Tom Berenger guest stars in this episode (10.13) about a married couple (both of whom are FBI agents) and their involvement with a mystery writer named P.K. Todd. As Todd is walking away from a restaurant, shots ring out: she is hit, and her male companion is killed. Briscoe and Green first try to figure out who the target is. They can't find anyone who would want the man (an accountant) dead, despite finding some people who don't like him very much. Then, clues indicate that Todd was the target, so they focus their investigation on her acquiantances, and even begin to believe that she arranged the shooting herself to create publicity that would boost her sagging book sales. Eventually, however, they focus on the female FBI agent, who owns the gun used in the shooting, and who may have believed Todd was having an affair with her husband. Then, of course, comes the twist: Todd was having an affair, but with the wife, not the husband. So then the investigation turns to the husband, who can't really account for his whereabouts and who had installed a tap on his own phone line. He goes on trial, admitting he did it, but offering an unusual affirmative defense: "gay panic." According to this method of defense, when a person is confronted with a homosexual situation he finds deeply disturbing, he acts irrationally and may strike out aggressively. McCoy says this method of defense is "blame-the-victim all over again," but the judge allows it, pending review after the trial. Eventually, after McCoy renews his objection during trial, the judge invalidates the gay panic defense, and it looks like the man is headed for conviction...until an unnecessary and superfluous plot twist comes along and establishes another character as the killer. I saw it coming, but was hoping it wouldn't, because it feels really tacked on and ruins the otherwise smart atmosphere of the episode.
The teaser is notable because we actually see the crime occur. A man is taking his very pregnant wife to the hospital and hails a cab. Just as they get in, you hear the shots, and the accountant stumbles into the frame. The author is a few feet away, bleeding.
It took me a while to realize this while watching the show, but the episisode is a retelling of the Patricia Cornwell situation. She had a lesbian affair with a female FBI agent a few years ago, and the agent's husband, also an agent, tried to kill his wife in revenge. Also, the "gay panic" defense is borrowed from the Matthew Shepherd case.
Anyway, here's FindLaw.com's synopsis of this episode. I didn't know they did reviews of L&O.
In this episode (11.20), a young man is found shot to death outside a school. At first, the leads point to the involvement of some low grade drug dealers, but using a key found on the victim's body, Briscoe and Green eventually discover he is the outcast son of a Donald Trump-type real estate developer, and the father/son relationship is quite complicated. Detectives think a young woman from Brooklyn, who was seen with the victim in the days and hours before the shooting might be involved, too. They discover the victim and the girl visited an ob/gyn together, so they assume the young couple was expecting a baby. When they finally track down the girl (via doctor's building's sign-in sheet), they bring her into the precinct where, under duress, she reveals the twist: she and the victim were siblings, not lovers! She says the victim's father had an affair with her mom years ago, but never took a paternity test. She and the vic had visited the doctor to perform "a kinship analysis" test to determine whether they shared a parent. Supported by the belief that the victim's father was her own father, she attempted to extort him, but without much luck. Because of the victim's hatred for his father, she was able to get him involved in the extortion scheme, a plot (we eventually learn) that culminated in a meeting in the schoolyard the night of the shooting. The girl claims she lost her nerve and left, leaving only the father and the son to hash things out. The father then becomes the prime suspect, and after a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence for a trial, the father eventually reveals to McCoy and Carmichael the full version of events.
There are a couple of interesting moments in the episode. One comes early on when the father is explaining to Briscoe and Green why they had to cut themselves loose from their destructive son. The father says to them, "I don't know if you've ever had to let a child make decisions that you knew were destructive for them..." and a quick, silent reaction from Briscoe immediately reminds us of his daughter who died at the hands of drug dealers. The moment is perfectly played by Orbach, who doesn't get enough chances on the show to show depth like that. Another interesting bit: a couple of times in the episode, when McCoy and Carmichael are back at the office discussing the case, McCoy is shown tinkering with that old tarnished desk lamp he has. He's got the thing in pieces and is trying to get it back in order. He fails, and there's a bit of physical comedy when he reacts to its unpredictability.
The episode's teaser depicts a father and his young son walking to school, gently debating why the son can't ride the subway to school. The discussion foreshadows the theme of father and son relationships, and also the yearning of a child for independence. The father tells his son about a girl he knows who gets walked to school, which raises the parallel between the boy and girl in the teaser and the boy and girl in the main storyline of the episode.
Entertaining, straight-forward episode (3.7) in which Adam Arkin stars as George Costas, a jewelry store owner who claims self-defense after shooting two young black men who attempt to hold him up. As Cerreta and Logan investigate, they conclude that Costas fired at the men while they were trapped in a metal security cage between the door and the interior of the store. In other words, although they were armed, they were sitting ducks. The man's claim of self-defense is further called into question when the detectives conclude that after the robbers fled, Costas reloaded and chased after them, killing one of them at close range as he tried to seek cover in his car. While Cerreta is convinced the man was doing what any concerned citizen should do, Logan and Stone are sure he exceeded the definition of "self-defense," if not at first then certainly once he chased the men out of his store, firing.
Schiff seems reluctant to pursue the case, also, and he has a great scene with Stone in which he tells him in a direct manner to drop most of the charges and make a deal. When Stone says he thinks they can win, Schiff asks, "Is that a refusal?" Stone hesitates for a second and says, "Your call." Cut to the courtroom.
The internal disagreement over the charges gets further exacerbated when the defense attorney (played by familiar character actor Ron Rifkin, now on Alias) calls Cerreta as an expert witness on shootings. We are told Cerreta is an expert because he has testified many times before on police-involved shootings. In a move that hurts Stone's case, he testifies that he feels that at least part of the shooting was in fact in self-defense.
The crime is also notable in this episode because it is clearly caught on videotape, a development that occurs surprisingly rarely in the series. It's quite dramatic videotape, too, all captured by the security camera and showing Costas having a relatively extended shootout with the suspects and then chasing after them. References are made to how the videotape is being played over and over again on the news, and ironically, the episode begins to play it over and over, too, making you feel like the people watching it on the local news.
The episode calls to mind the Bernard Goetz incident, and the characters mention it explicitly. There is a lot of civilian-vs.-police tension in the episode ("You're upset because someone did your job for you.") and a lot of racial tension, with lots of implied racisim, including a great exchange between Robinette and an associate of the defendant who says, "You don't understand these people," and Robinette steps closer to him and asks pointedly, "Which people are those?" As is usual for this show, the themes are dealt with in a sophisticated and subtle manner.
Finally, the teaser is a little unusual: it involves an NYPD tow truck driver talking on his radio while driving down the street in search of vehicles to tow. He is talking rapidly to another driver about football and women, I think, and then he pulls over to tow a Ford, which contains the body of one of the robbers.
My friend Matt sends in this report of a close encounter with Elisabeth Rohm, "Serena Southerlyn" on the original series:
A couple friday nights ago I was walking home from work to my apartment on 14th
St between 2nd and third. As I approached the corner of 14th and 2nd, I saw a
bunch of trailers. Assuming this was a movie that was going to shoot all
night, I approached a teamsters looking gentleman and asked when they would
start shooting. He informed me that they were with Law and Order and only had
another two scenes to shoot. So, I kept going towards my apartment. When I
got to the door of my building, I saw a door open on the trailer closest to me.
I immediately recognized the DA woman with long blonde hair. Being interested
in talking to her as well as finding out which episode they were filming, I
said, "Hey, which episode are you filming?" She looked around her as if I was
talking to someone behind her. Once it became apparent that I was indeed
talking to her, she smiled and said something I could not hear. So, I took a
few steps towards her to hear better. I expected that she would take a few
steps backwards in order to keep the distance between us constant. Instead,
she took a few steps towrds me and our lips were just yards apart. I then
asked, "When is this coming out?" She replied, "In three months." Not wanting
to scare her, or worse end up cheating on my girlfriend because I would not be
able to resist her advances, I said, "Thank you," and turned to unlock my door.
She began to walk down the street toward 2nd ave, blonde hair swishing in the
breeze.
It turns out that the the software manager had stolen Jackson's identity, mortgaged his house, laundered the proceeds, and lived off the cash. When McCoy tries to bring charges, his lawyer insists he's not competent to stand trial, so guess who McCoy brings in to establish competency. That's right! Good ole Elizabeth Olivet. Eventually, Jackson admits that he discovered Hitchens was the one who ripped him off, tracked him down, and shot him with a gun he recovered from the Nazis in World War II.
The episode partakes in the paranoia about technology and the Internet that the series has evoked almost since the Internet was first popularized. In my opinion, the technophobia has gotten old, but the L&O writers haven't tired of milking it yet. According to Jackson, all his problems began when his son gave him a computer and he signed up for some sweepstakes using identifying information. Myra, the red-haired girl who has become the forensic computer technician makes another annoying appearance in this episode, mystifying everyone with her ability to recover lost data with a suspicious simplicity.
