Robert Goren

Det. Robert Goren is a fictional character featured in NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He is portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio.

Goren works as a detective (detective investigator first grade) for the Major Case Squad in the New York Police Department (NYPD). As created by René Balcer and interpreted by D'Onofrio, Goren is an intense, intelligent, and imposing man who uses his intuition and insight into human nature to size up suspects and pick apart the details of crimes. Goren's diverse background frequently supplies him with information he uses to solve cases.

Biography

Criminal Intent highlights Goren's abilities as a profiler and an interrogator. He is able to elicit confessions from calculating killers with his insight into their minds and his imposing physical presence. However, Goren shows a sensitive side as well, particularly directed at his mother, his partner Det. Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe) (who is the senior partner of the two), and female victims of the crimes he is solving.

Early life

As with the parent Law & Order series, and unlike the spinoff Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent seldom delves into the current romantic life of its main characters. Until the sixth season, it rarely delved into their non-professional lives at all. Instead, Goren's personal life was revealed in tidbits he revealed to form a personal connection with victims, suspects, or witnesses.

Goren was born on August 20, 1961 and grew up in the Canarsie neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City near the The Rockaways. A phenomenally bright young man, he took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory his senior year of high school and was sent to speak with the school counselor and school psychiatrist as a result. He played basketball as a youth and was the power forward on his junior varsity basketball team, but quit when he "lost [his] love for the game."

In his youth, Goren was an altar boy; today, he considers himself a lapsed Catholic.

His early life was troubled due to a rough relationship with his parents. His father gambled frequently on horse races and was a serial adulterer (René Balcer, Criminal Intent's Executive Producer and Writer, describes Goren's father as "a rake") and his mother Frances (Rita Moreno), a librarian, first started showing symptoms of schizophrenia when Goren was seven years old. Goren’s father left his mother four years later, making little attempt to stay close to his son – he later credited this disinterest as the reason for his loss of interest in basketball.

Military and Early Police Life

After college, Goren served in the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Germany and did a 6-week tour in South Korea. Although a specific timeline for his service has not been established, he was in Germany during 1987. Before joining the NYPD, Goren earned a Purple Heart.

While Sergeant Goren was with CID he met Dr. Declan Gage, one of the first criminal profilers, who was on loan from the FBI to offer advice on a South Korean serial killer. The two became close and Gage became Goren’s mentor in the field of criminal profiling, a relationship which continued even after Gage was discredited following a particularly tense and unsuccessful hunt for a serial killer.

After leaving the military, Goren joined the New York Police Department and spent four years in the Narcotics Division. He was responsible for three sting operations that resulted in 27 arrests and 27 convictions.

Major Case Squad

Since sometime before 2000, Goren has been partnered with Det. Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe) working within the Major Case Division under Captain James Deakins and later Captain Danny Ross.

As an investigator and profiler, Goren is uncommonly skilled at sizing up suspects and picking apart the details of crimes. Thanks to his diverse background and commitment to research (in the episode “Dead” he called his library card his most important investigative tool) he is frequently able to recall pieces of information that may seem obscure but prove to be incredibly relevant to the case. Additionally, he has an acute sense of smell that discloses details even a forensics investigator might miss.

During interrogations, Goren has the habit of cocking his head at odd angles while talking to people – a "side talking" method he uses to distract and unnerve them. D'Onofrio invented this kind of habit from a scene in the pilot episode where a suspect he was interrogating would not look him in the eye. It is such a strong identifier of his character that in the episode “The Gift” a woman who, while describing a psychic dream she had, labeled Goren as being "the man with the broken neck."

Additionally, when questioning people, Goren will attempt to agitate uncooperative suspects by exploiting a weakness of theirs which he has noticed. For example, if he believes a subject is a "neat freak" he will deliberately move the subject's possessions around to create clutter, appearing to do so out of clumsiness or lack of respect, in order to rattle them.

