Production
"Weeping Willow" was written by René Balcer, Stephanie Sengupta and Warren Leight, who served as the show's executive producer and head writer. The episode was directed by Tom DiCillo, marking his first time as director with the series; he would go on to direct the episodes Players, Offense and Last Rites. The story and the character WeepingWillow17 are modeled after Bree, the protagonist from the lonelygirl15 video blogs on YouTube. Originally believed to be a real-life 15-year-old blogger, Bree was eventually discovered to be a hoax. She was in fact a fictional character played by actress Jessica Lee Rose and created by filmmakers Mesh Flinders and Miles Beckett.
"Weeping Willow" analyzes the concept of 15 minutes of fame during the Information Age from the perspective of the Internet celebrity, one who gains fame through the creation of or participation in a popular website. Leight said of the episode, "Forget about 15 minutes of fame: there are hundreds of people who get their 15 inches of bandwidth, people making names for themselves on YouTube and others. ... This blogging phenomenon has created a certain kind of 'cyberfame,' people who don't have to do anything more than put themselves on the Web and catch a cyberwave. We now have a spate of very strange celebrities." Leight said the episode also focuses on the extent to which one will go to achieve such fame. While the Law & Order shows routinely draw on inspiration from real-life events in an approach the creators call "ripped from the headlines", Criminal Intent producers referred to this episode as "'pre-ripping' from the headlines", because the script usually took a real-life event (as the lonelygirl15 phenomenon) and added to it a fictional dramatic conflict (the kidnapping).
The so-called "cyber-kidnapping" portrayed in "Weeping Willow" is believed to be the first such crime ever portrayed on television. While the writers and producers prepared the episode, several district attorneys they consulted said the law was dangerously vague regarding what charges could be filed in the event of such a real-life cyber-kidnapping; Wright said, "They told me that this is a real problem, that there's a lag between what's on the books now and what's happening out there." The script also includes a difficulty on the part of the detectives in coping and dealing this new form of cyber-crime and differentiating the truth from the hoax; Leight said, "Their biggest frustration is trying to understand what's real and what isn't. Does this woman, Willow, really exist, and has something happened to her? Is she playing a character and a game that's gotten out of hand? And how do you locate someone in cyberspace?"
Julianne Nicholson, who plays Det. Megan Wheeler, said "Weeping Willow" was her favorite Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode. She described it as "really different from a lot of the ones we've done before and very exciting and current." Nicholson also said she enjoyed working with Michelle Trachtenberg and the other supporting actors, as well as director DiCillo, who also directed Living in Oblivion, one of Nicholson's favorite movies.
During one of the kidnappers' videos featured in the episode, a banner is visible advertising the website FreeWillow17.com. The producers of the show set up a real-life website with that domain, containing eight video blogs starring Trachtenberg and the other cast members. The videos were created from video content filmed for the "Weeping Willow" episode, most of which was ultimately not used in the episode. The producers originally also established a mirror site, WeepingWillow17.com, but it is no longer active.
Read more about this topic: Weeping Willow (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)
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