Cast-wise, there's great stuff in this ep: Jackson is played by old-timer Paul Benjamin, and his first lawyer is played with great dignity by the familiar character actor Roscoe Lee Brown who has been appearing on television since the 1960s. The episode also marks the return, after 10 years, of Lorraine Toussaint as defense attorney Shambala Green.
The episode's title refers not only to the identity theft, but also on the defendant's insistence that he is not crazy or incompetent, and that he wanted to do something to show that he mattered in the world. The teaser involves the victim's young daughter telling her younger brother that she doesn't want anyone to know they're related. This attitude is reflected by Jackson's son towards Jackson himself.
In this episode (10.4), a 15-year-old girl, the daughter of extremely wealthy parents, turns up beaten to death outside her home. The episode is replete with twists and turns, as it seems everyone involved had a motive to kill her. At first it appears that two sons of a neighboring wealthy family, the Vances, are responsible. Both brothers had sex with her, but they murder charges against them are not pursued. Since the older brother was engaged to the victim's older sister, the older sister then becomes a suspect. Because she's on more than a dozen psychotropic medications, the older sister, Mercedes, can't seem to remember whether she had a role in her sister's death or not. The actress who plays Mercedes turns in a very good performance, capturing the haze of the overly medicated while still projecting emotion at the right times. Eventually, a maid exonerates Mercedes as well, and is so doing points the finger at the victim's parents, who have a reason of their own for wanting to kill their daughter. The specifics of that reason are pretty shocking and come very late in the episode, so I won't reveal them here. Nonetheless, the parents' general interest in seeing their daughter dead is that some facts about their daughters might interfer with the marriage between Mercedes and the older Vance boy, and there is more at stake in that marriage than just love: the Vances and the victim's father were on the verge of a major business deal that neither man wanted to see fall apart. Hence, the title of the episode.
One funny thing that happens in the episode is that Green calls Briscoe "Old Spice" again, the nickname he came up with in his first appearance on L&O, and a nickname Briscoe has previously said he doesn't like.
After many twists and turns, investigators learn that the infant was (a) actually 2.5 years old and malnourished and (b) dead before the 7-year-old attacked him. McCoy and especially Carmichael trace the history of the infant back to a lawyer who appears to have illegally gotten the child from Russia. The lawyer and a Russian intermediary are arrested for Murder 2, showing depraved indifference toward the baby's medical conditions.
This is the first appearance of Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon). She pursues her case doggedly ("No deals for anybody...Let's hang 'em all."), issuing arrest warrants with the slightest provocation, and bending some truths to help Briscoe and Curtis get the evidence they need. Before Carmichael and McCoy actually meet, McCoy tells Schiff he doesn't like her style. She's too independent and takes risks, he says. But these qualities are shared by McCoy himself. When they meet, they have a testy first encounter, as McCoy lambastes her for her style and a screw-up, but she fires back and mentions McCoy's run-in with the disciplinary committee, an attack she almost immediately apologizes for. Also interesting is that Carmichael takes the lead role in the prosecution of defendants instead of McCoy. Another backstory plot development gets brought up here again: Van Buren's lawsuit against the department for skipping over her for a promotion. She says her captain has been chilly towards her since her lawyer deposed him.
These dead baby episodes are hard to watch and always disturbing. This is the third one TNT has aired in the last week or so, the others being Mother's Milk and Cradle to Grave. I understand why they have all these episodes, they tend to go long in the last half, with lots of draw-out testimony about the inhumanity of it all. Generally speaking, I'd much rather watch an episode about a dead businessman or college student than a malnourished infant.
Here are screen captures of the first two shots of Abbie. Her first line is, "Your honor, I've booked time with the grand jury. I'm looking to charge the Warings with obstruction."
In this episode (3.3), a young, intelligent Mexican immigrant college student is investigated for the killing of his wealthy white girlfriend. Logan initially believes the girl's abusive father is to blame, but Cerreta has his eye on the boyfriend the entire time. Cerreta's instincts prove to be more accurate, however, and a search of the boy's apartment turns up materials used in the murder. Before the detectives can arrest him, he shows up at the police station with his priest, to whom he has previously confessed.
The remainder of the episode hinges on whether the crime is Murder 2 or Manslaughter 1. Stone argues there was intent, but it's hard to come by evidence of this. Meanwhile, the defense argues mental defect, but that doesn't go over very well either.
Overall, this is a straighforward episode with an eerie performance by Luis Antonio Ramos as the defendant. The title refers to the confession and to the boy's apparent need to be forgiven by everyone, including the jury and himself.
In this episode (10.11), a young emotionally disturbed woman is heard being attacked in Riverside Park and then goes missing. Briscoe and Green eventually identify her and try to track her down. They find her body in a storage trailer on the waterfront, and identify her killer as another emotionally disturbed man she was involved with. However, things are not always what they seem, and Sokda discovers the suspect may not have precisely the mental deficiency he appears to. Additionally, McCoy and Carmichael discover that the facts of the case may not be what they had believed, either.
The episode is notable because it involves one EDP attacking another, and because of the subtle emotional performance of Tovah Feldshuh as the suspect's defense attorney, Danielle Melnick, a character who has appeared many times in the series. Melnick is convinced that McCoy is seeking an unjust punishment for her client, and she is especially upset when McCoy attempts to win a court order demanding the man be forcibly medicated after he hordes his medication and falls into a catatonic state.
The teaser of the episode involves a married couple in their apartment building who hears the argument in the park. Before they hear the argument, the couple is discussing planned visit by the husband's mother. The discussion picks up on the theme of parenthood and family that is prominent in the rest of the episode, especially since the parents of both the victim and the suspects have important roles in the story.
The title apparently refers to the unhappy collision of these two EDPs and the unfortunate consequences of that collision.
In this episode (11.18), the wife of the US Army major in charge of drug interdiction in Colombia is investigated for smuggling cocaine into the US on military aircraft. The smuggling operation leads to a double murder, and Briscoe and Green try to uncover her connection to the deaths.
The episode is one of several over the years that have depicted the testy relationship between the New York City investigators and the US Armed Forces (cf. Conduct Unbecoming, which reimagines the Tailhook episode), but unlike many similar episodes, this one doesn't deal explicitly with the Army brass meddling in the investigation.
The episode is also notable for the almost non-existent participation of the murderer himself. He barely says a word the whole episode, and spends most of his time glowering at the major's wife (his chief accuser) during the trial. On the whole, the episode is fairly straight-forward and entertaining. Plus, there's lots of footage of helicopters landing and taking off at the East River helipad.
More notes if you keep reading.
Truck driver. Doorman. Ms Alvarez -- dead in her nice apartment. A guy too.
His ear has been cut off.
Briscoe, Green, McCoy, Carmichael, Lewin
--
Doorman says he saw a guy going in. Saw a kid in the lobby.
Bag in the apartment. Cocain residue in it.
Looks like a coke deal. Kid involved?
LUDs -> teresa martinez, sister in law -> girlfriend of tito (the kid) -> tito. Drug picked up at heliport.
Heliport: worker saw him with blonde woman. helicopter came from air force base.
wife of army official. named karent. came in from colombia.
karen wyman: talks to green. hubby is a major in the army, heads up drug war in colombia.
wyman at precinct: defenseive of wife. avb tells men to 'carry on"
talk to other army wife: karen didn't fit in. expensive clothes.
karen's ex-clubbing friend, brandi: settled down, reformed now.
go to hotel. arrest karent at funeral for family member (19'). charged with conspiracy and possession.
McC and AC meet with karen and the major.
karen admits she carried drugs for -- get this -- fernando the gardener at a fee of $10K per trip.
mccoy goes to colombian consulate. wants to extradite fernando.
feernando arrives, confesses to akren's involvement. is scared. he says he arranged many deliveries. he gets 1 yr for each of 6 trips.
karen still not taking charges seriously. says s aguy threatened her at hotel. have her telno. showed her the ear.
bait plan: get karen to call guy, arrange "delivery" at heliport, arrest guy. mccoy says he'll give her probation but she must testify.
they plan the operation.
at the heliport: briscoe is undercover. green undercover. dealer shows up. she arrives by helicopter. they make a deal. he's busted (39')
dealer is named Pena.
at trial (pena for murder) (40'):
the doorman changes his testimony...is afraid.
5 minute recess: he says he's afraid. other eye witnesses back out too.
karen wyman testifies and is nervous. lewin suggests a deal, in her typical spineless way.
karen escapes the police detail that is guarding her. she finally calls her furious husband on his cell.
they meet karen in a diner. she almost killed herself.
back at trail, she is cross examined, but is stronger willed, even confronts pena, who is scary.
verdcit comes back: guilty on two counts of Murder 1.
pena had 1 line of dialog in the episode.
Patient Zero? More like zero patience. This is a tedious, annoying episode.
Tiresome episode (14.3) in which SARS blah blah blah infects blah blah blah researcher blah blah blah mistress blah blah blah.
I guess I'll write a more detailed summary later, when I can stand to watch it again.
