"Neighborhood Watch" is most notable for being the penultimate Logan episode for 'Criminal Intent', before Jeff Goldblum's Zack Nichols took over. This fact made me quite sad, being someone who likes Logan as a character and he did have a good number of good and more episodes during his three season run on the show. As well as some not so good ones where he was nearly always a redeeming merit but deserved better.
Luckily, "Neighborhood Watch" is a more than worthy penultimate episode that shows very well why Logan was a great character. Actually thought that most of "Neighborhood Watch" was great and was this close from being all round great from start to finish, until it fell apart at the end. Which was so frustrating, because it is one of the better episodes of a rocky season in my view and was so close to being one of Logan's finest episodes and just missed out on there.
A huge amount is done well. It's well made, intimately photographed and slick with no signs of under-budget or anything. The music didn't sound melodramatic or too constant and the direction is accomodating while still having pulse. Chris Noth is as gritty and dry humorous as to be expected. Julianne Nicholson is a suitably understated but never dull partner and they interact very nicely in a different to Goren and Eames but working in its own way. The supporting cast don't disappoint either.
The script is lean and intelligently written, provoking thought and pulling no punches while having personality and not being over-serious. The story, starting from one of the latter seasons' most ominous openings, is full of tension, few other episodes this season were this suspenseful, and the twists and turns are many and most going in direction one doesn't expect. The suspects are also a good number and with clear motivations and the motive for the perpetrator's work could have been anything.
It is unfortunate that the ending does not live up at all to the rest of the episode. After such unpredictability and tension beforehand, the truth is executed incredibly predictably and the reveal is not a big, shocking one or twisty. It just felt abrupt and the motive was so "they killed for that?"
Very good episode overall and nearly great until the end. 8/10.