February 15, 2004
14.2 Bounty
In this episode (14.2), L&O offers a take on the Jayson Blair scandal: a young black reporter gets in over his head when he starts manufacturing stories for his newspaper. But in the L&O version, the story ends in murder. In fact, this episode takes two recent real-life stories and smashes them together, namely the Blair scandal and the story of Duane Mad Dog Chapman, the bounty hunter who chased down a wealthy fugitive rapist in Mexico.The episode begins with a young couple discovering a murdered bounty hunter in a low-rent hotel. It takes a while to Briscoe and Green to figure it out, but eventually they learn he's a bounty hunter from Philadelphia. Briscoe's humorous insistence that they check out "the manicure angle," since the man had a manicure. A woman at the nail salon remembers him as "Bob" and says he talked about Philadelphia. Once they identify the victim, they begin to construct a motive, and work backwards. They determine that he was on the trail of the fugitive rapist named Mitchell Moss, heir to a bookstore chain. Soon after, the detectives learn that a newspaper reporter had printed an interview with the fugitive. They talk to him, and they say it was just a phone conversation, but they then begin to expect the reporter actually met with the fugitive. Therefore, they are able to charge him for aiding a fugitive, and find out what he learns. But then, McCoy and Southerlyn determine that he didn't actually meet the fugitive: he just made up a story about him. The new theory of the crime goes that the bounty hunter learned of the reporter's fake stories, and went to NYC to blackmail him. The reporter grew angry, and murdered him. They find the reporter's prints in the hotel room, and that's enough to arrest him.
His defense attorney is the quirky, seemingly incompetent, but effective lawyer Randy Dworkin (brilliantly played by Peter Jacobson), who has appeared in a couple of other episodes. Dworkin's irreverent style alienates the judge, but wins over the jury, and he begins to drive McCoy crazy when he introduces an affirmative defense for his client: the reporter felt driven to succeed at any cost because of his race. McCoy objects, but the judge allows it, and Dworkin figures he needs only one juror to identify with his client, and he'll get an acquittal.
ps. This is the 100th episode summary about the original series I've written for this site. Only 220 more to go!
Posted by adm at February 15, 2004 10:58 PM
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