Racism is a major theme in the episode, even before it's clear that the shooting was racially motivated. While attempting to track down the suspect, Briscoe and Green are accompanied by some members of the victim's squad, who are overly energetic as they storm a predominantly African-American bar (in a scene very reminiscent of one in The French Connection. One of the detectives yells something like, "If you [something something], I'm going to kick your black ass." He does this in front of Green, who rightly confronts him immediately and in the aftermath. The two detectives nearly come to blows over the incident, until Van Buren shows up and settles things down.
Green's racial identity continues to be an issue as the suspect is identified. Many people around the suspect seem to feel that Green is a sell-out for going after the former Panther, but it is Green who is able to enter a mosque where Miller is hiding out, and earn sufficient respect their to walk Miller out without an ESU team or any violence or fanfare.
Law & Order has a tendency to deal with racial issues in a relatively sophisticated way, and this episode is no exception. The scripts are often very good at painting a complete, but complex, picture of race relations and motivations in this city. McCoy and Miller go round-for-round, trying to get each other to acknowledge the other's point of view, but both are unsuccessful.
A couple of casting notes: Al Sapienza, best known as Mikey Palmieri on a couple of seasons of the Sopranos, plays the detective who causes the commotion in the bar and argues with Green. Joe Morton, the talented character actor who has been in several episodes of Law & Order and Homicide, is Miller's defense attorney. Morton plays the leader of an African-American advocacy group in the episode "Conspiracy" and reprises his role as the lawyer Leon Chiles in "Vaya Con Dios," one of the best episodes in the history of the show. Clarence Williams III, best known for his role on the Mod Squad, plays Miller, in an almost-extraordinary performance.
The episode's title refers to a rallying cry of the Black Panthers during the civil rights movement.
Disturbing episode (10.12) in which McCoy and Carmichael attempt to assign blame for an infant's death. Carmichael eventually takes the lead chair in the trial of the baby's mother, who essentially starved the baby to death by refusing to breastfeed it or give it formula. The young mother claimed the hospital's lactation counselor intimidated her into using breast milk or nothing, but Carmichael badgers her until she nearly admits she wanted to the baby dead because she couldn't deal with the responsibility.
Briscoe and Green spend the first half of the episode trying to find the baby and the mother, eventually discovering the mother living with a guy from the local coffee shop and the baby buried in her in-laws' backyard. In a nice, but grisly, stylistic touch, the baby is discovered in a canvas bag indentical to one used to identify a location (a lumber company) earlier in the episode.
Apart from Carmichael's taking the lead in the prosecution (McCoy doesn't even show up in court), and the episode's emotionally disturbing plot, there isn't much notable about the episode.
In this episode (2.16), Logan and Cerreta track down a serial rapist/murderer who strangles a woman and leaves her on top of an elevator. Old fashioned police work leads to the discovery that the women's ob/gyn's gynecologists each used the same bookkeeper. This bookkeeper has served prison time for a previous murder. He becomes suspect #1, and Logan and Cerreta lean on him hard -- for 12 hours -- until he reveals the location of a storage facility. A search of the facility yields Polaroids of his victims. Unfortunately, a judge determines that the interrogation lasted too long, and all the fruit of that poisonous tree must be thrown out. That makes convicting him extremelely difficult, but Stone is determined.
Robinette is not so sure, however, especially after the Connecticut DA's office steps in and tries to take over the case, on the premise that the victim was "lured" from CT to NYC on false pretenses, which makes it a kidnapping in Connecticut. Stone rejects this argument, and a judge reluctantly agrees with him. So the burden falls on Stone to prove the man's guilt, but Robinette argues the man has a better chance of being convicted and -- importantly -- executed in CT. Stone and Robinette have a really great conversation about the nature of justice, punishment, and the law. Stone argues steadfastly that justice must be found through the proper application of the law, but Robinette argues for a more instinctive sense of justice. The discussion is one of the most well-thought-out debates on the topic I've seen. It also serves to highlight and important difference between Stone and his successor, Jack McCoy, who as I've said before, is far more willing to bend the law a little bit to exact a justice based on instinct rather than law. In his position, Stone is similar to Atticus Finch, the lawyer from To Kill a Mockingbird, who will seek justice through only the law. Although I think McCoy has a lot of Atticus in him, in some ways, Stone's single-minded devotion to the law makes him more Finchian.
The title of the episode refers to the desire of the victim's family to find vengeance against their daughter's killer, and it calls to mind the differences between justice and vengeance.
In this episode (9.21), a man who installs stereo equipment in clubs is found murdered in his van near the Hudson River. It turns out he has tenuous connections to both the mob and the FBI which come back to haunt him. Sean Russo, a jailed crime boss's young son who is looking to step into his father's shoes is the lead suspect in the case, especially after it's revealed the victim was planning to tell his friends in the FBI about connections between the mob and a strip club that owed him money. Eventually, McCoy convinces the club owners to testify against Russo guaranteeing them time in a secure facility and witness protection for their family. However, when a federal prosecutor initiates a racketeering case against Russo and his associates.
The prosecutor deliberately ignores McCoy's deal with the club owners and, after Russo rolls on other members of the crime family, indicts them, too. They please with McCoy to help them, but his hands are tied.
The federal prosecutor on the case is the same one from an episode called DWB, which involves the dragging death (by police officers) of a black man. (The actor who plays the prosecutor has been on L&O a bunch of times, usually playing different characters.) Apparently, McCoy did something in that case to anger the prosecutor, who wanted to take over the case on civil rights grounds. In this episode, however, the prosecutor gets his revenge, and has McCoy over a barrell, and relishes it. McCoy even follows the prosecutor into a courthouse men's room at one point to berate him, but the prosecutor is unmoved. McCoy realizes he's beaten, and for once, he's out of last-minute tricks to save the day. Even Schiff appears to have sold him out earlier in the episode, encouraging him to turn the case over the feds, and then doing it himself when McCoy refuses.
The episode is notable mainly because of two cast members, both of whom play the strip club owners: Joe Piscopo, who needs no introduction, and Mark Linn Baker [screen shot], best known as Larry on Perfect Strangers. His acting style in this episode is extremely mannered: he's playing someone who at every moment seems about to have a nervous breakdown. In a way, his character anticipates his next appearance on a Law & Order show: he recently appeared on Criminal Intent as "Wally Stevens," the actuary with Asperger's Syndrome who was at the center of an intricate scheme and who gave Goren a run for his money. Linn Baker's performance in that episode is one of the best in CI's history, and it was funny to see him next to D'Onofrio, who's performance on the show is similarly idiosyncratic.
The episode's teaser involves a young couple on their way to the courthouse to be married. Just before the discovery of the body, the bride-to-be says to no one in particular, "I'm about to marry a family of morons!" This mirrors the theme of family in the episode, and foreshadows a comment later in the ep in which Curtis says of young Russo, "If that's the future of the mob, we have nothing to worry about," indicating that Russo is not particularly bright.
The title of the episode, "Ambitious," refers to the ambition of the young Russo, the strip club owners' American Dream, the career ambition of the federal prosecutor, and possibly McCoy's own ambition which blinded him to the play being made by his federal counterpart.
In this episode (10.23), a wealthy woman falls into a coma after her second husband injects her with insulin. The episode is pretty boring until 23 minutes in, when it is revealed that ... get ready for this ... the wife consented to be injected as part of a sex game, whereby she would be in a near coma state while he had his way with her. Because she's in the coma, the husband gets power of attorney over her assets. McCoy is worried that the defendant's wealth will make it difficult to convict him, so they encourage his stepdaughter to seek power of attorney. She does, and she gets it, but then McCoy and Carmichael quickly learn that the daughter had motives of her own for wanting to see her mother incapacitated: First, she needed money to continue her publishing business and second -- get ready for the second gross twist of the episode -- she may have been having an affair with her step-father!
When conducting a search of her office, Green discovers a packet containing a poison called MPTP. MPTP, when taken in large quantities, triggers a disease remarkably similar to Parkinson's. The victim in this case appeared to be suffering from Parkinson's. New theory of the crime: the daughter and step-dad polluted the supply of insulin with MPTP so they could live happily ever after. Yuck. Thankfully, it turns out slightly different from this.
The episode is notable mainly because plot-wise it feels like a hybrid of SVU and the original series: rich guy kills rich wife for money, but with all this sexual perversion mixed in. Another odd moment in the ep comes just after everyone watches a tape of the guy injecting his wife. Green says something like, "Just a bunch of rich white people with too much time on their hands." The racial reference is extremely unusual for him, and seems very out of character. Assuming that this line was written in for him, I feel bad that he had to utter it.
