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Celebrating 1,000 NCIS-franchise episodes

Sympathy for the Devil(s): CI's Most Sympathetic Perps

Eolivet

By Eolivet
in Law & Order: Criminal Intent [V]

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Eolivet

Eolivet

The more I read the "worst parents ever" thread, the more I realized a lot of these perps were messed up by their parents. So, I thought I'd create a slightly more positive thread. It's bound to have some repetition, since sometimes bad parents = justifiable perps, but I was dying (no pun intended) for a dose of positivity. And these perps don't have to have bad parents (though sometimes it helps), but just where you walked away from the episode feeling some sympathy for these people, even though they were still murderers.

 

For me, the mother in "Magnificat" is an easy example. Or the daughter in "Shrink-Wrapped" with her messed up parents.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

I definitely felt sorry for those two.

I also felt sorry for the guy with the severe case of Aspergers. I didn't think it was fair that his ex wouldn't even let him see their kids...this was before he came a murderer, mind you.

 

Ah, yes. Wally the Probability Guy.  Bobby must have felt sorry for him, too, since Wally told Bobby in "Endgame" that it had been a while since Bobby's last letter. The perp in "Identity Crisis" comes to mind for this topic. Yes, he killed his brother, who only wanted to make amends (and perhaps a kidney), but between the psychotic mother and his little brother being pressured by police to name said perp as the killer of their mom, I can almost understand why the guy would want to outrun his past.

 

(And the whole parallel with Bobby's life was hard to miss, as an aside.)

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Eolivet

Eolivet

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Really good choices. Another easy one, as it was on today, was Robbie in "Scared Crazy." Talk about a non-murderous personality driven to murder through torture. Also wins the prize for one of the show's most creative killings (death by vending machine).

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Maherjunkie

Maherjunkie

 

 

I definitely felt sorry for those two.

I also felt sorry for the guy with the severe case of Aspergers. I didn't think it was fair that his ex wouldn't even let him see their kids...this was before he came a murderer, mind you.

He was a drunk, Wally had Aspergers.

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Donny Ketchum

Donny Ketchum

The astronaut driven to murder from being drugged in "Rocket Man."  She was a normal, harmless woman until the perp got through with her.  Hope she got a lesser, lighter sentence when it was discovered that she'd been normal until then.

 

Or the daughter in "Shrink-Wrapped" with her messed up parents.

Even today, I'm wondering if neither parent went down to the station with her simply because they didn't want to deal with each other.  I hope to God it wasn't because they didn't care a bit about her.  Honestly asking here, right now, which one everyone else thinks/thought it was at the time.

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Eolivet

Eolivet

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I always thought it was because they were too narcissistic to care about her -- that if it didn't concern themselves, neither was interested. She was an afterthought to them every time we saw her, and if I recall correctly, we never saw either of them really paying attention to her...I wouldn't see why that would change just because she was arrested.

 

But maybe I'm too cynical.

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Donny Ketchum

Donny Ketchum

I always thought it was because they were too narcissistic to care about her -- that if it didn't concern themselves, neither was interested. She was an afterthought to them every time we saw her, and if I recall correctly, we never saw either of them really paying attention to her...I wouldn't see why that would change just because she was arrested.

 

But maybe I'm too cynical.

Could be, but I don't know.  They both seemed pretty horrified when they realized she was a killer, so I figured at least one would've gone down to see her.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

I always thought it was because they were too narcissistic to care about her -- that if it didn't concern themselves, neither was interested. She was an afterthought to them every time we saw her, and if I recall correctly, we never saw either of them really paying attention to her...I wouldn't see why that would change just because she was arrested.

 

But maybe I'm too cynical.

 

Well, if you're cynical, so am I. I think this is a perfect explanation. As Alex said, those two would eat a marriage counselor for lunch. And as far as Camilla went, based on all we were privy to about her childhood, it makes me truly wonder why these two self-absorbed narcissists even had a child in the first place.

 

Because, clearly, they weren't fit parents.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

I felt sort of sorry for Drew Ramsey, the guy whose sister, Lisa, had Spina Bifida, and whose greedy mother was conducting a wrongful life suit not because she was uninformed about Lisa's condition, as claimed, but because she was a gold digger whose gold in the form of her late hubby's money dried up.

