The saying is that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, so I agree it was implausibly bad luck that Cutter found himself facing a grand jury made up of vegetarians. Or civil libertarians.
Everybody writes about those periodically. The New Yorker did a piece about them last year, and the depiction of Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, was not at all positive. I know L&O took a lot of its ideas from the Post, but I found myself wondering if that article influenced this episode.
It would have been an interesting final show if Lt. Van Buren told the guys, “Oh, fuck it. Go get a brew. If you hear sounds of explosions and screams, check it out.”
I think the whole Leno thing messed it up for some of the used-to-be-at-10/9Central shows. I used to watch L&O, but then when they moved it around to make room for Leno this fall, it wasn’t at a good time for me to watch anymore. They moved it back, but by then I had other shows I watched at that time…
I hope they do some kind of two-hour finale wrap-up. This last episode was good, and a fine end to the current season, but as the series finale for a 20 year run, it deserved something bigger.
I’ve wordered what a Law & Order episode set in the aftermath of a Romero-style zombie outbreak would be like. The NYPD & National Guard would more or less have the situtation under control, but there’d still be the odd zombies running around or someone harboring a zombie relative. There’d be the radom slice-of-life opening; somebody would get attacked by a zombie, police would terminate it, then sexy ME lady would determine that it’s original cause of death was homicide, and so on.
Speaking of which, if any character was going to continue, I’d love to see Rogers (the “sexy ME lady”) jump networks to CSI: New York, which might actually make that show barely watchable.
Dick Wolf is looking for another venue to continue the show (USA?). If he can’t find somewhere to continue the show as is, he plans on doing a L&O Mini-Movie kind of thing to wrap it up.
Yeah, Rip. The first episode aired that night you tipped back a few with Henry Hudson and his men while playing ninepins up in the hills. Did you think Sam Waterston had aged that much overnight?
Dick Wolf was hoping to get TNT to pick up the show but was unsuccessful (TNT is tightening the purse strings, it just announced major budget cuts for its cop show Southland).
One factor in NBC’s decision to cancel (L&O wasn’t doing that badly in the ratings) was the spinoff Law & Order: Los Angeles which is coming in the Fall. It’s clear that they’re hoping this will pick up the all-important younger audience which L&O wasn’t attracting in enough numbers.
A group called the Alliance for Justice presented the cast and crew of L&O their annual “Champion of Justice” award. There’s a very nice story and video with comments by some of the cast here.
One of the teachers in this episode appears to be based on a teacher in my hometown.
Like Law & Order science teacher Ron Kozlowski, Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater was accused of “branding a cross” onto a student’s arm with a Tesla coil.
Both Kozlowski and Freshwater responded that they never branded anyone and had only done a harmless demonstration as they had on hundreds of students previously.
Although the main part of the drama of “Rubber Room” was on identifying and apprehending the suspect, it was good to see the show’s producers shed some light on the issue of teachers’ careers being harmed by “nuisance complaints” from students.
If you are interested in Freshwater’s story, you can [watch a video of him addressing the school board.](http://
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