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| Satisfyingly bad! by Jerry Whorebach 04/30/2008, 2:11am PDT | ||||
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| SO much worse than the episode in which Martin Short played a crime-solving psychic with a thing for little girls. Here's a quick recap for those who missed it (no one?):
Robin Williams plays the ultimate criminal, a scientist with the ability to make people do whatever he says because he's so clever and charming. He uses this ability to prank call a McDonald's and make the manager molest one of his hot young hardbodied employees, which puts him squarely in the sights of Manhattan SVU (who are responsible for investigating all crimes RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES of Yahoo! News). They track him down using a fuzzy spot in a security camera photo that's been enlarged and enhanced into what looks like a publicity photo from the set of Mork and Mindy, a fact which comes up later even though it isn't important and doesn't really matter. Robin Williams gives the SVU detectives a comically detailed alibi, which they confirm by calling a bunch of phone numbers he gave them for the hotel he stayed at out of town and the diner he ate at etc. Of course each number is just Robin Williams doing a slightly-different incredibly wacky voice ("why ah sure do remember that cutie pie, officahs!") which the detectives figure out only after Captain Kragen JUST HAPPENS to mention that his buddy tried to stay at that hotel last week and they were closed for fumigation. So they arrest Robin Williams and put him on trial and he decides he's going to defend himself, and he does it so well the ADA says we're lucky he became a scientist instead of a defense lawyer, because the entire legal system would collapse under the weight of his incredible natural ability. At one point he challenges the photo the detectives used to ID him because there's no fucking way you could get that from the original grainy black and white security camera photo, and the SVU computer tech (who is Chinese and an expert on everything about computers from cryptography to Second Life) explains how they use ALGORITHMS and so on and so forth and the layperson couldn't possibly understand it. SVU expresses shock that Robin Williams would play to the jury's ignorance of technology like that. So he gets off, and becomes some kind of anarchist folk hero for challenging corporations with prank calls, and he starts organizing rallies over the internet where people have impromptu pillow fights or freeze like statues in a busy train station. I guess now would be as good a time as any to delve into his complex psychological motivations for civil disobedience so here we go. When he was a child, some of the older boys raped a little girl in an old, abandoned, possibly-haunted house. He tried to tell the police but no one would believe him on account of one of the boys was the police chief's son. Frustrated, child-genius Robin Williams burned down the house just like Eminem did in 8 Mile and David Byrne WISHES he did in Wall Street. He was caught and sentenced to childhood trauma at the hands of the judicial system. As if one totally sweet motivation wasn't enough for such an awesome supervillian, they gave him another. Later after he somehow grew up into a well-adjusted adult, his wife and unborn child died during childbirth because their doctor, "a little God in a white coat," wouldn't listen to Robin Williams when he told him to perform a C-section because the medical professional was too proud to take doctoring advice from a completely unqualified emotionally distraught husband, even though he was a natural genius! So afterwards Robin Williams had to use his ability to "push" men's minds to make the doctor commit suicide. Now that SVU understands his complex pathology, they're all ready to arrest him on suspicion of being a "pusher" who gets inside your brain and "pushes" you into voluntarily stepping in front of traffic or whatever. But when Elliot and Olivia get seperated while they are arresting him, he kidnaps Olivia by telling her there is a bomb in his pants and if she doesn't throw her badge and gun in the trash and come with him willingly, he will detonate it, killing them both and countless civilians (it's a big bomb). Elliot uses detective work (interviews exactly ONE of Robin Williams' co-workers at Aeroscience Labs) to determine that he took Olivia to an abandoned recording studio. It turns out he was a music recording engineer and his wife was a singer before her death unhinged his mind, who knew? Elliot goes in alone without backup on a hunch which proves disastrously accurate after he discovers the whole thing was a set-up. Now he has to choose between giving his partner and the secret love of his life painful electric shocks like in that one psychology experiment we've all heard about on TV, or listening to her scream in pain as Robin Williams gives her much worse electric shocks from his homemade remote-control electric chair (remember he's a genius). So Elliot says "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" and Robin Williams says "are you sure?" and Elliot says "yeah" and Robin Williams says "congratulations, YOU PASSED. You're a man not a sheep and I doff my hat to you sirrah." Then Robin Williams reveals that the whole thing was a trick, he was just playing back pre-recorded screams he recorded earlier with his recording engineer skills and Olivia was in no danger the whole time, and he turns himself in for punishment. Then, as Elliot and Olivia are escorting him out of the abandoned recording studio, he asks if he can tie his shoe. The detectives are like "I don't see anything wrong with that, knock yourself out" BUT! It's a trick! Concealed in Robin Williams' sock is a miniature detonator that he uses to blow up the abandoned recording studio and make his escape. The detectives chase after him but he runs through some bushes and on the other side of them is the Hudson River and Robin Williams is nowhere to be found. Olivia thinks that if he went into that water in handcuffs he'd already be dead and sinking to the bottom, his body never to be recovered. But Elliot remembers the whole genius supervillian thing and suspects that Robin Williams is still out there... somewhere... |
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