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.