Directed by John David Coles Original air date August 9, 2009 | Production code CI8024 | |
Episode no. Season 8
Episode 16 (#171 overall) Written by Dick Wolf (creator)
René Balcer (developer)
Michael S. Chernuchin (story) | ||
"Revolution" is an eighth-season finale episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and the 171st episode overall.
Contents
This is a unique episode, in that Detective Nichols and Detective Eames partner together, when usually they are part of separate teams. It is also worthy to note that both are NYPD Senior Detectives, when usually there is one 'Senior' and one 'Junior' in a team. This was the only episode of its kind, due to Detective Wheeler (Nichols' regular partner) being on maternity leave during the final two episodes of Season 8.
Summary
With the banks failing and public discontent high, aging revolutionary Axel Kaspers believes the time is ripe to galvanize public reaction and spark a populist uprising. With his disciples Birgit and Mel, Kaspers orchestrates the kidnapping of Continental Bankcorp president, Peter Evans. However, the carefully planned carjacking goes wrong and turns into a murder, leaving Detectives Nichols and Eames to pursue Kaspers' gang. As the police intensify their manhunt, discovering and defusing a car bomb along the way, Kaspers and Birgit kill the other members of the group and set off a second bomb on Wall Street as a diversion. Nichols and Eames soon discover that Birgit is Kaspers' daughter.
The detectives eventually arrest Kaspers, but not before Birgit purchases large quantities of the raw materials needed to make a triacetone triperoxide bomb. A call soon comes in that she has taken hostages in the Continental Bankcorp building and is threatening to blow it up unless Kaspers is put on a plane to Cuba. Nichols takes Kaspers into the lobby and gets him to admit to Birgit that his love for his daughter is more important to him than the radical ideology he has been trying to put into place. As Birgit begins to realize this, though, an FBI sniper outside the building gets a clear shot and kills her, knocking her backwards into Nichols' arms so that the tilt switch around her neck does not set off the bomb. As the hostages are freed and Kaspers and the body are taken away, Nichols muses to Eames that relationships such as the one between Kaspers and Birgit - or between himself and his own father - are the reason he never had any children.
Allusions
This episode makes extensive reference to the Baader-Meinhof Group, also known as the RAF (short for "Rote Armee Fraktion," "Red Army Faction"), an actual radical network active in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. The logo featured on the website Nichols is reading quotes from however is not the actual RAF logo: The website shows what appears to be an M16 in front of a red star with no writing whereas the original logo consisted of an MP5, the red star and the letters "RAF" in white print. Certain parts of the intended kidnapping like the sound-proof closet and the baby carriage are reminiscent of the RAF's abduction of Hanns-Martin Schleyer.
Reception
This episode pulled 4.83 million views in the Nielsen ratings on its original airdate but pulled 5.93 million views in the Nielsen ratings when it was rerun on NBC.