User Reviews

Jeff Goldblum and Saffron Burrows get handed in this episode the murder of young Lindsey Rose Sinclair who is a student at a very posh performing arts academy. Young Ms. Sinclair was not the most popular among the rest of the students, she was good and she knew it and she made sure everyone else knew it too.

So there's a whole school of young and eager girls wanting desperate to succeed in their chosen discipline of dance. And as we discover there are some of them with some real issues.

Also on the suspect list is Lorenzo Pisoni who is their dance instructor and choreographer and has plowed through the cast like a satyr on a rampage. He's someone you can truly hate Burrows develops a real dislike for him. It's real easy to do that.

The perpetrator does this deed for some deep psychological issues that one needed a detective like Zack Nichols to get at. Maybe Bobby Goren could have though.

In a dance class, the dancing lead was hated by most of her classmates due to her behavior towards everyone who stands in her way. She had a sex relationship with dance instructor and one night, after a drunken night in a club, dumped her black boyfriend. Back at her place, she bumped into someone who hit her unconscious before throwing her from the balcony. Detectives soon figure out she suffered from stomach things and, after questioning another dancer, they realize someone used to poison dancer by using antifreeze. Something happened behind the stage curtain and it's hard for detective to break the wall of silence.

A boring episode, involving teenage girls who don't draw the audience attention for their performances. The pace is slow, even the main actors don't care too much. Below average.

"Delicate" is the second episode to have Nichols and Stevens partnered, following on from the big amount of change seen in the previous episode "Broad Channel". Nichols didn't do it for me in his first two appearances in Season 8 but quickly grew on me, whereas Stevens and the chemistry between them were a bit on and off. While really liking 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent' in its early seasons, it did start becoming hit and miss halfway through and stayed that until the end of the run.

While not a bad episode at all, "Delicate" is not too great (or even particularly good) either and does little if anything to improve upon the unsettled nature seen in "Broad Channel". Or at least the individual components that were not settled in that episode. While feeling a little more like 'Criminal Intent', the chemistry and changes still aren't there and the case is weaker. Not one of the best episodes of Season 9 definitely, a lesser episode really.

There are good things. The production values are slick and have a subtle grit, with an intimacy to the photography without being too claustrophobic. The music isn't used too much and doesn't get too melodramatic and there is some nice direction. Jeff Goldblum plays Nichols with ease without overdoing the quirkiness.

It is also redeemed by the well staged and clever ending and Lorenzo Pisoni playing a colourful character that one loves to hate.

However, "Delicate" has a lot of drawbacks. It has a dull and over-stretched plot that has too few surprises and it is very thin and unoriginal. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio phones in her standard boss role and the chemistry between Goldblum and Saffron Burrows is too much of a mismatch.

Partly because of it being too soon to judge and also because Burrows' personality, which came over as underplayed, is not as strong as Goldblum's. The supporting characters are very forgettable on the whole, with the sole exception of Pisoni. The writing could have been a lot tighter.

Overall, disappointing but still not bad. 5/10.