"Law & Order: Criminal Intent"
Weeping Willow (2006)

Director:

Tom DiCillo

Writers:

Dick Wolf (creator)
Rene Balcer (developer)

TV Series:

"Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (2001)

Original Air Date:

28 November 2006 (Season 6, Episode 10)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery

Plot:

Logan and Wheeler investigate the cyber-kidnapping of a popular female video blogger--something that many people suspect to be a hoax. |

Plot Keywords:

Hostage | Internet | Fake | Prosecution | District Attorney

US TV Schedule:

Thur. Aug. 21

11:00 PM

MyNetwork

Weeping Willow

#6.10

Cast

Chris Noth	...	Detective Mike Logan
Julianne Nicholson	...	Detective Megan Wheeler
Eric Bogosian	...	Captain Danny Ross
Michelle Trachtenberg	...	Lisa Willow Tyler
Michael Goduti	...	D. Holden Foster
Cinqué Lee	...	Holden's Classmate
Pedro Pascal	...	Reggie Luckman
Leslie Hendrix	...	Dr. Elizabeth Rodgers
Neal Jones	...	Chief of Detectives Bradshaw
Wallace Shawn	...	Film Professor
Larry King	...	Himself
Gary Patent	...	Ira Whipple
Julie McNiven	...	Suzie Waller
Aya Cash	...	Lori
Trevor Oswalt	...	Todd

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:TV-14

Company:

Wolf Films

Trivia:

This episode is based on the "Lonelygirl15" (2006) hoax. Beginning in the spring of 2006, video blogs from a user known as lonelygirl15 (weepingwillow17 in the episode), who claimed to be a lonely, home-schooled teenager, began showing up on YouTube (YouLenz in the episode), a popular on-line website that hosts videos. The user was eventually revealed to be a 19-year-old actress named Jessica Rose who was working on getting her acting career started.

Movie Connections:

References Rashômon (1950)

What a stupid episode!

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Normally, I'm a fan of L&O CSI. It follows a pretty standard formula, just like all the Law and Order shows. Usually, this renders reliably solid episodes. But "Weeping Willow" has easily the worst ending the entire franchise has done since Serena was fired and then revealed to be a lesbian on her last ten seconds on the show. You just look at the screen and wonder what the heck the screenwriters were thinking. In this episode, "Willow" stages her own kidnapping and broadcasts it on the internet, begging viewers to spend more money on her web site, or she'll be killed by her abductors. When she's revealed to be a fake, she becomes a celebrity with a movie deal and lands an interview with Larry King. (King does yet another of his self-indulgent cameos playing himself.) I know that Law and Order does stories that are "ripped from the headlines." Of course, that completely nullifies all of their disclaimers at the end of every show that "Any similarities to any persons....is entirely coincidental," but oh well. That's all well and good, because the show usually takes pains to be at least halfway realistic. In the real world, people who fake their own kidnappings are publicly despised, then charged and arrested. They're not feted with movie deals and fawning interviews. In fact, it would be impossible because of laws that don't allow people to profit from their crimes. You'd think that would be especially true in a case where real people got extorted, mutilated and killed in the course of the hoax, as is the case in this episode. In it's own cynical way, this episode was about as realistic as an episode of Gilligan's Island. Terrible.