In this episode (11.19), Briscoe and Green investigate the death of an illegal Mexican immigrant who was involved in a car crash and then died several hours later. In attempting to identify the man, the detectives eventually link him to a moving company that hires illegal day workers and then entices them to participate in an insurance fraud scheme. The scheme involves forcing car accidents with unsuspecting drivers using a manuever known as "swoop and squat." The swoop-and-squat involves two cars that are part of the scheme, and one "mark". Car #1 pulls in front of the mark and slams on the brakes, while Car #2 blocks the mark from pulling over a lane. The mark rear-ends Car #1, and no fault insurance pays everybody's bills. In this particular scheme, McCoy and Carmichael learn not only that the head of the moving company is involved, but also that a chiropractor is billing these participants in the fraud for treatment they never receive. McCoy gathers evidence indicating that the chiropractor's defense lawyers are involved in the scheme as well, so he petitions a judge to disqualify them so he can go after them for Murder 2. McCoy cuts a deal with the chiropractor who testifies that his own lawyers knew about and aven engineered the the whole scheme, a scheme they repeated 212 times.
There isn't anything particularly notable about the episode. It moves along pretty quickly, though I think about 5 minutes could have been cut off towards the end, so the end feels a little like filler. Nonetheless, a pretty decent look at the increasing problem of these orchestrated "accidents."
In this episode (9.3), a young shooting victim doesn't seem to be telling the whole truth about what happened. He offers what Curtis calls the "all-purpose 'two black guys with a gun' excuse" which no one is buying. Eventually, Briscoe and Curtis discover the vicitim was involved in a drug transaction, but the case takes an unexpected when they visit the parents of the victim's friend, and learn she was killed -- in the same location where the original victim was shot. With a tip from a narcotics detective, they close in on a couple of suspects and raid a garage where they hang out. One of the suspects takes a swing at Curtis with a steel pipe, but soon enough the two are in custody. The case gets thrown out, however, when the defense learns that the tip about the suspects location was garnered from an illegal wiretap.
The narcotics detective is in the hot seat now, and further investigation reveals that he was illegally using the under-aged shooting victim as a confidential informant. McCoy decides to go after the narcotics detective for manslaughter, since the detective apparently had some evidence that his informant was in danger from the two dealers, but allowed the kid to attempt a transaction with them anyway. Briscoe, who had elicited a confession (of sorts) from the detective refuses McCoy's request to testify completely at the grand jury, but McCoy arranges things so that although Briscoe testifies, he doesn't need to actually sell out the other detective. McCoy uses a ploy to get the detective to plea to related charges, and everyone is left wondering about how often you have to get your hands dirty to achieve results in law enforcement.
The title of the episode refers both to the detective's using his young informant for his own purposes, and to McCoy's method of eliciting the plea from the narcotics detective.
Coincidentally, the detective is played by Jose Zuniga, who starred as the lead bad guy in "Wedded Bliss," an episode I discussed yesterday.
The murder took place at a raucous party for the ship's crew on shore leave. The party depicted in the episode's teaser is reminiscent of what was described when the Tailhook scandal became public, and this episode seems to be L&O's take on the scandal.
The episode begins with a party of Naval officers in a hotel, and things are getting pretty rowdy. A prostitute is "walking the line," i.e., walking down a hallway of hollering soldiers as she strips. The cops come to break up the party, and enter each room, emptying it of people. They discover a dead female, who Briscoe and Logan quickly determined to be not a hooker, but a naval officer named Janet Hagen.
They talk to a Naval officer at the precinct, who says her death was an accident -- she fell and hit her head, he says, so there should be no further investigation. The ME determines otherwise, however, and says she may have hit a wall or a headboard, but she was also beaten. They talk to her captain, Captain Bunker, who says he will get a list of partiers who left the party before the cops could talk to them. They talk to one sailor, ensign walters, who was with her shortly before she died. They also talk to Lt Mendoza (played by Julianna Margulies [screen shot]) who says she saw the victim before her death, and it appeared she had been drinking. They talk to Hagen's dad, himself a former Navy man, who says his daughter almost never drank. She also had a low BAC.
They recover video of the party, and see Hagen on it, walking the line, looking very drunk but dazed. Lt Bates, someone they had talked to earlier, is seen entering a room with her. Bates says he and Lt Walters had sex with her. Walters says, however, that as he started to get into it with her, he watched her die and panicked. Briscoe says he remembers a boxer named Cookie Benitez who received a beating, walked out of the ring, and died a short while later. He's suggesting Hagen died after a beating, but it just took a while for it to happen. They talk to the ME who confirms this probably is what happened, and would have made her look drunk.
Re-investigating the hotel, they learn that Captain Bunker signed room service for the room where Hagen was seen exiting. They plan to talk to Bunker, but they learn that Lt Walters has confessed to the crime, via military channels. They suspect there is more to the story, however, so they meet with Lt Mendoza in their car, and she says that Bunker and Hagen were in a room with her, and she was ordered to leave.
An admiral meets with the DAs to talk about the investigation. Stone questions Bunker in the presence of Navy personnel. He says he has an alibi, which is that he was with a blonde call girl. They threaten to hold him and a material witness. They talk to the blonde escort who says he was rough with her and was impotent and wanted to be called "Bunky." I don't know why this guy decided to go do it with a prostitute after beating a woman to death, but whatever.
Stone talks to an admiral and learns there was a prior incident between Hagen and Bunker, back when she was in training. They learn that she spurned him, and then he harassed her until she filed a complaint. They arrest Bunker (43') and his trial begins shortly thereafter (45').
Stone cross-examines Bunker, and says that the incident during training was a black mark on his record, and that other men who held the same position as him went on to big promotions, whereas his career stalled. That, apparently, was his motive. Stone gets Bunker all fired up about his attack on the escort, and he explodes, "That bitch deserved it!" It's not clear whether he means Hagen or the escort, but regardless, the incident is damning, and he's found guilty of Murder 2.
The episode is notable because it is one of a handful of episodes in which the L&O team takes on the armed services of the United States, and because of the appearance of Julianna Margulies, who would go on to stardom on another NBC show, ER, the very next year.
Some photos of a Criminal Intent shoot in midtown. Includes pictures of trailers, signs, etc.
In this episode (2.18), an infant girl is found abandoned in a hospital waiting room, dead. Turns out a slumlord trying to harass its low-income tenants is responsible for the baby's death. The slumlord ordered its superintendent to cut the heat to the building so the tenants would move, opening the way to renovate the buildings and charge higher rents. Pretty unremarkable episode overall, although maybe it's notable because so many of the people in the episode are sleazy.
Very good episode (3.5) in which Cerreta and Logan's investigation of two drowned and handcuffed Mexican teenagers leads to a slavery operation run by sweatshop owners.
The episode is exceedingly well written and acted, and very engaging. It's one of the better "straight" episodes I've seen. By "straight" I mean that it strictly follows the L&O formula, and begins with a fairly typical (albeit grotesque) crime. Most of the truly extraordinary episodes rely on either a particularly savage crime, a remarkable twist, or some duress suffered by one of the regular characters. By contrast, this episode sticks to the routine, but is simply one of the finest examples of that routine I've seen.
Logan and Cerreta are both affected by the age and innocence of the victims, and their disgust spills over into rage as Logan gets a little overly-physical in his treatment of suspects and witnesses, at one point throttling the guy who turns out to be one of the main suspects. This behavior is echoed by Stone later in the episode when he becomes increasingly frustrated with witness who changes her story during a deposition. He threatens her with perjury, and this seems to scare her off.
As Stone and Robinette continues to look into the case, they learn that a middle-aged white couple runs a sweatshop staffed by Mexican immigrants provided to them by another young immigrant who concocts a scheme to enslave the workers. The female owner gets romantically involved with the young Mexican, and her cuckolded husband seems to go along with everything she says. Eventually, however, Robinette proposes a plan to get the husband to turn on his wife and her lover, and this proves to be a crucial break in the case, although he is a less than perfectly trustworthy witness. The case takes yet another turn with the discovery of additional violent crimes by the Mexican, and Stone then has enough to force a plea bargain with the defendants. Considering the brutality and number of the various crimes, it seems like the defendants get off easy with their plea bargain, but since their was a possibility of acquittal, Stone was right to follow Schiff's advice and seek a plea.
The episode is notable for a few other reasons, too. Because the bodies of the initial victims are badly decomposed, Cerreta and Logan rely on the NYPD's forensics department to re-construct the victims faces based on their skulls. They manage to get a pretty good likeness of them from this process. There are some interesting cast members, too. Vincent Pastore, best known as Pussy from The Sopranos, turns up as xenophobic gun dealer in New Jersey, and Lisa Vidal appears as the almost shockingly beautiful wife of the young Mexican killer. Vidal went on to work regularly on various shows, including ER (as "Sandy Lopez") and Third Watch (as "Sarah Morales"). Her brief appearance in this episode is memorable.
Just a reminder that there will be another L&O/Homicide: Life on the Street cross-over on tonight. The first episode is at 8, the second at 9. The episode is "For God and Country," and I believe it involves the subway bombing discussed in the another cross-over, "Baby It's You."