 

And Drew did the actual killing of blackmailer Eric, but it was at his mom's urging. Drew seemed to want to protect Lisa from the awful truth of her just being bait. Glad he spilled against Mommy Dearest, but if I were Lisa, I'd opt for the group home. No way would that shrew of a parent really take care of her properly even with the D.A. hanging over her. She's not the maternal type.

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Spartan Girl

Spartan Girl

I felt sorry for Piper Perabo's character in "Folie a Deux", who accidentally left her baby daughter in a hot car. She was obviously mentally ill because of the grief and guilt; I understand why she needed to fake her daughter being alive. And it was pretty clear that the plot to fleece the aunt was all the plan of her lying, cheating, pompous husband.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

I felt sorry for Piper Perabo's character in "Folie a Deux", who accidentally left her baby daughter in a hot car. She was obviously mentally ill because of the grief and guilt; I understand why she needed to fake her daughter being alive. And it was pretty clear that the plot to fleece the aunt was all the plan of her lying, cheating, pompous husband.

 

I missed the nephew trying to fleece the aunt, but it makes sense, her being his only living relative and wealthy, to boot. I thought he fostered the illusion of his kid being alive so his wife/girlfriend (were they married?) wouldn't totally crack up but then decided to fake the kidnapping to try to "wake her up" or something. But yeah, I guess the aunt angle made more sense here!

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

Really good choices. Another easy one, as it was on today, was Robbie in "Scared Crazy." Talk about a non-murderous personality driven to murder through torture. Also wins the prize for one of the show's most creative killings (death by vending machine).

 

This episode was on again last night on USA, and I still felt bad for Robbie. Bobby obviously had sympathy for the guy, too. I was kind of glad when Carver said he'd likely go to an institution for a bit or whatever. I mean, yeah, Robbie did kill. No way around it. But the doctor is the one that drove him to it.

 

Seems like since she was suffering from what she did, she wanted to make Robbie as miserable as she was and take him down with her.

 

His sister, Sienna, though: I get she wasn't well informed of the doc's plan to torture her brother, but if her brother was as ill as she thought and being a psych major or something, I would have thought she would have been more involved with his treatment.

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Xeliou66

Xeliou66

I felt sympathy for Judge Sabatelli in Semi Professional, he did participate in a conspiracy to murder but I found him sympathetic, at least compared to Blakemore. I liked how he worked his way up from nothing compared to the piece of shit Blakemore who had life handed to him on a silver platter despite being talentless and useless but he came from wealth so he was automatically successful. I hate people like that with a passion. I hope Blakemore was ruined when it was revealed his mistress had been writing all his articles for him and he had to step down from the bench. I think everyone involved hated Blakemore as well. Good episode BTW, I liked the references to the mothership with the numerous references to Nora Lewin and the one reference to McCoy, one of only 2 times he was mentioned on CI that I can recall. 

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

On 2/18/2017 at 4:52 PM, Xeliou66 said:

I liked the references to the mothership with the numerous references to Nora Lewin and the one reference to McCoy, one of only 2 times he was mentioned on CI that I can recall. 

Yeah, McCoy was mentioned here - and in S8, "Lady's Man", the episode where Raul Esparza [Barba on SVU ] played a different, cray-cray ADA. I think I was less sympathetic to Sabatelli because he put on such a pity party for himself.

Was it fair that he did hard work and Blakemore got rewarded? Not at all, but that's life. The woman he had killed hadn't anything to do with it outside of having the shitty taste to be into Blakemore.

I did sort of feel sorry for Arnie, who actually did the killing, because he let his hero worship of Sabatelli let him be used by the guy and he didn't seem too bright to begin with...

On a side note, it was weird seeing Bruce MacVittie [Arnie] and VDO in that episode together. A few years before CI, VDO appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life On The Street (discussed here!) called "The Subway", an episode where VDO's character fell/was pushed into an oncoming subway and faced certain death upon his rescue. MacVittie played the man who may or may not have pushed VDO's character. (I guess that episode even got a Peabody and a PBS documentary. It was a tough yet great episode.)

Even more ironic was, Kathryn Erbe also appeared on this show the week after VDO's episode aired as a woman who got AIDS from her lover, a man who knew he had the disease and never told her character; her character ends up terminal and kills the ex.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

I think we were supposed to feel some sense of sympathy for Johnny in "The Consoler" (since he was molested), but the way he drugged the victim and then shot her just sort of nullified that for me. It's like Goren told Johnny, the abused became the abuser.

