January 01, 2004
Foul Play
This episode (12.21) is L&O's take on Danny Almonte, the preternaturally talented Bronx little leaguer who used a false birth certificate so he could play baseball even though he was actually too old for the league. In both the real life and L&O's version, a private detective is hired by a competing team to determine whether the boy was older than he claimed. But in the L&O version, the president of the boy's little league encourages the father to go after the PI, and so McCoy puts the president on trial for second degree murder. This doesn't seem particularly realistic: the boy's father gets off even though he was the one who pulled the trigger.
The episode is not particularly engaging, and since the legal plot is predictable but far-fetched, it's one of the weaker episodes. It's another Richard Sweren episode, who is becoming my least favorite writer for the show.
Posted by adm at January 1, 2004 10:08 PM