Really great episode (2.22) in which Schiff has to go after an old and powerful friend for his connection to the murder of a businessman worth hundreds of million of dollars. The episode begins with the discovery of the businessman in his office at 5.30 am. The investigation leads to an aging and cancer-striken elderly union member whose pension and health insurance were gutted by the businessman's corporate dealings. The union member, brillantly played by Eli Wallach, is eager to represent himself at trial, but Robinette discovers he's not responsible for the crime. The man admits he wanted to go to trial just so he could make public all the things the victim did to the other union members.
Once the case against the old man falls apart, further research reveals that the businessman was about to be indicted by the Justice Department, and information about the indictment was leaked to powerful people who stood to be damaged by it. And that's when the episode gets really interesting.
It turns out that one of the men who stood to be damaged by the indictment was Dwight Corcoran, a former governor of New York and Secretary of State. Corcoran is chairman of The Bank of the Five Boroughs, a bank directly connected to the dead millionaire and certain semi-corrupt union bosses. Corcoran also happens to be one of DA Schiff's oldest friends -- they "cut their teeth" together in their earliest days in politics, Schiff says -- and it sounds like Schiff even ran Corcoran's first campaign for governor. Before Schiff goes after his friend, he tells Stone and Robinette they need "a smoking gun," a direct connection between Corcoran, the corruption charges against the bank, and the murder. Robinette gets some solid leads, but it's Schiff himself who makes the final necessary connection between his old friend and the murder.
As he's sending Stone off to investigate, he tells him, "No fear, no favor," a quotation he attributes to the campaign slogan of "an old liberal muckraker" (whom I can't identify). In this episode, we see exactly how seriously Schiff takes this dictum. He pursues his old friend aggressively but without bias, and you realize that for Schiff, justice is the highest calling. He never seems to waiver or question whether it's worth it...he just does what he needs to do to pursue what is right. Steven Hill's acting in this episode, although more muted, is nearly on par with Wallach's, and it's great to see him so determined and so colorful. Seeing Schiff in episodes like this just reminds us how the role of the DA has been squandered in recent years with the gutlessness of Lewin, and the occasionally politically-influenced whimsy of Arthur Branch.
The episode neatly establishes a parallel between two elderly men and the different directions of their lives: Wallach's character, down and out and barely surviving, hacking his way through his sentences, but still showing an amazing vitality, and Corcoran, a distinguished politician and businessmen who should be in the golden twilight of his career. Despite their divergent paths, both men ultimately will meet the same end -- a slow and lonely death -- though each will meet his end on opposite sides of justice.
In this episode (12.15), a young woman is found murdered under some garbage bags in her neighborhood, and the trail leads at first to a troubled girl whom the woman mentored. It turns out the girl arranged for her to be mugged by a friend, but the mugger is innocent of her murder. Eventually, detectives discover that the woman, who was a psychologist, had some rather violent clients, including one who is a convicted rapist and was seeing her as a condition of his parole.
Detectives bring in the rapist, and through a search warrant, learn that he had full access to the victim's computer files, via a software "worm" he managed to get installed on her computer. Through this access, he learned that she was recommending him for a parole violation. He also learned that she was raped when she was college, knowledge he gained from a company called "Access Nation" that uses technology to research the lives of "targets" for a fee.
Because of a legal technicality based on privacy rights, his confession is thrown out, and mushy old DA Nora Lewin (whom this blog hates) tells McCoy to make a deal with him. He pleads out on manslaughter, and gets 10 years. Bullshit. The victim's parents are understandably livid, so they come to McCoy seeking justice. McCoy decides to go after Acess Nation for manslaughter, especially when he learns that the company's CEO had direct knowledge of the suspect's rape conviction.
The episode is filled with paranoia about privacy, the internet, and technology. The script connects privacy rights to 9/11, an event which is mentioned 2 or 3 times in the episode. The paranoia continues as Southerlyn uses Access Nation to dig up facts on McCoy and Lewin to show how much is knowable. She claims that these services can find "practically every website you ever visited." Give me a break. Not unless they hack into your ISP's log files, they can't. However, information hunting is not a one way street. Midway through the trial, McCoy uses some hackers (off camera) to access some emails the CEO and his attorneys. He learns that the lawyers advised the CEO to stop looking into the background of his clients. McCoy gets these emails into the trial by claiming an exception to attorney/client privilege based on a conspiracy exception. How did these hackers come upon these emails? It must have been illegally, but no mention of this is made.
The CEO is played by Frank Whaley, an actor whose career is sort of like Vincent D'Onofrio's, pre-The Cell. What I mean by that is he's very talented, and has done a lot of big and small projects, and is consistently working, but never seems to have broken through to the kind of stardom (even as a character actor) that he deserves. He directed his own movie a few years ago, and can be heard on the commentary track of its DVD complaining about all the crap he has to do so that he can make the projects he really cares about.
The episode is also notable because of all the personal information we get from Southerlyn about McCoy via her search: McCoy has "an unhealthy obsession" with the clash, uses his grandmother's name as his password everywhere, and takes some kind of medication that Southerlyn implies is not necessarily being used only for therapeutic purposes.
Also, this is the ep in which you get that shot from the promos of Briscoe in plain clothes (including an ill-fitting leather jacket) pulling his gun on a suspect underneath the elevated subway tracks, yelling "get on the ground" or whatever. He does this because as Green attempts to apprehend the suspect, the suspect knees him in the groin. Green makes up for it by shoving the guy's head into a desk later on, calling to mind Green's earlier brushes with excessive force, for which he's been written up more than once.
All in all, the episode is a little frustrating because of its one-sided paranoia about technology (a song we've heard a few times before on the show, including in an episode called "Paranoia"), and because of Lewin's foolish and self-contradictory positions. Here she is supposedly one of the great liberals of NYC, and she is standing up for the rights of the government to invade our privacy and the rights of companies to do so as well. Her suggested plea deal with the rapist makes her even more annoying. Wiest could have done so much more with the role. It's a shame that the writers made her character so mealy-mouthed and soft.
In this episode (7.21), an arrogant novelist and his lover are alternate suspects in the murder of the novelist's young editor, with whom the novelist was also having an affair. The episode's plot is quite complicated, and towards the end, it's pretty difficult to keep the story straight. In the end, the identity of the actual murderer seems somewhat arbitrary, and the psychological motivation of another key character isn't entirely clear. Still, the episode engages your interest, at least until it becomes too complicated to follow.
The episode's teaser begins in the 911 call center, where you hear the victim calling for help, and cuts to the crime scene where you see the damage done. The detectives also take a trip or two up to Westchester to talk to some neighbors of the woman at the center of the case, the novelist's lover. One interesting legal issue: the woman tries to kill herself while at Rikers, and she leaves behind some unsealed letters. It is ruled that the letters are not confidential because they weren't stamped or sealed. Had they been, they would have been off limits.
In this episode (12.14), a young woman goes missing, and an older, powerful, married lover may be responsible. Sound familiar? It's not just because it echoes the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy case: This plot structure is a recurring one on Law & Order, and to be honest, there isn't much difference between this episode and the one, say, where the woman gets involved with the man in the state's Office of the Attorney General. In fact, the two episodes are almost interchangeable, except this time, the official she's involved with is chairman of the state's Gaming Commission.
The episode is notable only because of a tiny bit of backstory we get during McCoy's conversation with the defendant's attorney. As Southerlyn gets righteous about the defendent getting involved with a young, vulnerable assistant, the attorney says, If it bothers you so much, you should talk to your boss: "He's famous for getting involved with his assistants." Snap! DA Lewin (Dianne Wiest) picks up on this thread a few minutes later and says, "I heard your past came up in there." McCoy responds, "But I married her, Nora," to which Lewin responds, "But it wasn't just the one, Jack, was it." She's referring here at least to Diane Hawthorne, who was mentioned in "Sideshow," one of the Homicide cross-over episodes, and probably also to Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) who I think we can all assume now Jack was romancing, given Jack's lack of objection when that relationship was also asserted in "Sideshow."
Anyway, as a result of the episode's implication about the official's wife's involvement in the girl's death, Condit's wife demanded (but did not receive) an apology from the show's producers.
In this episode (2.23), Goran and Eames investigate the murder of a nurse connected to some missing anthr*x vaccine booster shots. Goran pursues a hot-headed scientist who appears to be connected to an effort to use anthr*x for terrorist purposes. In his efforts to break the suspect, Goran pushes too hard, and the suspect appears to kill himself, and Goran blames himself, just as the media incriminates him for causing the death of an innocent man. But even after all this, the episode is really just getting started: Olivia D'Abo shows up, reviving her terrific Elizabeth Hitchens/Nicole Wallace character from the episode "Anti-Thesis" in which she nearly drove Goran mad. In much the same way Sherlock Holmes is transfixed by Irene Adler in "A Scandal in Bohemia," so is Goran captivated by Nicole Wallace. And she is equally drawn to him, putting herself on the hook for the anthr*x and murder investigations without much of a rational reason for doing so. As in her first episode, she and Goran have a rather emotional confrontation in the interrogation room. Goran seems to come out on top this time, though, and as the episode ends, she's led away in handcuffs. However, as she warns Goran, don't think for a minute that this is the end for the two of them.
