The Ledger

The Blue Wall

In this early episode (1.22), the finale of season 1, Capt. Cragen is being investigated by Internal Affairs for his role in a corruption ring that involved erasing some computer evidence against money-laundering bankers. Instead of featuring a body discovery, the teaser shows Stone and Robinette in court as they lose their case against the bankers. It turns out that the erased data was to blame, and that someone in the department erased it. Most of the episode deals with Logan and Greevey's efforts to find out exactly what happened and what, if any, role Cragen had in it. The rest of the episode is about Cragen's loyalty to the chief of police, who has been Cragen's "rabbi" in the department for years, but who seems to be involved in the corruption ring. Eventually, Cragen has to make some very difficult decisions about how far his loyalty will take him, especially since it looks like he's going to go down with the ship if the chief is indicted.

The episode is notable for its unconventional structure and its focus on Cragen, who usually doesn't have much to do on the show. The structure obviously is built around solving the mystery of the missing evidence, not finding a murderer. Cragen's motivation and character get a lot of attention, but I'm sad to say that I still find Cragen to be a weak and not always interesting character. I don't know if that's because of Florek's portrayal of him, or just the way he's written, but there's something about him that just isn't very satisfying...which leads me to my next point. I know this is a little heretical, but I'm not really wild about S. Epatha Merkerson's character, Lt. Van Buren, either. It's the nature of the role that it is secondary to the detectives, so maybe Florek and Merkerson are somewhat bound by it, so they don't have room to expand into the role, but sometimes their roles seemed tacked on an unessential. But, of course, they do move the plot along, and on L&O, plot is king.

The episode also gives a lot of attention to Max Greevey, who used to be Cragen's partner. It's a good script for Greevey (which is somewhat rare), and Dzundza makes the most of it. Although he's extremely loyal to Cragen, he shows none of his former partner's reluctance when it comes to going after dirty cops. A dirty cop is a dirty cop, Greevey seems to say, regardless of how much you liked him.

Posted by adm at January 3, 2004 05:18 AM

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