While Goren has never crossed the line into open insubordination, he does occasionally push professional boundaries, either because he feels it will solve the case more effectively, or because empathy leads him to believe that the most extreme punishments are not warranted. Eames once said that his willingness to test authority stems from his days as a "lapsed altar boy." This attitude has pushed him into conflict with superiors before, particularly with ADA Ron Carver and Captain Ross as they are concerned with due process and regulations.

At the end of "Untethered" (Season 7, Episode 9; air date December 6, 2007), Detective Goren is suspended and sent for a psychological fitness evaluation. Pending the current Hollywood Writer's strike, the resolution of Goren's status with the NYPD is unknown until the next installment of Goren/Eames original Season 7 episodes airs on the USA Network sometime in January 2008.

Partnership with Alex Eames

Goren and Eames both tend to discuss the other, and call each other, by their last names alone. However, Eames does address him by the more intimate "Bobby" (the name by which he is known to his family) when it is clear he is under unusual stress; in the premiere episode of season 7, Goren was heard for the first time by viewers to address his partner as "Alex." Goren often takes the lead, although he is actually the junior partner in their working relationship.

Early in their partnership, Eames petitioned the department for a new partner. She later withdrew the petition. Letting her know that he is not offended that she once thought him erratic and unstable, Goren admits he is "an acquired taste."

Eames is practical, while Goren is often portrayed as intellectual, yet there is little evidence of conflict between them. Indeed, they display mutual respect and friendship. Goren himself said they have "complementary skills": Goren is portrayed as having extensive "book knowledge," while Eames is portrayed as more computer and politically savvy. Contrasting with the instability of his family, Eames is a steadying, and perhaps calming, influence.

Goren was temporarily partnered with Det. G. Lynn Bishop (Samantha Buck) in 2003–2004 while Eames was on maternity leave. They did function reasonably well as a team, and Bishop seemed more intellectually curious than Eames, but their personalities were not as compatible and Goren often compared Bishop to Eames, to Bishop's detriment. Although she respected his ability to close cases, Bishop did not appreciate Goren's somewhat aggressive style of questioning uncooperative witnesses. It was implied that she was aware of being compared to the partner that Goren very obviously missed.

Family

Goren's childhood contributed to his ability to understand criminal psychology and to empathize with the victims of crimes. In the episode “Suite Sorrow,” he states that he knows what it is like “to have your judgment, your sense of security undermined by your parents; because they were hiding a truth or denying it to themselves.”

As a result of his father’s infidelity, Goren now harbors a hatred of men who abandon their wives, especially if the wives are sick, and/or neglect their children. When blindsided by his enemy Nicole Wallace, Goren comments, "She picked a man I already didn't trust. I already didn't respect. ... She, uh, picked a man like my father." However, at the time Mr. Goren left the family, Goren blamed his mother for driving his father away. Some of Goren's dislike may stem from guilt over having felt this way in the past.

Goren’s mother suffered from schizophrenia since she was 32, and was an in-patient at the Carmel Ridge mental facility. He was in the habit of calling her every day and visiting her once a week, saying in the episode “Semi-Detached” that she has been slipping away from him his whole life but he can’t let go. In Season 6 she was diagnosed with lymphoma and underwent major surgery, appearing for the first time on screen in the episode "The War At Home." Goren is known to flinch openly whenever his mother is mentioned, another vulnerability Wallace frequently exploits.

Goren's older brother, Frank Goren (Tony Goldwyn), is presented as a man who has a gambling problem. Frances is very proud of Frank and described him as a "scientist,” and seemed to believe that Frank could take better care of her than Bobby did. In reality, Frank was homeless and destitute on Manhattan’s streets, refering to a homeless woman as "his old lady" and saying “church people” helped him clean up. At one meeting, Bobby gave Frank $50, his overcoat, and his business card. Bobby told Frank to call him if he ever needed any help. They agreed to meet the following Sunday - Frances' birthday – but Frank failed to appear at the appointed time. In vain, Frances waited for Frank to appear, sure that he would never forget her birthday. Bobby did not give her any details about Frank's condition.

