This might almost be a GQ, but really it’s sort of more of a gripe. How many times have people been shot to death on the courthouse steps in Law & Order (usually at the end of the episode, very often an innocent person accused of a crime they didn’t commit being targeted by an outraged but mistaken family member, or a criminal who got acquitted)? After having watched too many reruns, it seems like the death toll has been insanely high. And that’s just the original and SVU.
How many times has this actually happened in the history of New York? I can’t seem to find a good way to count. Has it ever happened in modern times?
Regardless, it has to be one of the laziest plot devices ever on this show: especially when it’s used to satisfy the audience after a bad guy beats the rap. The show can’t just let you believe that a murderer got off… so they seal the deal with an impromtu execution. