Family Values (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)
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| "Family Values (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)" |
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"Family Values" (alternate title: "Happy Family") is an eighth-season episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and the 163rd episode overall. This episode was originally set to air after "Playing Dead" which was the episode chosen to be the season premiere.
Plot
A man disturbed by the imagery of a girl wearing a low-cut costume in a school play walks out and drives to a house reciting religious scripture. He sips a mug while wearing rubber gloves. A dead woman lies on the floor next to his table. The man of the house returns and the assailant ambushes him with a hammer. Eames and Goren are called to the scene in the morning. They note that the case is peculiar because of the woman's apparent familiarity with her killer but nothing of value, even one-thousand dollars in cash was taken, nor any sexual assault took place during the home invasion.
It turns out the killer, Paul Devildis (David Harbour) and his wife Mary (Susan Misner) are the victims' relatives. He is extremely socially conservative, even having used a towel to cover the chest of his sister-in-law after killing her. Paul learns from his daughter Kathy (Britt Robertson) that she will next be performing in a Tennessee Williams play, which he disapproves of, because of Williams' homosexuality. Paul confronts her drama teacher, Vilma (Karen Ziemba). He later walks out of an alley, dropping his hammer in a dumpster. Vilma is found dead the next morning; she was killed by a hammer.
Paul builds a pipe bomb which is delivered to and detonated by the boss who fired him from his bank job, at which he has been pretending to work for the past five months. The body count continues to escalate as Paul's wife and pet dog are found dead in his house, but he has absconded with his daughter. Goren theorizes that Paul's mother will be next. Listening to the radio, Kathy discovers what her father has done and unsuccessfully attempts to escape. After apprehending Paul near his mother's retirement home, Goren and Eames now must race to look for Kathy before Paul kills her. Goren manages to use Paul's fanaticism against him to get him to reveal Kathy's location in time.
Trivia
- This episode was originally set to air after “Playing Dead”. But due to the reset dates of the season premiere (Nov 08, Jan 09, and Feb 09) and the Jeff Goldblum/Julianne Nicholson episodes not ready yet, the network shifted the episodes around, no reason why has been mentioned to this date.
- The case is based loosely on the case of John List.
Cast
| Vincent D’Onofrio | Det. Robert Goren |
| Kathryn Erbe | Det. Alexandra Eames |
| Eric Bogosian | Capt. Daniel Ross |