Striking Gold(blum)

I’ve been enjoying Jeff Goldblum’s recent introduction to the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Taking over from actor Chris Noth (who always looked as if he was one tattered fuse away from exploding, due to all of his internal frustrations), Goldblum alternates in the series lead with Vincent D’Onofrio, and partners with Julianne Nicholson. I was sorry when NBC cancelled Raines, the show in which Goldblum played a Los Angeles cop haunted by the victims of crimes he was investigating; and I appreciated the actor’s turn in the 1980 detective-comedy series Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (remember this opening?), even if I wasn’t a resolute fan of the program. So I was pleased to hear that Goldblum would be joining L&O: CI.

But Slate’s Nathan Heller (who shouldn’t be confused with the fictional gumshoe of that same name) insists this was a poor casting call. He writes:

We 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.

Heller might not have been disappointed to hear the news that Goldblum had died on a New Zealand movie set, even though that turned out to be misinformation. But what about the rest of you? Do you think Jeff Golblum is a welcome or weird addition to L&O: CI?