Law & Order: Criminal Intent (TV Series) Trophy Wine (2011) User Reviews

I'm more like a barbaresco kind of guy

[Mrpalli77 · 7/10 · 16 October 2017]

A middle aged man (Michael Cumpsty) worked as wine dealer. But he didn't trade the common wines you can find at the restaurant, but high quality ones (most came from last centuries) you bought only at auction sale. He set up a taste meeting with few guests in his hometown with his new collection just delivered by armored vans. When all guests left, he lost his senses inside the cellar and he was unable to get out because someone locked him up. What appears to be a heart attack was really a murder, because his wine glass was blended with Viagra. The wealthy man had a lot of enemies in his business and even his business partners had something to hide in relation to a fraud. Suddenly a prenup turned up and detectives have to look even inside the household.

This episode shows us the classic uptown marriage, made up of cheating and blackmailing where only money counts. You can see since the beginning the stone cold way one looked at the other. "Dumbest day of my life" written in a marriage portrait: cool!

Drinking to deception

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 4 November 2021]

Loved all four of the previous episodes of Season 10, especially the previous one "The Last Street in Manhattan", and was incredibly impressed by the high standard of the season. After being hit and miss for a while, it was like 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent' properly got its old spark back. While the story idea for "Trophy Wine" is not an innovative one, it is also very intriguing and is a good setting for this kind of show.

Which "Trophy Wine" clearly had fun with. To me it was a little disappointing after four such wonderful episodes previous to it and falls a little short of greatness. Also consider it perhaps the weakest episode of Season 10. Despite how that sounds, as some of the weakest episodes of 'Criminal Intent's' previous seasons were not good at all, it is still a very good episode indeed which has a lot about Season 10's high quality. Which is why it is sad that it didn't last longer.

"Trophy Wine" has foibles. Like a couple of the previous episodes, everything with the therapy slows the episode down occasionally.

Adrian Pasdar's performance has divided people here and can see why. He does have sinister moments, but he can be hammy and his character is unsubtly obvious.

However, "Trophy Wine" has a lot of truly great things. As ever, the photography and such are fully professional, the slickness still remaining. The music is used sparingly and is haunting and non-overwrought when it is used, and it's mainly used when a crucial revelation or plot development is revealed. The direction has some nice tension while keeping things steady, without going too far the other way.

Moreover, the writing is lean, leaves one in thought and nothing feels sugar-coated. The mystery is not a predictable one and while quite intricate later on coherence never felt like an issue. Goren and Eames are such a well-matched and contrasted pairing and are great characters in their own right. The acting is very good on the whole.

Concluding, very good. 8/10.

Superb Performance by Adrian Pasdar

[jlthornb51 · 10/10 · 28 December 2016]

Adrian Pasdar is absolutely mesmerizing in this episode as an eccentric wine collector who is fabulously wealthy. The scenes with he, Kathryn Erbe, and D'Noffrio are electric and quite funny. Pasdar injects just enough of what is sinister and humorous in the character to entrance the viewer. Erbe is as superb as usual and the rest of the guest cast is excellent. In this last season of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, the episodes explored a warmth and humor in the detectives and those with whom they interact that was missing in the previous years. This made for a humanizing of the characters and a suitable farewell to a very fine series.

Love Law & Order but...

[[e-mail] · 6/10 · 2 September 2013]

...in this particular order, there is one actor who was so bad that I felt compelled to write this review. The story line is a good one and the actress who plays the primary wife is pretty good. But what ruined this for my was Adrian Pasdar...truly BAD. I found it so distracting it was difficult to watch the rest of this episode. I've seen him in some other things where he's pretty good but I didn't get this at all.

It came across as trite and contrived and it fact, I was at a loss to understand what he was trying to portray as a character and whoever did his hair should be fired. It was almost caricaturish...it was kind of silly.