Faithfully (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)

"Faithfully" is an eighth-season episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and the 160th episode overall.

Plot

In this episode, Goren and Eames investigate when a celebrity doctor is killed in his luxurious home while his wife laid bound and helpless upstairs.

Their investigation leads them to the church the victim attended. They check out the reverend, who may know more than he is telling the detectives. As they question the reverend’s wife, a former speech therapist, they come across one of her troubled patients, who she tutored at a young age. As he becomes a prime suspect, Goren and Eames are even more perplexed when he ends up committing suicide. Their investigation shifts them to the victim’s wife, who is implicated in the murder of her husband through a tape recording. However, as it turns out, it was the reverend’s wife who was scheming all along, she was having an affair with her patient and manipulated him into killing the doctor before she turned on the victim’s wife and attempted to use the woman's former profession to frame her for the crime. Albeit the evidence to a conviction is thin they reveal the truth to the reverend who leaves her.

Trivia

• This episode was originally set to air after the Season 7 finale, Frame. But the network decided to start with Playing Dead because of the Nichols (Goldblum)/Wheeler (Nicholson) episodes not being set to air as well as the season premiere which was planned to air in November 2008. The out-of-order airing leads to some inconsistency: particularly Goren's returning from an extended family visit and being welcomed back by Capt. Ross. This would have made sense after family-heavy Frame but is odd after Playing Dead, which has nothing substantial about Goren's family.

• This episode reveals that Detective Goren has more family than just his deceased brother Frank Goren, his deceased mother Frances Goren, his deceased (executed) biological father Mark Ford Brady, and his missing nephew Donny Carson. Frank is his only mentioned sibling, though he brags to Eames about his niece.

Cast

External links

• IMDb entry
• Official website