| "Scared Crazy" | |||
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| Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode | |||
| Episode no. | Season 5 Episode 9 (#98 overall) |
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| Directed by | Marisol Torres | ||
| Written by | Dick Wolf (creator) René Balcer (developer and story) Diana Son (story and teleplay) Stephanie Sengupta (story editor) |
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| Production code | 0509 | ||
| Original air date | December 4, 2005 | ||
| Guest stars | |||
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Jennifer Van Dyck |
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| Episode chronology | |||
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"Scared Crazy" is a fifth season episode of the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Contents |
A programmer for a high-tech software company is found dead, crushed by a vending machine that rolled down a flight of stairs and onto him. Goren notes that the man had been listening to an iPod whose headphones have been yanked out; the device is later found to be loaded with house music.
As Goren and Eames investigate, they look into both the programmer’s company and a rival firm in the adjacent building, with windows that give each a clear view of the other’s office. The motive for the killing appears at first to be industrial espionage, since each side has been trying to penetrate the other’s counter-surveillance measures. However, Robbie Boatman (played by DJ Qualls), a programmer at the rival firm, soon draws the detectives’ attention because his body language suggests that he has been coached in ways to deal with the stress of questioning.
The focus soon shifts to Robbie’s therapist, Dr. Katrina Pynchon (played by Jennifer Van Dyck), who has been helping him deal with his psychological problems, including paranoia. She cites doctor-patient privilege and refuses to cooperate with the investigation, leaving Goren and Eames to piece together her background by other means. They learn that she has a military service record: training soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina to resist enemy questioning and torture as part of the SERE program, then supervising the interrogation of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
In addition, Goren and Eames uncover a hidden detention cell that had at one time been fitted with controls for light and sound, along with a stack of house CD’s. They deduce that during a two-week period in which Robbie was supposedly on vacation, he was actually being held in this room and subjected to psychological stresses that amounted to torture, as they specifically targeted his phobias. According to Pynchon’s acquaintances, she felt so guilty for her work at Guantanamo that she was desperate to bring some good out of it.
In order to force Pynchon to admit what she has done, Goren puts Robbie in an interview room at the precinct, removes all the furniture, and steps out,locking Robbie in. As Eames, Carver, and Pynchon watch, he shuts the blinds, flips a light switch, and puts a house CD into a stereo wired to pipe the music into the room. Believing that Robbie is being tortured by the darkness and the music, Pynchon breaks down and tells the truth: she had put Robbie in the high-stress detention cell as an extreme cure for his problems. Instead, he emerged with such a negative conditioning toward the stimuli she used that when he saw the programmer at an office party where the music was being played, he was pushed to kill him and rip out the iPod’s headphones.
Goren then pulls the light switch off the wall, revealing it to be connected to nothing, and shows Pynchon that the music has in fact not been playing in the interview room. When he opens the blinds and turns on the speaker, Robbie is standing there quietly. Pynchon is arrested for kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and reckless endangerment, while Carver plans to charge Robbie with involuntary manslaughter.
| Vincent D'Onofrio | Det. Robert Goren |
| Kathryn Erbe | Det. Alexandra Eames |
| Jamey Sheridan | Capt. James Deakins |
| Courtney B. Vance | A.D.A. Ron Carver |
This episode examines how torture can affect both the torturer and the victim. Additionally, it comments on extreme techniques used by some therapists that have been compared to torture.[1]
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