Other notable moments: The scientist's suicide note blames Goran for his death and identifies Goran as a "former member of the Army's investigation unit." Eames also seems to (delicately) blame G for the death, admonishing him, "You didn't list, Bobby. You didn't listen to what his wife said." The scientist, obviously, is reminiscent of Steven H*tfill, the man identified as "a person of interest" in the FBI's real-life anthr*x investigation.
I wrote about this episode on my other blog when it originally aired. Here's that earlier post.
In this episode (3.12), Goran and Eames investigate the relationship between a needy young fundraiser and his recently-widowed wealthy patron, a wannabe stage actress. The couple is involved in some fraudulent activity as well as a murder or two, but each seems to be keeping some secrets from the other.
The funny thing about CI is that it's loaded with subtext, but there's nothing particularly "sub" about the subtext: everything is right there in the open. Harvey, the fundraiser, has a facial tic that activates whenever he gets nervous, and the older lady's obsession with being loved is so obvious she acts like she's on stage even when she's not. Nuts like these are not tought to crack, especially for Goran, who helpfully explains all the subtext just in case we are to thick to get it. Goran is like that guy who narrates movies on the channel for old people, except he explains characters' psyches: she does this because of that, he always obeys his mother, she needs to be loved by the world, and so on, until you feel like yelling at him to shut up and let you figure it out for yourself.
Don't get me wrong, I love Vincent and I begrudgingly love the show, but, especially lately, it utterly lacks subtlety.
Anyway, the episode is notable if only because it marks the return of Eames from her maternity leave, a development which illustrates the odd timeline of the Law & Order world: she had her baby just two episodes ago.
In this episode (10.9), a woman is killed while awaiting minor surgery at a hospital. An early suspect is a clever con-man who preys on older women he meets at support groups for conditions he doesn't suffer from. Because he is so good at his cons, it takes Green and Briscoe quite a while to track him down. When they finally do, McCoy and Carmichael realize he is guilty of a crime, but not the crime. This leads to another suspect (the victim's daughter), and then another. The final suspect is Mr Hallenbeck, the victim's husband, who suffers from the intermediate stages of Alzheimer's.
The episode begins with the discovery of the victim by her daughter and her husband. She is bludgeoned and bleeding in the solarium of the hospital where she was awaiting minor surgery. Logan and Green respond and give the security chief a hard time for not noticing the body for several hours. They find a receipt from the gift shop, which becomes a good clue later on. They talk to the family, but the daughter says the dad is in shock (it turns out he actually has Alzheimer's). They say there is some jewelry missing: a cross and a valuable watch. The daughter mentions this, which doesn't make sense given later events in the ep.
In a scene practically written for comedy, the detectives talk to ME Rodgers and learn the vic died from the beating, which ruptured her spleen. They receive a phone call. Green goes to pick up the phone, and sees something on it.
Green: What's that on your phone? Brains?
Rodgers: It's egg salad, maybe.
Green: You got another phone?
Rodgers: Right now, I gotta get a javelin outta somebody's chest.
Briscoe: What made you go into this line of work?
Rodgers: Free javelins.
The dets talk things over back at the precinct. AVB is fiddling with her kid's laptop, frustrated because the "company from hell" sent it back to her without repairing it. At her suggestion, the dets try to nail down the timeline and visit the hospital gift shop, where they learn that the receipt they found involved a transaction with a person named Phillip Greitz.
Greitz matches the sketch given by the orderly. They ask the vic's son, daughter, and husband if they know Greitz. They say no, and the son reveals the dad's disease. They say that the vic went to a support group for spouses of victim's of Alzheimer's. They talk to the support group leader, and he says Greitz was in that group, and that he and the victim stopped coming several weeks ago. The address he had registered with the group is fake.
They go through Mrs Hallenbeck's financial records, and see she was spending an awful lot of money on romantic outings and so forth. It's apparent she was having an affair. They talk to a travel agent who leads them to Greitz's mailbox store, which leads them to another old rich pretty lady, Ms Wynnick. She knows Greitz by another name. She says he's very nice. He gave her Mrs Hallenbeck's watch, but said it was his mother's. They still can't find Greitz, so they canvas tons of support groups, and find another old lady he was conning. She tells them he's flying to Europe. They track him down at JFK right before he flies to St Kitts, where he couldn't be extradited from. He's canoodling with yet another old lady. They arrest him and he has Hallenbeck's jewels on him. (21')
At his arraignment, he refuses to give his real name. The judge picks a public defender to represent him, but then the high-profile attorney Mrs Wiess shows up to represent him. He's being paid for by a wealthy old lady, who is in the gallery.
Carmichael goes to the hospital to find out when the jewelry disappeared from Mrs Hallenbeck. This is important to their case. She also talks to the vic's family again, and begins to suspect that the daughter killed her mom because she didn't like her and because her mom's $750K life insurance policy would help pay off their dad's medical expenses.
They bring the daughter in for questioning, and under pressure, she confesses, saying she punched her mom to death because she gave the jewel's to her boyfriend, Mr Greitz. She's charged with Manslaughter 1. (33') However, the vic's injuries indicate that she was hit something with a large square in the center. This leads to a ring on Mr Hallenbeck's finger. As he's arrested in his home, he attacks Green and is subdued. (39')
At his arraignment at Bellevue, his lawyer, recurring character Anne Paulsen, represents him. AC, Van Buren, Skoda, and ME Rodgers all get together for a meeting (very unusual!) and review the evidence. Skoda talks to Hallenbeck and determines he was sane at the time of the murder, but that he has a lot of rage directed toward his wife (which he also revealed to Skoda). No deal for Man I...McCoy won't allow it. So Paulsen argues that putting him in jail would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Carmichael visits a state prison to determine the conditions under which Hallenbeck would be incarcerated, and is horrified by what she sees, a horror that is apparent as she reports her findings to McCoy and Skoda. She likens it to a "fourth circle of hell." McCoy at first is unmoved, and has to defend the possibility of sending Hallenbeck to prison at a motion hearing. Once the judge decides that putting Hallenbeck in prison does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, McCoy re-offers 6-12 years in a halfway house, and they accept it. He allocutes, during which he has a bit of a spell as well. It is difficult for McCoy and the viewer, as well, to determine whether justice has been served.
The title of the episode refers to the term for the later part of a day for an Alzheimer's patient, when he starts losing clarity. It seems symbolic, too, of the status of Mr Hellenbeck's life.
In this episode (11.14), a fender-bender leads to the discovery of a shot and dying pregnant woman in the trunk of a car. Thorough investigation yields a couple of suspects who, it turns out, stole her car, not knowing that she was in the trunk. Further investigation reveals that a prominent basketball players (a member of the "New York Cheetahs") is involved in her death. Criminal associates of the basketball player are brought in, and they point the finger at the player. McCoy and Carmichael have to figure out who's telling the truth, a process made more difficult by the efforts of the player's lawyer, played by semi-regular guest star and well-known character actor James Rebhorn.
The episode is notable mainly for the wide patch of plot covered by the script. The path to convicting the murderer is a long and vertiginous one. The ep begins with a traffic accident involving an elderly Jewish couple and some Russian thugs, and ends with an NBA star with connections to the drug world on trial.
Other noteworthy elements of the episode include the performance of a friend of the player, who is one of the hardest thugs I've ever seen on the show. A convicted murderer who has served hard time, he seems entirely unintimidated by Green and Briscoe. His performance seems heavily influenced by both Don Cheadle and Isaiah Washington, two brilliant actors who plays a couple of thugs in Out of Sight. The best moment of the show -- indeed, one of the best moments in the history of the show -- comes when he tries to tell McCoy the gun they found in his apartment is inadmissible because there was no probable cause for the search. "That's poison from the fruit tree," he says with confidence. What he's trying to say is "fruit from the poisonous tree," an oft-repeated phrase on L&O that means any evidence that comes from an unwarranted search is inadmissible, including further evidence found because of that evidence. It was a clever gesture on the part of the episode's writer to have a character interpret a half-learned phrase learned from what are presumably countless brushes with the law, and to make that phrase a sort of joke about the show itself.
I also want to mention that the episode takes Briscoe and Green to Lot 61, a pretentious but popular club in Chelsea that I went to and hated shortly after it opened several years ago.
Unfortunately, the old lady was allegedly dumped at sea, and McCoy has a weak case against the conniving killer because her body can't be found. When McCoy realizes his case is about to fall apart in the classroom, he appears to deliberately mention information that the judge had ruled inadmissible. The defense requests a mistrial, and the judge grants it. But McCoy is secretly pleased: he'll get another crack at the defendant when more evidence becomes available.
