode is a step in that direction. It’s proof that the show can do both big storylines and smaller, quieter ones. It can carry a narrative through that doesn’t have to have a “gotcha” plot twist. That fourth-act “aha” moment, in the Criminal Intent ethos, is always supposed to be when Graff and Bateman confront the real perpetrator. “Good Neighbors” is just a good Criminal Intent episode, without any bells and whistles, and that’s all it needs to be.

Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Citytv.

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