Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent Premiere Recap: Dick Wolf's Empire Expands North! Plus, Grade It
While Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent premiered in Canada in 2024, American TV viewers weren't privy to the Law & Orderverse's first northern offshoot until Wednesday night.
Aboot time, eh? (I promise, that's the only time I'm going to do that in this recap.)
In a minute, I'll want to know what you thought of the series' first episode. But first, a quick overview:
"In Toronto's war on crime, the worst offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Specialized Criminal Investigations Unit. These are their stories," the show's opening narration tells us, right before we're brought into a booze cruise thrown by a cryptocurrency finance dude named Daniel for his investors. A few of them are skittish, but he reassures them it's all good; the fact that he slips one a manilla envelope full of bills makes the whole venture feel shady, though. At one point, Daniel isn't feeling well, and his wife, Sophie, gives him his meds and tells him to rest a while.
Later on, Daniel is at the railing, feeling sick, when he's approached by someone we can't see. As he backs away from the person, he falls overboard into Lake Ontario. The next morning, when Daniel is reported missing, Det. Sgt. Henry Graff (played by Aden Young, Rectify) and Det. Sgt. Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe, FBI) are on the case. They visit Daniel's company, Bigaplex, which allegedly has $300 million... but its bank account is empty. The cops theorize that Daniel siphoned off the money into his own account and faked his death, with plans to escape with the cash. But his business partner, Nick, says that's ridiculous. Soon enough, Daniel's body washes up on the lake's shore.
The medical examiner determines that he was drugged with pentobarbital, likely in the sparkling wine he was chugging at the party. Was Sophie the poisoner? It seems like no, given that someone is terrorizing her — they even run her over with a car in her own driveway — and demanding that she cough up some crucial intel.
As Bateman and Graff investigate, we learn a little bit about them. Graff is an oddball with Fox Mulder-levels of arcane knowledge stuffed into his brain. Bateman has a son but is no longer with the kid's father. And their boss, Inspector Vivienne Holness (Karen Robinson, A Million Little Things), is your typical no-nonsense police superior.
The hour progresses, and the partners get closer to figuring out the puzzle. Nick is a conman who met Daniel in college; he and Sophie colluded to con Daniel, but then she fell in love with him and confessed all, and they worked through it. Sophie also is eight weeks pregnant. Everyone is looking for a dead man's code that will allow them to access Daniel's account, and Nick thinks he has it, but the string of numbers in his posssession turn out to be a dud.
Bateman lures Nick to Daniel and Sophie's home under the pretense of helping him figure out the code, but when they get there, Graff is pacing the nursery and ready to lay it all out for Nick (and the audience). Daniel and Sophie's falling in love messed with Nick's plans to run away with the money; Daniel had planned to meet with the head of the police's fraud unit to turn Nick in and cut a deal. Nick denies everything, but Graff and Bateman continue, saying that they have the actual dead man's code, because Daniel actually is alive and gave it to them. A highly destabilized Nick mutters that Daniel can't be alive, because "he went over the side of the boat. I watched him." And with that confession, other officers swoop in, cuff him and take him away.
Bateman and Graff were lying: Daniel is really dead, but the code they have is real, and it means that all of the investors' money will be returned to them. When Bateman wonders how her partner figured out the long sequence that unlocked the account, he points to the wallpaper border of the baby's room, which at first appears to have an alphabet-and-numbers theme but which really spells out the code. Hiding in plain sight!
Now it's your turn. What did you think of the premiere? Grade it via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!