Frank Goren has a son named Donny, incarcerated in a mental institution.

Mark Ford Brady

In "Endgame," the serial rapist and murderer Mark Ford Brady (Roy Scheider), anxious to delay his scheduled execution, arranged for Goren and Eames to interview him about victims not yet attributed to him. Goren, with aid from his brother (now clean after a lucky streak in Atlantic City) pieced together a story which showed that Brady and Frances Goren had a long-term, on-and-off relationship. Their relationship continued until Goren was four and his brother Frank was seven. Frank remembered Brady as "Uncle Mark," who brought little presents for Bobby when he came to visit. Uncle Mark, who only visited when Mr. Goren was away, no longer visited after Uncle Mark and Frances got into a "car crash." Goren did not remember Uncle Mark but recalled that after the car crash, Frances was never the same.

In a Death Row interview room, Goren learned that Brady was on leave around the time Jack Kennedy was elected — the month that he would have been conceived – leaving Goren with the horrible possibility that this serial killer might be his father. Goren confronted his mother, who revealed she did not know for sure who his father was. Both Brady and Frances died that night, leaving Goren alone in his mother’s empty room. It is unknown whether or not Goren has sought to confirm who his biological father is.

In the episode "Untethered", he uses the name William Brady when he goes under cover in prison to find out if prisoners were being tortured.

Character Comparisons

Fictional Persons

Goren is often compared to Sherlock Holmes because both latch onto clues that seem minor but end up solving a case. Both possess the ability to come up with a complete theory of a crime based on little evidence, and then sustain that theory based on evidence. Nicole Wallace is probably a direct attempt to play on Holmes' antagonist Professor Moriarty, or perhaps Irene Adler. However, Goren displays more compassion and empathy than Holmes. Goren even displays sorrow regarding how Wallace's past damaged her, and destroyed "that sparkling little girl" she once was.

Goren's character owes a lot to another popular television detective, Lt. Columbo. He often mirrors Columbo's habit of stopping to ask a suspect "one last" question before leaving. He also catches people off guard by pretending to be incompetent. While Goren is not as disheveled as Columbo, he certainly is not as formal as his fellow detectives. Both tend to appear unshaven and to wear an oversize trench coat.

René Balcer further cites Georges Simenon's French Commissaire Maigret influenced Goren's development. He also says the character owes a lot to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe for some attributes.

Like Detective Dave Robicheaux, Goren believes in the power of libraries to aid detective work. Goren has called his library card his most important investigative tool. René Balcer repeats this sentiment when describing the creation of Goren.

Factual Persons

René Balcer cites the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz as a model for Goren's interview style and ability to get others to talk about themselves.

Details

• He is left-handed.
• He is 6 feet, 4 inches tall and wears size 13 shoes - a size advantage he frequently uses against suspects.
• He always carries both a cloth handkerchief and a switchblade with him. He usually carries a well worn leather binder — roughly 9 x 12 inches in size.
• He appears to speak German, Dutch, Spanish, and some Cantonese thanks to his army experience. He can read some Russian and also knows some American Sign Language, but not enough to conduct a full interview.
• He likes veal Parmesan enough to order it five nights in a row at Sal's Restaurant. When the waitress commented on the repetition, he charmed her by replying that he really just liked the way that she wrote it down. She responded by grabbing the order from a passing server and serving him immediately.
• Goren stated that, while in the armed forces, he read the Qur'an in order to impress a Muslim woman to whom he was attracted.
• He spent some time in Oxford "chasing co-eds."
• He was vaccinated for anthrax after 9/11.
• His NYPD badge number is shown to be '4376' in numerous episodes.
• A relapsed smoker, he has been seen smoking following a few recent cases, after giving up the habit seven years ago.

References

The citation style for specific episodes is Season # : Episode #, " Episode Name ".

External links

• NBC biography of Robert Goren
• USA's Law & Order: Criminal Intent site, including 18 "Character Insight" videos