TV Guide Interview

Posted by Donnajo on USA forum. sent in by Kimmy - thank you!

Interrogating Goren
by Mike Flaherty

Vincent D'Onofrio Puts His Criminal Intent Alter Ego On The Couch -
And He's Not As Crazy As You Think.

Watching Vincent D'Onofrio's Det. Robert Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent is a deliciously unsettling experience. We love the awkward mannerisms, the halting yet penetrating speech, the craned neck bend he performs when grilling suspects. He's brilliant, insightful, riveting, But frankly, he seems a few sandwiches short of a picnic. If you know what we mean...

For example: In "Untethered," D'Onofrio's last episode before the writer's strike, Goren went undercover in a mental ward to expose prisoner abuse........

.....In the first poststrike episode "Purgatory," the suspended Goren got reinstated, but we never witnessed the psych evaluation that was required to get his shield and gun back. This was no accident. Turns out D'Onofrio's loathe to have his alter ego follow a certain, powerful, neurotic Italian-American to the couch. "The Sopranos did it so perfectly that if you take a strong character like mine and put him with a shrink, it's going to be a copy." says the actor. "So we won't go there."

Actually dude, we will.......(here comes the poking fun at therapy part)

Diagnosis: Abandonment Issues
Goren's major malfunction in a nutshell: His father, a compulsive gambler and serial adulterer, walked out when his son was 11. Four years earlier, his mother, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia...

..D'Onofrio says "Goren's very damaged. In some ways, it's what makes him a better cop. He's lost everyone close to him (save for partner Alexandra Eames) but refuses to lose a suspect once in his grasp."

Our Conclusion? That obsession is his way of exerting a degree of control that he never had growing up.

Diagnosis: Paternal Neglect
Did someone say "daddy issues?" Goren's mother informed him on her deathbed that the louse he thought was his father may not be his father. Instead, it may be the louse she was bonking back in 1960, a serial killer
named Mark Ford Brady. As a result, says D'Onofrio, "Goren is lost and has to find his way." The show's consulting producer, Rene Balcer, is more direct: "He's always looking for a father figure." But Balcer also points out "that neglected boys tend to have a lot of problems with older males and authority issues."

That's our boy!

Diagnosis: Post-Romantic Stress Syndrome
OK, we made that one up. But it's the best way to describe the psychological morass that is Goren's relationship with criminal mastermind Nicole Wallace.......

...."That's the only true relationship with a woman that he's had in the last seven years other than his mom," notes D'Onofrio. "Which is very screwed up."

Diagnosis:Repressed Sociopathy
Manipulation is a symptom of the psychopathic personality," Goren once observed of a suspect. That's the cop calling the kettle black! His ability to guilt-trip, distract and befuddle suspects into a confession makes you wonder what path Goren might have followed if not law enforcement. "He walks that line of being able to enter that criminal world and think like a criminal," D'Onofrio observes. Balcer concurs: "There but for the grace of God goes Goren."

Diagnosis:Narcissistic Personality Disorder
A more taciturn, less flaky Goren of the past few seasons was an attempt , as D'Onofrio said, to, "internalize" the character. "The guy couldn't be so quirky that he wouldn't be allowed to be a cop." That
recalibration seemed to have come full circle when we saw the scruffy, puffy Goren at the beginning of "Purgatory," brooding at the end of the bar......

So who knows? Maybe he will go completely off the rails someday.. Until that happens, Goren will remain a work in progress. "The last episode this season will revisit his past in a very literal way," reveals D'Onofrio. "He'll be pulled out of a nosedive," adds Balcer.

OK, just don't go making him normal or anything.