Is it because she’s a lesbian?
No…Of Course not…No
Suppose you got drunk one night and were walking home. You were crossing a bridge and you stumbled and fell into the river. Somebody jumped into the river to rescue you. As it turned out, they were able to pull you far enough towards shore that you lived. But they got pulled in by the current and drowned.
Would you feel responsible for their death? You didn’t kill them directly. But they would never have been in the river if it hadn’t been for you falling in. And you wouldn’t have fallen in if you hadn’t been drinking.
But that’s a different situation. It’s reasonable to assume that jumping into a river might lead to drowning, but it’s not reasonable to assume that giving someone a ride home will lead to them getting hit by a car. Does taking alcohol out of the equation change anything? If I weren’t drinking but I asked a friend for a ride and she gets hit by a car on her way, I wouldn’t consider myself to have contributed to the death. The only one at fault is the driver who hit her.
New York had the death penalty between 1995 & 2004 cite, it just doesn’t seem to have been used. That was actually a plot point in “Aftershock” - that that was among the first (if not the first) execution in a long, long time. It was one of the things that Claire talked to her father (stepfather?) about when she went to visit him.
Yes, it changes the situation because Lennie would have driven himself home were he not drinking.
In addition, the character was a recovering alcoholic who had already lost his family because of booze and swore off it as being a destructive force. He already felt guilt for the negative effect his drinking had on the lives of others (which was discussed in this episode, btw), so the propensity to feel guilty because of drinking was already extant in the character. He falls off the wagon, decides to gets drunk, and within an hour or two, somebody is dead because they had to drive his drunk ass home.
But people ask for rides all the time. I don’t think it’s a reasonable assumption that driving someone home means that a car accident is likely. If he asked for a ride because he was feeling sick or because his car got towed or for whatever reason and an accident ensued, would people be saying he caused her death? By that rationale, no one should ever ask anyone for a ride because an accident MIGHT ensue.
Yea, if you’re going to start that game, you could argue Lennie is responsible because he didn’t drink enough. Consider: If he actually got falling down drunk, he might have stumbled getting to the car, then the trip home would have been delayed 5-10 seconds, and instead of them getting t-boned, the other drunk driver would have passed right in front, and Claire and Lennie would have said “Boy that was close! That could have been bad!”
Sliding doors, man!
There was an episode where they arrived together in the morning in the same car. I don’t remember what was said or done, but it was pretty obvious they weren’t just carpooling. Also, it wasn’t the first supervisor Kincaid had had a relationship with. So, both of them were familiar with the scenario.
Yes, the one at fault is the driver who hit her, but she was on the street she was on because she was taking Briscoe home. Had she been going to her own place, taking McCoy home (or heading to McCoy’s on her own), she wouldn’t have been at that intersection. Also, Briscoe didn’t even have a scratch. It’s called survivor’s guilt.
But there was the same dilemma then as now-- no method that will pass constitutional muster. I lived in NY for part of that time, and we thought of ourselves as a non-DP state. The DP is again in limbo in NY, due to the fact that there is no method.
I’m not arguing that this is what happened, though. I found the ep. disturbing, and have not seen it since it originally aired, so we’re talking 20 years. I’m sure you are right.
FWIW, it’s the only ep. I ever found to disturbing to rewatch. L&O is one of my favorite shows ever.
I can understand it as survivor’s guilt. But I don’t think it has any basis in reality, and he has no reason to feel guilty or bad. A drunk or reckless driver could just as easily have been on McCoy’s block as on Briscoe’s–it’s just bad luck that it was taking Brisco home that led to an accident.
It reminds me a little of the Sopranos episode where Bobby Baccala’s wife is killed in a car accident. Bobby blames himself at one point because his wife, Karen, was in the accident picking up steaks for dinner, and, weeping, he says that if he’d bought them, she wouldn’t have died. Which is true, technically, but obviously absurd: it’s not reasonable to expect that going to pick up food for dinner would lead to a car accident. By that rationale, he should never have allowed her to get behind the wheel ever.
I think it just shows a need to try to take control of a situation, even when there truly is no one at fault (well aside from the other driver). Sometimes bad things happen. Fundamentally they wouldn’t happen if you weren’t there, but there’s no way to control that.