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Ambrosefolly

Ambrosefolly

I felt for the cop killer in Stray. Goren was right, with the right schooling, he could have been a great engineer or some sort of sculpture, but because his learning disability, wasn't detected, he was treated as the biggest dunce in the world and was influenced by his girlfriend, and he was the one that end up on death row.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

On 5/26/2017 at 10:20 PM, Ambrosefolly said:

I felt for the cop killer in Stray. Goren was right, with the right schooling, he could have been a great engineer or some sort of sculpture, but because his learning disability, wasn't detected, he was treated as the biggest dunce in the world and was influenced by his girlfriend, and he was the one that end up on death row.

The only silver lining out of that whole tragic episode was the girlfriend presumably ended up on death row, herself. Because she was arrogant and dangerous, a lethal combination.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

A part of me wondered if we were supposed to also feel sympathy for Spencer Farnell in "The Posthumous Collection"? I mean, the level of abuse described about him by his whole family seemed to beg for sympathy.

The trouble is, the brutality of his crimes drained any such pity right out of me...

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Xeliou66

Xeliou66

Agreed about Barry even though he wasn't a perp, he just used his ex as a servant basically but then whine when she called him all the time. He wanted to have her be his maid and then also have her never talk to him basically. 

One that I felt sympathy for, even though I hated the episode, was the scientist in Brother's Keeper, he didn't mean to kill the reverends wife IMO, and he was betrayed and provoked by the victim and the scumbag hypocrite preacher. 

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

USA is showing "The Pardoner's Tale", the one where the reporter and his fiancé are gunned down. And I know he killed them, but I still sort of felt sorry for Greg, the former transit cop turned drug addict. I know, he's a double murderer, but he just seemed to get in over his head thanks to the "friend of the family" politician who used him in exchange for drug rehab.

At least Greg was still concerned enough to ensure his mom and son would be safe.

As mentioned before, the perp's wife, Stephanie Upton, was played by Kate Burton, Richard Burton's daughter. (She also appeared as Ellis Grey on Grey's Anatomy.)

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Star Aristille

Star Aristille

I mentioned Jacob from "Players" as a victim I didn't feel sorry for.  But in that same episode, I did feel for his friends, Colin and Daphne.  At least they were regretful and remorseful for what they'd done to try and get his father's car fixed, and even more so that their actions led to him getting killed.  Of course, Daphne was a cute girl with a rich father, so like Logan said, she probably skated, anyway.  But also like Logan (and like Wheeler), I hope Colin at least caught a break himself.

Of course, this compares them both to the last friend, Riordan, whom I thought was vile, loathsome, and unsympathetic.  I was so glad when even his own father basically gave Logan and Wheeler the okay to cuff him.

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WendyCR72

WendyCR72

ION was showing a Season 2 marathon all day today/yesterday [Sunday into Monday], and I could never tell if we were supposed to sympathize with the dyslexic father who pushed his son Robbie into being a "genius" in Bright Boy. On the surface, it's a father that wanted the best for his kid.

But dig a bit deeper, and it seemed like he  wanted to live through Robbie since his disability held him back (as it wasn't well understood years ago) and his dream world would be destroyed if Kim the Social Worker's evaluation would block Robbie from the fancy school (which she didn't, but Robbie lied that she had so he wouldn't have to go to the school; too bad the social worker was killed because of that "white lie".)

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Spartan Girl

Spartan Girl

21 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:

ION was showing a Season 2 marathon all day today/yesterday [Sunday into Monday], and I could never tell if we were supposed to sympathize with the dyslexic father who pushed his son Robbie into being a "genius" in Bright Boy. On the surface, it's a father that wanted the best for his kid.

But dig a bit deeper, and it seemed like he  wanted to live through Robbie since his disability held him back (as it wasn't well understood years ago) and his dream world would be destroyed if Kim the Social Worker's evaluation would block Robbie from the fancy school (which she didn't, but Robbie lied that she had so he wouldn't have to go to the school; too bad the social worker was killed because of that "white lie".)

I am pretty sure he was abusing Robbie, pushing him to study so that he could live vicariously through his success.

So no, I didn't feel sorry for that creep.

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Xeliou66

Xeliou66

We weren't supposed to like that asshole, I hated him. He was one of those parents whose own life was a disappointment so he tries to live through his kid, with no regard for what his son wanted. I couldn't stand him, his psychological abuse made Robbie suicidal and he was only in it for himself to try to live and gain fame through the success of his kid. 

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