That Guy From Jurassic Park Would Like To Ask You a Few QuestionsWhat is Jeff Goldblum doing on Law & Order?
Posted Thursday, June 25, 2009, at 9:26 AM ET
Hardworking American, you are having a bad day. You dropped your cell phone in the sink this morning, used the bleach detergent on your colored laundry, got sneezed on while waiting at the drugstore checkout. If ever a person deserved an hour of mindless television, you are that person. You sigh. You wake your DVR. You call up Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Zoned out with New York's finest, swaddled in your favorite couch pillows, you feel, at last, protected from the day's unkind surprises. Or do you? Something weird is happening on your screen. You blink, then double-blink. You wonder: What is Jeff Goldblum doing on my show?
That is the question millions of Americans asked, or should have asked, beginning earlier this spring, when Goldblum replaced Chris Noth on the eighth season of the crime procedural. The question has an easy answer: Goldblum plays Detective Zack Nichols, a wily shamus with a murky past who serves justice and limp wisecracks to the city's worst criminal offenders. But that is not a satisfying response. The real question is what Jeff Goldblum, a guy who cannot for the life of him come off as a gritty, self-serious human being, is doing in the citadel of gritty, self-serious human beings. And why is he smirking? What's so funny? To see Jeff Goldblum on the screen these days is to be confronted by a topsy-turvy version of the show you planned to watch.
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StumbleUponWe all know Goldblum is a quirky guy. But it's rare that quirkiness is so starkly at odds with its surroundings. Law & Order has existed in one flavor or another for just short of 20 years; the recipe is as golden as a Wonka chocolate bar and basically unchanged since the ascendancy of Hammer pants. Our overcoated heroes beat the New York pavement in pursuit of heinous criminals, trawling from lavish townhouses to grim walk-ups and keeping countless coffee carts solvent along the way. Criminal Intent is the series' most eccentric flavor, blending a high tolerance for idiosyncrasy (Vincent D'Onofrio's Detective Robert Goren gets more fitful, obsessive, and shabby-looking with each season) with a low attention span for jurisprudence. But Goldblum exceeds even these allowances. The latest season doesn't come across as Law & Order with Jeff Goldblum cast as a police dick. It comes across as an oblique, high-irony parody of Law & Order with Jeff Goldblum playing both the premise and the punch line.
His weirdness works from outside in. For reasons unknown, Nichols generally eschews the customary overcoat in favor of—in one key episode—a ski parka over a leather jacket over a fleece over a tie over a shirt, performing a number of his civil duties with his arms hanging slightly out and down, like a 4-year-old bundled up for a snow fight. In warmer climes, he glides behind his colleagues with his hands stuck in his pockets and a wan, dubious grin imprinted on his face. Words are exchanged. The words are normal Law & Order words, but you wouldn't know it: Goldblum turns dialogue inside-out with stylized speech and a range of pregnant pauses, looping his eyes around the room with each caesura as if tracking an imagined hummingbird. Below, a catalog of his most jarring displays so far this season:
It's hard to regard Law & Order through the usual lens of gray sobriety when its leading man is seen (for instance) doodling a giant eye on a legal pad instead of poring over case files. Yet Goldblum's subversion reaches past these eccentricities. When he turns the show's clunky punch lines on themselves—or when he grins impishly into the camera—he is doing something Law & Order characters aren't supposed to do: He is communicating with a world outside Law & Order.
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Interesting. I had a completely different reaction to seeing Jeff Goldblum on Law and Order for the first time; I was convinced that he melted into the show in the same way a person slides into their favorite pair of jeans. And his "eccentric detective" character runs rings and figure eights around Vincent D'Onofrio's Robert Goren. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Goren, however I can't shake the feeling sometimes that D'Onofrio is working hard at Goren, whereas Jeff Goldblum inhabits Nichols like a man possessed. Which makes sense, given the facts included in the article about his method.
-- mlisaoverdrive
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Goldblum can't hold a candle to Vincent D'Onofrio. Goldblum is a cartoon character. D'Onofrio is flawed and personal. I like Goldblum in broad character roles like Jurassic Park and Independence Day, but they are all the same characters.
D'Onofrio is on the level of Robbie Coltrane in Cracker. Goldblum? Just quirky. Americans like broadly quirky though, anything that hits a little too close to being personal and real makes them nervous. That's why Americans screw up excellent TV shows like Cracker and Prime Suspect when they try to remake them.
-- Adrasteia
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Your review is exactly right except it only impliedly answered its question: What is Goldblum doing on Criminal Intent? It is obvious why Criminal Intent's producers wanted him -- he has added a truly original, twisted character to the formulaic Law & Order series. He has added stature.
From his own point of view, in light of his career choices described in your piece -- challenging a formula program is its own campy reward. Goldblum is known as a better actor than his movies are known as good movies. He has never been too pure to take on a commercial project with little artistic merit. Nor has he been afraid to take on an artistic project with zero commercial potential.
In his most memorable and representative role (the People magazine writer in The Big Chill) he introduces core character traits that have animated his entire career. In a nutshell, he lives within his own quirks and takes reality as it comes, one day at a time. The result is that rare Hollywood result -- art.
-- john adkisson
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