Can't you feel them circlin', honey?

Lately when I’ve been watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent, I’ve been catching this whiff of a faint odor. Something salty. Familiar. Something from Seaworld? Then last night I’m watching the latest Goren/Eames episode, and the killer turns out to be not only a lawyer out for revenge on Eames for screwing his case, but also a cross-dresser with a penchant for red wigs inspired by his poor, dead, Irish mother.

Oh, hello, Mr. Jaws. Cause that is definitely doing a Fonzi-style water ski jump, spread eagle, straight over the shark tank.

And I kept thinking, no, surely not. Surely we aren’t going there. But yep. Not only was it a saggy dénouement, the clue that unravels the entire plot is a piece of stationary that is only sold only in Ireland. Seriously? That’s too cockamamie to even be ripped from the headlines. Plus, though you never see him in drag, the guy who played the lawyer would have made one UGLY tranny. And part of the caper is that he picks up the vic’s friend in a bar. It would have to be a coal miner themed bar, lit exclusively by phosphorous lamps for him to have pulled that off. Nobody gets that drunk.

It’s sad when you see the moment when a favorite long-running show jump the shark. First, you start getting that feeling that maybe the writers are out of gas. Then you're making excuses for lamer and lamer plot twists. Then you find yourself thinking, “I’d better start checking the listings for Sunday night.” Once that shark barrier has been breached, the chances are that the writers are just going to be pulling increasingly weirder crap out of their collective butts, until somebody has the guts to put the show out of its misery.

Maybe, L&O:CI can pull out of the death spiral. I thought maybe the Jeff Goldblum character would add some new life. But they’ve kind of quickly slid towards chum. I think that fin's is a circling. Everybody outta the water.