WeepingWillow17

Enthusiastic girl blogger and disinterested boy... sound familiar?

WeepingWillow17 or Lisa Willow Tyler was a character on an episode of the NBC series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, modeled after lonelygirl15 and portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg. (The name "Willow" was perhaps a reference to a main character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which Trachtenberg had a major role.) The episode, (the 10th episode of Criminal Intent's 6th season) entitled "Weeping Willow", aired on Nov. 28th, 2006.

Episodes of Law & Order are frequently "ripped from the headlines." WeepingWillow17 is a popular, but anonymous video blogger on a site called YouLenz, an obvious reference to lonelygirl15 on YouTube. She makes posts about her life and her relationship with her Danielesque boyfriend Holden, who is not interested in her new vlogging habit. In one "webisode," she briefly holds a stuffed monkey up to the camera.

While filming one of her vlogs, a masked-man bursts into her apartment and captures Willow and Holden. Like the sleuthers who hunted for Bree, the detectives in Law & Order aren't sure if the kidnapping is real, or a ratings stunt for a fictionalized blog. To promote the episode, NBC actually registered the Web sites weepingwillow17.com and freewillow17.com which contain the collection of Willow's videos.

The episode aired the same night as Bree's chat. Some fans speculated that the Creators scheduled the chat for the same night as the episode because they didn't want fans to watch. At one point in the episode, a film-director harshly criticizes an aspiring film-maker named "Miles," which fueled speculation that the writers of Law & Order were taking a shot at Miles Beckett, or the Creators in general.

External links

• freewillow17.com
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Wikipedia
• Michelle Trachtenberg on IMDB.com
• Clip criticizing "Miles"