It’s a standard thing. As mentioned before, a prime suspect in any TV whodunnit these days is whoever would have to protect an image of righteousness or respectability. Heck, many of the shows have even used that as a red herring, when you’re sure that’s where the plot leads but then it turns out that the person’s just a prick, or even crazy, but not guilty.
And these shows tend to look for scandalous or lurid plotlines 'cause that’s what gets ratings. L&O even had an episode shortly after the peak of the pedophile-priest scandal that seemed to advocate that “good” priests should violate the confessional seal! But I don’t remember where it was that I read someone pointing out, that the real incidence of these sorts of heinous crimes in NY is nowhere near what it would seem from L&O (and ditto for Vegas and CSI).
In any case, “random firebrand streetcorner preacher” is nowhere near the dig at religion that would be “established pastor”. The raving guy in the sidewalk is ALREADY part of stereotypical NY…
We’ve been dealing with my 7 y.o. daughters’ friendship with a prosyletizing fundie girl all year (UES public school). There may not be an organized Religious Right but the thumpers are out there.
Heh. I actually wrote a paper about that in college - comparing the racial and socio-economic characteristics (and conviction rates) of murderers on* Law and Order *with actual crime statistics. The results were enlightening.
I remember reading years ago that the number of children kidnapped by strangers in Manhatten over the course of an SVU season is similar to the real life number of children kidnapped by strangers across the whole country in a year.
Also, Dick Wolf must have been a huge fan of HBO’s series, “OZ” as every actor on that show has appeared (or stars) in Law and Order (and spin offs) ever since.
Then again, after 16 billion episodes, is there a single male actor alive in NYC who has NOT been on Law and Order?
Yes, there have been quite a few religious fanatics, but apparently, NYC is also chock full of prep schools with rich kid drug addicts, prostitutes on every corner 24/7 and only corrupt politicians/judges and lawyers who frequent those prostitutes.
But hey, what do you expect after all these years - short of suddenly finding aliens and zombies, you pretty much have to go after these stories - especially those “ripped from the headlines” plots.
Forgot to mention, but “Oz” fans will remember the fundamentalist from last night’s show was Detective Stabler’s prison lover in OZ. They had quite a few hot, nude scenes together in that show.
I’ve told that Law and Order’s standard technique now for creating stories is to take a current news story about an interesting crime and set it in Manhattan. I’m told that they actually prefer to use crimes that took someplace else. The problem, I’m told, is that the crimes are sometimes fictionalized on Law and Order before they go to trial. This means that during the jury selection for the trial, the judge has to make sure that no juror has seen that episode. (I’m including “I’m told” in each sentence because I don’t have cites for these statements.) Because of this, crimes that aren’t typical of New York end up getting set there.
I felt like they wrote the scene between Stabler & the killer in the interrogation room the way they did just because of their relationship on that show. With them touching heads and all, heh. Keller & Beecher reunited!
Well, one problem is that Law and Order began 20 years ago, and New York City’s crime rate, particularly for violent crime, has changed dramatically during the past two decades.
In 1990, New York City (all five boroughs) had 2,262 murders; in 2009, the figure was 471. In 1990, there were 3,126 rapes; in 2009 there were 1,201. In 1990 there were 44,122 felonious assaults; in 2009, there were 16,662.
The discrepancies are, perhaps, even more noticeable for Manhattan. 503 murders in 1990; 59 in 2009. 689 rapes in 1990; 242 in 2009. 10,089 felonious assaults in 1990; 3,099 in 2009.
These figures taken from the reports on this page. The reports give details of other types of crime as well, and provide figures for some intermediate years.
If much of America still thinks of New York City as a dangerous place, it’s probably at least partly the fault of TV shows that portray the city as if it were still 1990. One of my favorite shows of all time was NYPD Blue, but by the time it finished up in 2005, it was really not giving a very accurate picture of the Greenwich Village/East Village/Soho/Chinatown area where the fictitious 15th Precinct was located, or of Manhattan as a whole. Same with the Law and Order franchise, only worse.