I don’t remember Claire having a relationship with a previous supervisor, but McCoy definitely did with previous subordinates. In his first episode, Claire mentions that he’d slept with three of his assistants. It turns out that he’d only had three female assistants.
As for Serena, the show wasn’t consistent on her sexuality. She mentions previous relationships with men at least once.
Again, feeling guilty about the effects his drinking had on the lives of others was an established part of Lennie Briscoe’s character. I’m not asking about a random situation in a hypothetical, we’re discussing a TV show with specific personality traits assigned to specific characters. If Lennie didn’t have a drinking problem and never expressed remorse for it, and had a happy life with his wife and daughter, the question probably wouldn’t occur to me.
Later in the series, Rey expresses regret about cheating on his wife with the college student in this episode so the concept of regret for past actions is not exactly an unknown idea in the L&O universe, and the concept of regret for actions that occurred in this episode are also established. But, as noted in the OP, I don’t recall Lennie expressing regret as I remember Rey doing so.
He really was a great actor; his task was to convey either horror-and-grief OR concern-and-pity, since when the scene was filmed it wasn’t certain that the Claire Kincaid character was actually dead. (By several accounts the decision wasn’t made until much later: List of Law & Order characters - Wikipedia )
To convey ‘either’ as circumstances warranted was quite a feat on Orbach’s part.
Claire had a relationship with the judge she clerked for. This was a plot driver in an episode. She must have a thing for both the law and father figures.
As for Serena, you are correct. There were episodes that the handling of the case could have benefited from her lesbian perspective, if she’d been a lesbian in that episode. The talk of dating guys was when she was younger and could have been before she came out to herself.
I think the “I’m a lesbian” thing was sold to the Röhm-bot as a great way to leave the series, a serious, memorable exit, but since they hated the actress it was really an insult.
No, but by the same token you are not a monster, or even weird, if you do not feel guilt (or very much guilt) for something you are not really responsible for, and he was not responsible in any morally meaningful sense.
No citation, I remember Serena being very sympathetic to a homosexual defendant or cause before her exit from the show. Maybe it is when TPTB knew they were writing her out of the show so they were foreshadowing.
There was at least one episode where Southerlyn says “I had this friend who came out in college,” and there was something about the way she said it that sounded a lot like other people I knew who were really talking about themselves, and I thought so at the time, but I figured it was just a joke by the writers. There’s another time when she refers to an “ex,” and that’s all she says. In the context, it sounded like “Wow, Southerlyn was married? didn’t see that coming.” But “ex” can really mean a lot of things.
However, when she finally did come out, when she got fired, it sounded to me like a recent coming out. It’s true that Branch wasn’t there yet when she was hired (Lewin was still interim DA), but if she was fired over her sexuality, and had been a lesbian all along, you’d think it would have happened sooner. They way it happened, and the fact that she asked, it sounded like (and felt like) she had just come out, and gotten fired shortly thereafter, and so was concerned there was a causal relationship that might affect her job search (what kind of references is she going to get?) so she asks an honest question.
Anyway, that’s my backstory, and I’m sticking to it.
Heck, when Jamie Ross started out, she was eagerly pro-capital punishment. Somewhere along the way, she quietly and completely reversed on the issue, and she wasn’t even there all that long.
What kind of boss would Branch be if he admitted, to a lawyer, no less, that she was fired because she was gay? IANAL, but isn’t that a perfect lawsuit waiting to happen?
They really assassinated Serena’s character at the end. Branch and McCoy were practically rolling their eyes at her when they were discussing cases, even if she was raising good points, and they were the same points Jaime or Abby would have raised without objection. Branch would tolerate no dissent, even if he was wrong.
I really though Serena’s last scene was setting the stage for a later episode where she would come back as a defense attorney, a defendant, or a victim.
Both Paul Robinette and Jaime Ross made an appearance after they left the show.
After characters left the show they did give some updates on Stone, Logan, Briscoe, Curtis but others, IIRC, like Lewin, Schiff, Carmichael, Sutherland, Green etc where never mentioned again.