The Ledger

1.7 By Hooker, By Crook

In this early episode (1.7), a guy turns up dead, apparently by the hands of the prostitute. Greevey and Logan investigate while Stone and Robinette present their prosecution in a series of unusual courtroom scenes.

The episode begins with some cops riding on horseback through Central Park. A woman's dog finds a badly injured man. He's taken to the hospital, where Greevey and Logan begin their investigation. They talk to some callous nurses, who have set up a pool on the likelihood of the victim's death. They learn that the victim suffered a blow to the head and had a heart attack. Strangely, his underwear was found to be on backwards.

The victim is identified as Irv Diamond. His glass eye and wallet were found. Irv has a reputation for flirting with the ladies. They track his movements to a local bar, where they find more ladies he flirted with and learned he was pretty drunk the night he got attacked.

The detectives then trace his steps to a hotel, where it appears he got hooked up with a lady from an escort service. An old bellhop gives them the lowdown. We learn that he ordered room service and that the girl with him was blonde.

The detectives further learn that the escort service also did business as "Poppy Catering." To find the escort who was with Irv, Greevey goes undercover at the hotel and calls the escort service, requesting a girl who matches Irv's dates descriptin. She shows up, but is convinced Greevey is a cop, based on his shoes. Greevey denies this, talks to her about an arrangement, and arrests her. When she says that he's not supposed to lie because he's a cop, he says, "I'm a cop. They pay me to lie."

After they take her into custody, Logan informs everyone that Diamond has died of his injuries. Jolene, the prostitute, admits during interrogation, she was with him. (During this sequence, there is a very unusual wide-angle shot of the detectives peering at Jolene -- the show was still finding its visual style during this episode.) Jolene says he was alive when she left, and says her driver was the last person to see Irv.

They talk to the driver, Cookie Molina, who says Jolene's boss, a madame, told him that because Irv had had a heart attack, he needed to be dealt with. Cookie's idea of dealing with it was to take a baseball bat to Irv's head and dispose of his nearly-lifeless body in the park.

They track down the madame, who goes by the name of Jasmine, at a bordello. It seems unlikely that there are lounge-like whorehouses around Manhattan where women are hanging out in lingerie waiting for johns to show up, but whatever. They arrest Jasmine (27 mins). They learn that Jasmine has lawyered up with a guy named Allclair, who is a high-priced lawyer unlikely to associate with comparative riff-raff like Jasmine. They wonder what's going on. They learn that the woman behind the entire "Poppy Catering" escort service is a high society matron named Livia Winthrop, whose family can be traced back to colonial America.

Anyway, she's arraigned at night court in a raucous scene where a street walker is in the background yelling at her pimp Andrew. The scene is apparently intended for comic effect, but it feels very stereotyped and out of place, especially against the rest of the episode and certainly the rest of the series. In any case, Cookie makes a (rather improbable) deal to roll on Jasmine and Mrs Winthrop, and walks, free of charges. The detectives get their hands on the service's "trick book" which reads like the social register.

But not everyone is happy with how well the investigation is going: an aide to the mayor (played by Courtney Vance) comes in to talk to Stone and wants him to back off the case: some very powerful toes are getting stepped on. Stone, as is typical, refuses, and he charges Winthrop with 2nd degree murder, getting right in the face of the defendant's attorney as he tells him this.

Well, the episode then gets a taste of early 90s "awareness" television when Robinette reveals that the escort, Jolene is HIV-positive. Unfortunately for her, Jolene doesn't know it yet, and Stone and Robinette have to go out to her house -- where she all of a sudden looks like a soccer mom -- and tell her. The whole time they're talking to her, she's gesturing with a kitchen knife, and you get the impression she's going to kill herself with it at any moment.

Winthrop's trial (44 mins) is a disorganized affair -- it takes place on a darkly lit, early set (not the clear, wide-open set we're used to from later eps) and people -- including the jurors -- are laughing and calling out throughout the proceedings. Cookie testifies he overheard Winthrop say a 2-hour session with Jolene would kill the victim, and the defense counsel actually says of Cookie, "This man is despicable." (It's hard to imagine this kind of foolish dialogue in later episodes of the series.) Schiff shows up (52 mins) and tells Stone to make a deal. Shortly thereafter, we learn that Jolene had sex with 800-1000 men in the time she's been a prostitute, and had only had sex with 3 men prior to that. Despite all this interesting information, it becomes clear that from a dramatic point of view, this episode and the case have lost their direction. People just keep talking and saying provocative things, but it doesn't really add up to a plot or a drama. Nonetheless, after revealing that Winthrop made $1.6M a year from her operation, he makes a deal with her for involuntary manslaughter. She gets 2.5 years.

The episode is notable because it seems so primitive by the standards of later episodes. The sets are darkly lit, there's lots of extraneous and silly dialogue, and the dramatic tension is dissipated over the course of the hour. It's also notable because of Courtney Vance's appearance as the mayor's aide. Years later, he would go on to star on L&O: Criminal Intent as Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver. The episode seems very loosely modeled on the case of the Mayflower Madam, the NYC society dame who was linked to a prostitution ring in 1970s and 1980s.

The episode's title is a play on the phrase "By hook or by crook."

Posted by adm at May 27, 2004 07:50 PM

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