Robert Goren
Robert "Bobby" Goren is a fictional character featured in the NBC-USA Network police procedural and legal drama television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio. Goren is a detective investigator first grade for the Major Case Squad in the New York City Police Department (NYPD). His shield number is 4376. He is partnered with Det. Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe). As created by executive producer René Balcer, Goren is an intense, extremely intelligent, and imposing man, but is also unpredictable and sometimes volatile. He appeared in 141 episodes. Character overview A highly intelligent, emotionally intuitive man, Goren has a talent for forming complex psychological profiles and understanding the "why" of even the most unusual crimes. While intellectually gifted, he has many personal demons, and his eccentricity and unconventional investigative methods sometimes rub his colleagues the wrong way. Goren himself has admitted his investigative style is unusual, stating that "I am an acquired taste". His partner, Alexandra Eames, was at first so puzzled by his methods that she asked for a new partner. She eventually came to respect his abilities, however, and the two became very close. On occasion, she makes 'apologies' to the people they question, as part of their investigations, for his 'style' and manner. In one episode, she notes 'the job' is pretty much all he does. Goren questions his own sanity while in a therapy session [ordered by his superiors]. In the episode Gone (2005), about a child prodigy who later became a famous chess grand-master before going awry and committing murder, he tells the suspect's mother, regarding her explanation of her son's behavior, "That's not eccentricity; it's mental illness", and later tells Eames, upon the suspect's arrest, "See, that's what happens when you keep people from doing what they do best ... It makes them insane." Fictional character biography Personal and family life Robert O. Goren was born on August 20, 1961, and grew up in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, near The Rockaways. A phenomenally bright young man, he took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory in his senior year of high school and was sent to speak with the school counselor and school psychiatrist as a result. He was an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church. Goren's mother Frances (Rita Moreno) first started showing symptoms of schizophrenia when Goren was seven years old. In later years, she is hospitalized at the fictional Carmel Ridge mental health facility. She is then diagnosed with lymphoma which eventually results in her death. Goren is estranged from his older brother, Frank (Tony Goldwyn), a drug addict who also has a gambling problem and is depicted as being sometimes homeless. Frank has a son, Donny, who asks for help when he is incarcerated. To that end, Goren goes undercover in the prison's psychiatric ward and uncovers a culture of prisoner abuse. While he saves his nephew, he is suspended for his unorthodox investigation. When Frank refuses to help him help Donny, Goren disowns him. While high on