Last night, Law & Order: Criminal Intent continued its long-standing tradition of having comedic television actors guest star in roles you wouldn't ever expect: in dramatic - and sometimes chilling - roles as the either the killer or at least some disturbed character.

Tom Arnold guest starred as a televangelist caught up in a homosexual scandal. He of course gained fame for his role on Roseanne, and more recently was the joker host (isn't he always a joker) of the Best Damn Sports Show Period.

The list of such actors to make guest appearances on CI is long:

Stephen Colbert (then of The Daily Show, now of The Colbert Report)
Darrell Hammond (of Saturday Night Live)
Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser of course)
Bronson Pinchot AND Mark Linn-Baker (Perfect Strangers) on separate episodes
Richard Kind (Spin City)
Michael Gross (Family Ties)
Fran Drescher (The Nanny)

In addition, there have also been many well-known movie actors to appear on the show (ones who have done both comedy and drama, but are typically known best as comedic actors/actresses).

Whoopi Goldberg (CI)
Liza Minnelli (CI)
Rip Torn (CI)
Brent Spiner (CI)

And this pattern is not exclusive to CI, but can also be found on SVU and L&O, with two recent and most notable examples:

Martin Short (SVU)
Chevy Chase (L&O)

Chevy Chase played a character which was a takeoff of the Mel Gibson drunk driving incident in which he went off on Jews (being responsible for all the wars, etc).

I wonder why Law & Order does this, especially on a dramatically intense show like Criminal Intent. I understand having guest stars (to draw viewers, add a dynamic, etc). And often such guest stars have had experience in both drama and comedy. But it was so weird seeing Stephen Colbert (in the height of his role as a hilarious reporter on The Daily Show) playing a psychotic killer in a serious drama. Or Darrell Hammond, seemingly better suited for his Bill Clinton impersonations than for that of a sleazy manipulator (no, he did not play Clinton on CI). And seeing Martin Short and Chevy Chase on those very heavy roles was strange indeed.

For the most part it was good, I just find it interesting that most of the guest stars aren't those who are more dramatic actors by nature.
Oh, one more thing, last night's episode also continued in another even longer-standing tradition (which dates back to the original series) of doing "ripped-from-the-headlines" stories for their episodes. This time, of course playing off the recent story of preacher Ted Haggard, who recently admitted to having relations with a gay hooker. What's strange here is that this is the same storyline that the previous episode of L&O playef off. Typically, they don't do that (have both shows use the same "ripped-headline" from which to build the episode's storyline. Oh well.

Finally, the episode also continued in yet another tradition of using religious or spiritual storylines. But that is the subject of another blog entry.

The Colts have beaten the Bears in the Super Bowl, so I must come out and say this, without humility: I correctly predicted this... way back in the pre-season. Yes, no kidding, I predicted the Colts to beat the Bears in the Super Bowl.

Okay, so picking the Colts to win was not exactly a stroke of genius. And the Bears had a very good year last year. But according to Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN (whose column I read religiously), people in the media correctly predicting the Super Bowl winner and loser (or anything in the NFL for that matter) have been few and far between. Check out his column on bad predictions here:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/070213

As for my seemingly amazing prediction, unfortunately I don't have any proof for any doubters out there (what, you won't just take my word for it?)

The only thing I can offer is this. For my day job at Sportsnet.ca, I helped to create division-by-division previews in the pre-season, which also included predictions. My co-worker and I each did predictions (though I only did mine because I didn't realize he had done his, and since he did his first, we went with his). They can be found here:

http://www2.sportsnet.ca/football/nfl/division_previews.php

For the most part, I agreed with his. I think pretty much the only difference was that I had the Bears in the Super Bowl while he had the Panthers (which wasn't a bad prediction at all, I considered them, but I just thought that it was going to be the Bears year this time).

Maybe next time around, we'll have side-by-side predictions with bylines - I wasn't the big "columnist" then that I am now - check out my blog for the site:

http://www2.sportsnet.ca/blogs/NFL_Fours/2007/02/05/super_bowl_wrap/

And yes, I went a little against the tide on Rex Grossman. But he did make a bad throw at a bad time.

By the way, I was also the top prognosticator in the weekly picks (against the spread) section on our website:

http://www2.sportsnet.ca/football/nfl/picks/2006/21

For anyone wondering I wasn't the one who picked the Super Bowl game itself, it was because of a deal with Sudbury Todd that whoever correctly picked the Championship game by the better margin would get to pick the Super Bowl. We were both right (even though more people were picking the Saints and Patriots), but his margin was greater. For the record, I would have picked the Colts to win by 7.

Okay enough self-promotion. Wait, this is my blog. What else should it be for?