The episode is well-written and funny, and Kicaid's reactions to McCoy are unusually colorful. Unusual, perhaps, because it's not Jill Hennessy playing Kincaid in this episode. According to rumor, Jill's identical twin sister Jacqueline plays Claire. Believe me, you can't tell. When I was watching, I thought she was a little more animated (and better dressed) than usual, and she looks a little funny in a scene at a coffee shop where she's talking to McCoy, but you'd never think, "That's not Jill!" (Here's a screen capture of the coffee shop scene.) According to the site where I read this, Jacqueline also plays Claire in Causa Mortis, but that episode is Carey Lowell's first, and I don't remember Claire in it. I think the person must've meant Bitter Fruit, the season premiere of Season 6, which is also Benjamin Bratt's first episode.
Dylan Baker, the NYC character actor perhaps best known as the father in Todd Solondz's Happiness, guest stars as the publicist's defense attorney. He convinces a judge to allow an independent autopsy, and this move pays off: it is discovered that the victim died not because of the car accident, but because he was brutally assaulted in the hours before the attack.
So Briscoe and Green have to come up with another suspect, and eventually they arrest another homeless person. This new suspect's lawyer, from some kind of homeless legal aid group, argues that the murder is defensible because it was "necessary," since the rules of homeless culture dictate that you must do whatever it takes to survive, and if you don't, you will become a victim yourself. Hence, the name of the episode. McCoy rejects this argument, and the two sides have it out in court.
Early in the episode as Briscoe and Green explore a YMCA locker in which the victim kept his belongings, they find a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's great novel about racial injustice in the South. Since this novel features Atticus Finch, one of the most legendary lawyers in American literature, I knew the script would reference this novel later in the episode. I didn't have to wait long. As McCoy is discussing the suspect's moral baseness, a judge cautions him, "Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes." These exact words are spoken by Atticus Finch to his daughter in Mockingbird. Like that novel, this episode is very much about class disparity. It's fitting that it begins with a suspect from the highest class going free and ends with a suspect of the lowest class (spoiler coming) going to jail. The suspect even delivers an outraged "You don't understand" speech to McCoy during his testimony, a bit of rhetoric reminiscent of Mayella Ewell's "you fine fancy gentlemen" speech during the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird.
All this Mockingbird parallelism allows me the chance to bring up something I was discussing with a friend just the other day: there is quite a lot of Atticus Finch in Jack McCoy. Atticus has a "justice above all" mentality that seems echoed in McCoy. However, McCoy is more willing than Atticus ever would be to cross certain ethical boundaries to achieve justice. It's hard to imagine Atticus even considering withholding evidence or skirting either the letter or spirit of the law. Still, his single-minded devotion to justice certainly seems to be an inspiration for McCoy.
Mostly boring episode (7.8) in which McCoy screws up at the end, losing a case against a wealthy murder suspect. The victim is the CFO of a high-end department store, and is married to the daughter of the store's founder. The family is fabulously wealthy, but the CFO was interfering with some illegal accounting procedures, so his wife and her sister decide to eliminate him. There is a decided King Lear quality about the episode, but instead of turning on the elderly father, they turn on the husband. Neither Briscoe and Curtis nor McCoy can figure out which sister is responsible for the murder. Predictably, they make a deal with one sister in exchange for immunity, but then during the trial, the father presents an alibi for the defendant and accuses the other sister, who already has immunity. Whoops! McCoy doesn't pull his usual "the deal only applies if your client told the truth" routine, and he's left with two in the bush and none in the hand. He admits to Cheekbones that he screwed up, and Schiff isn't particularly pleased either. Well, as Cheekbones says, it's not the first time that a rich person got away with murder, and it won't be the last.
The episode is boring, I think, because the suspects are not particularly interesting or even distinguishable from each other, and the murder of the husband, although a bad thing, doesn't seem like it's a terrible tragedy. Everything about the case is routine except for the outrageous wealth of the suspects, and that's not enough to sustain an episode.
Jerry Orbach will appear on Conan the evening of January 20th. It will be repeated on Comedy Central on January 21st. [via usenet]
The episode's plot is incredibly intricate and sometimes confusing. Here is an attempt to explain (with spoilers) the entire plot:
The crime scene is in Battery Park. Dead victim in her thirties. Someone tried to make it look like a suicide, but failed. Upon identifying the victim, Briscoe and Curtis learn the victim, a government economist, lived in Baltimore at the time of her death. They call the Baltimore homicide detectives, and Munch and Rene Shepherd (Michael Michele) get on the case. Eventually, they figure out that the victim ("McBride") was killed in Baltimore and then driven to NYC where she was dropped in the park. Detectives question a man she was involved with who works as a high-level aide to a Senator Romney. The aide initially stonewalls but eventually admits that he is gay, and so was McBride. They were just friends who would appear to be dating to cover for each other. This introduces a major theme in the two episodes: covering up -- specifically, covering up homosexuality. From here, the detectives talk to an ex-boyfriend, a "stalker" who turns out to be the husband of a government employee McBride had an affair with ("Wellington"), an FBI agent who asked McBride to back off the government employee, a young former co-worker of McBride who also had a lesbian affair with McBride, and the co-worker's old boss and new boss, a woman who is the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House. (The detectives talk to many of these people in Washington, DC, and there are some nice exterior shots of Briscoe and the White House, the Washington Monument, etc.) Many of these witnesses seem extraordinarily unwilling to talk. They all seem scared about something. Eventually, they come up with a suspect: Chesley, a bisexual prostitute and hitwoman with ties to an imprisoned drug dealer. She's the suspect, but they can't track her down.
As the detectives and McCoy begin building their case, they begin encountering interference from an unexpected source: the office of the independent counsel investigating the President of the United States. The Indepent Counsel Dell, a Ken Starr-like figure, has caught the whiff of corruption and sex around this case, and is trying to connect it to the White House. You get the impression that he is leaving no stone unturned and will stop at nothing to smear the President and his administration. This brings him into conflict with McCoy, however, who has made a deal with a gay witness involved with McBride to protect her identity. When Dell asks McCoy for the woman's name, he refuses. Dell subpoenas him to the federal grand jury ("Is your full name 'John James McCoy?"), and McCoy steadfastly refuses to give up Wellington's name. Dell even attempts to smear McCoy by bringing up his disciplinary hearing (he deposed Cheekbones), and he brings up Claire Kincaid and says that Kincaid was McCoy's lover. McCoy does not deny this. (So in case you were wondering whether the two were involved, there's your proof.) Dell also asks McCoy about another ADA named Diane Hawthorne, who McCoy was also romantically involved with and who withheld exculpatory evidence on a case that she and McCoy were working on together. This led to the conviction of an innocent man. Dell takes his smearing even further, and brings up Briscoe, the lead detective on the McBride case, and suggests Briscoe is corrupt and a drunk. He raises this by mentioning Briscoe was in the car the when Kincaid was killed. At this point, McCoy makes a lot of sanctimonious pronouncements and then says to Dell, "Have you no shame, Mr. Dell? Have you no shame." When Dell continues his line of questioning, McCoy does one of the best things ever: he gets up and walks off the stand! He is promptly detained by court officers, and Dell tries to bring him up on obstruction charges.
Luckily, the detectives track down Chesley, so there is no need for Dell to press McCoy about the name of the lesbian witness he was protecting, since her only value to Dell's investigation was her knowledge about Chesley's identity.
Just as we're getting to know Chesley, a very compelling character, the FBI takes her into custody, but as they leave the 27th precinct with her, she gets shot Jack Ruby-style by...McBride's ex-boyfriend (the straight one) who's muttering something like, "You took her from me! You took her from me!" Nonetheless, it appears McCoy's selfless efforts to protect the identity of Wellington were in vain, because someone leaked her name to Dell's office anyway. And who was the leaker? None other than Michael Giardello (Giancarlo Esposito), the son of Al Giardello, the lieutenant of the Baltimore homicide squad, who happens to work in the department as the liaison to the FBI.
But the Independent Counsel is not done with the case yet, and they subpoena all the evidence that both the NYPD and Baltimore has on the McBride killing. (As the agents serve Munch the subpoena, he says, "You guys couldn't track a bleeding elephant through the snow.") The episode then gives us all a chance to catch our breath, and we get a few minutes of the other detectives discussing something that happened to Shepherd a few episodes earlier. In the parlance of the Balto detectives, "she got her gun took." The female detectives think this reflects badly on all women cops, and the male detectives feel unsafe going through the door with her, especially Lewis, her partner, who was nearly killed as a result. This was a major plot line on Homicide for a while, so it feels a little out of place in the context of L&O, but it's good to be reminded of the depth of Homicide's story arcs. In the midst of all this, the Indepent Counsel is still upset with Danvers and McCoy for his refusal to fully cooperate on the case. He dispatches an aide to Baltimore, who tells Danvers, "People with a past should be more careful." It is revealed that Danvers has a juvenile record: as a 14-year-old he was a member of an all-white gang involved in the racially-motivated beating of a black kid. He goes to Giardelli, and Giardelli explains the situation to the brass of the department, who all agree to back Danvers if the shit hits the fan. However, it's clear to everyone, including Danvers, that he must withdraw his nomination to the bench.
Back to the case: Once they have DEA agent ("Dawkins") as a suspect, the Danvers and McCoy connect him to the Deputy Chief of Staff ("Bernardi"), who as I mentioned, is a lesbian, and who (like McBride) had an affair with the young co-worker ("Rainer") I mentioned above. She reluctantly admits she and McBride were in competition for the affection of Rainer, and that she arranged for McBride's promotion to Baltimore to get rid of her. However, it didn't work, so she spoke to Dawkins and asked him to bribe her. According to Bernardi, McBride refused the bride and threatened to report Dawkins to the Independent Counsel's office. Dawkins asked Bernardi if she could protect him, she said no, and so apparently Dawkins arranged to have McBride killed. Thus the case is solved.
So, just to recap the recap: Bernardi is involved with Rainer. Rainer is involved with McBride. Bernardi tells Dawkins to bribe McBride to get rid of her. McBride threatens to report him. Dawkins contacts Little Walter, asks him to arrange hit. Little Walter contacts Chesley, who kills McBride and drops her in Battery Park.
The detectives arrest Dawkins, but as they do so, the rep from the Independent Counsel shows up again, and takes custody of him. They plan to give him immunity for the murder so he can testify about his connections to the White House. This is immensely dispiriting for everyone involved in the case. The detectives retreat to Lewis and Munch's bar, where they drown their sorrows, and a tipsy Shepherd issues a monologue that applies equally to the President and to her. She says she thinks people should be forgiven for judgment errors they make, and that they should not be obligated to live under the cloud of "moments they can't take back." She leaves the bar. Munch, Briscoe, and Curtis follow her out, and Munch pauses to salute the flag on top of a government building (City Hall?). He says, "I'm too damn sober," and the three turn around and go back into the bar.
The detectives start tracking down leads, the most promising seeming to be that the designer was somehow involved. They go an interview some other models, including one who, during a photo shoot, also appears to be about twenty. During the interview, she steps into a trailer, and continues talking to Briscoe. When she steps back out of the trailer without makeup or couture, she is transformed: she looks like an 8th grader, which, in fact, she is. This raises one of several themes in the episode: the loss of innocence or girlhood. Characters in the show make several references to the girl's growing up too fast, and it gives you the sense of an unnatural childhood and transition to adulthood, themes which become important later on. (And let's not forget the thematic connection to the Jon Benet Ramsey case.)
As the investigation heats up, significant conflicts hinder the detectives and the ADAs. Someone leaks details about the crime to the media, and McCoy accuses the victim's family's lawyer, who apparently is trying to direct suspicion away from his clients. Meanwhile, a media frenzy erupts around the case. This media frenzy is depicted explicitly -- lots of reporters chasing detectives around and waiting outside doors -- which is somewhat unusual for L&O. Most times, the characters mention the frenzy, but we see very little of it ourselves. Things are different in this episode, however, and I attribute that to the influence of the Homicide episode that is linked to this one. Homicide very often depicts packs of reporters chasing its detectives around, and I think the writer and director knew the Homicide ep would continue the media frenzy, so they wanted to make it more consistent by including it in the L&O ep, too.
Meanwhile, McCoy learns that the victim's family's lawyer is not going to be a push-over. The lawyer is a real bull dog, brilliantly played by Dan Hedaya, perhaps best known as Cher's dad in Clueless and Carla's ex-husband on Cheers. Hedaya's strength as an actor translates into strength for his character, and as he and McCoy go round for round, he never backs down. At one point, McCoy gives him as harsh a tongue-lashing as I've ever seen him give anyone, and you expect Hedaya to finally throw in the towel. He doesn't. He comes right back at McCoy with a tongue-lashing of his own, except he delivers it more calmly than McCoy, which almost makes it seem like he has the upper hand. Hedaya's character is a rarity on L&O: a quasi-sleazy attorney who seems to have a sense of integrity. Hedaya's presence elevates the entire episode.
Briscoe and Curtis get a scolding of their own when they are finally allowed to interview the victim's parents at home, with Hedaya present. As Briscoe chows down on a donut, Hedaya cuts of the interview. Briscoe says, in his usual deadpan tone, and with a mouthful of donut, "We were just getting warmed up." The apparent insensitivity of this comment upsets the father, who repudiates Briscoe and reminds him "this isn't a game. This is our daughter," etc. Cut to Briscoe back at the office, still eating. Since the detectives learn that the family has connections to Baltimore, including a home there, they call down to Baltimore to get some information from Baltimore Homicide. Briscoe mentions that he slept with Munch's ex-wife, Gwen, and we cut to Baltimore.
When the scene opens inside the Baltimore precinct, there is an immediate change in the sensibility of the script. Munch is talking to somebody, going into one of his long, off-beat monologues of the sort you never hear on L&O and always hear on Homicide. Behind him, the H:LOTS set looks strange and alienated from itself, because it's being shot in the L&O color palette, which is very different (much colder) than Homicide's. Although both shows are well-known for their washed out colors, L&O is all blue and gray, and Homicide tends towards dull brown and white. Homicide also lets a lot more light through the lens, so seeing the Baltimore precinct dull and dark is a disconcerting experience. Some quick dialogue establishes the connection between the Baltimore squad and the case in NY, and then we cut back to NY.
The investigation proceeds. The victim's family brings in an FBI profiler who shares his ideas with Van Buren. Van Buren quickly dismisses them and throws his report in the trash. Nearly everything he said, the detectives had either already learned or already discounted. Meanwhile, McCoy confronts Heday on his ethics and attempts to control the investigation, but as I said before, Hedaya is unusually strong, and resists him. Meanwhile, the Briscoe and Curtis interview additional potential witnesses. I could be wrong, but I thought these scenes were shot in the distinctive H:LOTS swinging-camera style, where the camera swoops from one speaker to the next. L&O uses similar camera-work, but I think these scenes adopted the slightly looser style of H:LOTS.
As more evidence is uncovered, it turns out that the girl was raped in Baltimore, got toxic shock syndrome as a result, and died in New York. And so begins the fight over jurisdiction. The State's Attorney in Baltimore (Ed Danvers) argues that Balto should have jurisdiction over the crime, since it originated there, but McCoy disagrees, and wants NYC to handle it, since part of the crime -- negligence -- took place in NYC. (More on this later.)
To assert Baltimore's connection to the case, Danvers sends Munch and Det. Falsone up to New York to help Briscoe and Curtis with the investigation. At 51 minutes into the episode, the detectives meet. They mention "the subway bombing two years ago," which is the subject of another cross-over episode. Briscoe and Munch start talking about old times, and Falsone gravitates to Curtis, immediately asking him whether he's Latin. "Peruvian Indian English German American Mix," responds Curtis, in case you were wondering. As the men are talking, it's obvious why the writers chose to send Munch and Falsone up to NY: there is a distinct parallel between the two pairs of detectives. Briscoe and Munch are older, white, and Jewish; Curtis and Falsone are younger and Latino. This, too, adds some depth to the episode, as you get a fuller sense of how each detectives relates to others like him, and those different from him. Falzone has more in common with Curtis, I think, than he does with anyone on his squad in Baltimore, and these similarities go beyond his ethnicity. Both he and Curtis are extremely passionate, ethical, and single-minded when it comes to their work, and both have families which are the focus are their lives. It's nice to see Falsone finally have somebody to talk to.
This pairing of the men continues and the investigation moves forward, and the men go undercover for a stakeout at a cemetery they hope their rape suspect will visit. Falsone and Curtis are dressed as gravediggers, and stand in a grave with their shovels, as they discuss their families. I think the connection here is intentional: the moment draws a subtextual connection between parenting and death, a theme which becomes important later on. During their exchange, Curtis mentions his sister died when she was 10 in a car accident, adding still more to the theme of childhood cut short. Munch and Briscoe dress as mourners and talk about Gwen, handling some cheap flowers for effect. I think this whole thing might be a reference to the Yorick scene in Hamlet, but it's tough to say. (Is every scene with talking grave diggers a Hamlet reference? Maybe.)
The stakeout at the cemetery works, and after a typically brief foot chase, they collar their rape suspect. During interrogation, the suspect (who isn't very bright) reads Detective Munch's vistor's badge and says, "Defective Monk?...That's like a fallen angel." A fallen angel, he says, like the victim herself. The detectives establish that the suspect is in fact innocent of the rape. He does, however, give the detectives some information that points to some other suspects: the girl's parents. When McCoy reports this to Skoda, the psychiatrist warns him, "Jack, you're about to look into a very ugly corner of the human heart." The epsiode ends.
As the detectives focus their investigation on the parents, specifically the father, Munch and Briscoe visit a WASP-y golf club in Baltimore to bring the father in for questioning. As they arrive, Munch says to the pro, "Hey, we're a couple of Jewish cops? Think we could get in." This picks up on the discussion about ethnicity that Falsone and Curtis have back in the L&O ep, and it also highlights the cultural chasm between the working stiff detectives and the high-class world of doctors and models they are investigating.
During the interrogation of
