Carolyn Barek

Det. Carolyn Barek is a fictional character on the NBC-USA Network series, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, played by Annabella Sciorra. Barek is partnered with Detective Mike Logan (Chris Noth) throughout the fifth season of the show. Annabella Sciorra abruptly departs the cast at the end of the season and is written out in the sixth season.

Characterization

Carolyn Barek is a criminal profiler from Brooklyn's Cobble Hill, Barek spent two years post-9/11 with the FBI. In addition to English, she also speaks Polish, Spanish, Italian, Creole, Russian, Cantonese, and Yiddish. Barek's badge number is 6141.

Barek previously worked without a partner, which accounts for her habit of talking to herself while examining a crime scene. Barek noticed Logan worried at their first crime scene, she had assured him that he had the job with the squad. She and her mother have gardens where they grow organic foods, she often offers Logan some (which he accepts). She hints that her mother was strict; when a girl who abuses heroin dresses in front of her and Logan in the hospital, she tells Logan her mother would have killed her if she dressed or undressed in front of complete strangers. Barek is Catholic and she says that she believes that even the truest sinner deserves forgiveness, Logan flatly disputing it. Barek and her mother are gardeners, growing foods such as cherry tomatoes and cabbage. Barek's father was a carpenter who was in the union and she mentions he prayed heavily to put her and her two siblings in school. Barek admits to having a former boyfriend with a gambling problem, she spent two years trying to fix him.

She initially thought Logan was "a cuddly cop" but she later found she has Logan's back at times; when he threatened a man with a pool cue in "Diamond Dogs" and "In the Wee Small Hours", which she initially doesn't condone but understands why he did it, to get information from someone who refused to cooperate with the police. She also backs Logan when he appears angry with a dirty cop in "Unchained", and when he accidentally shoots an undercover cop in "To The Bone". She also notices he falls ill in the episode "The Healer", and she takes him to a healer she knows who reveals he ran into poison ivy by touching a suspect's things, who is also a healer who knew how to give it to Logan unknowingly. A defense attorney for a dirty cop tries to claim Logan is going after his client, Barek tells him it's just "a nice sound bite" and it won't get his client off of the hook for another cop's son's murder.

In "To The Bone", she and Logan are at a bar talking about the case at hand, where rich families are murdered and their homes being robbed, Logan gets drunk (after shooting an undercover officer) makes advances towards Barek, asking her to come to his apartment, him taking the couch. Barek declines, stating that Logan didn't have a couch that big and that he wasn't in his right mind. In a session with Dr. Olivet (Carolyn McCormick), Olivet tells Logan he wanted Barek to retaliate at him for shooting the officer, all of Logan's colleagues on his side.

Barek does not appear on the show after the end of the fifth season. She was replaced by Megan Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson). No reason for her apparent departure is stated by the show, but in the sixth season, new Major Case Squad captain, Danny Ross (Eric Bogosian) sarcastically mentions to Logan that if his new partner (Wheeler) didn't work out, he'd try to get her back. Logan responds with a snort and an eyeroll.

External links

• Character profile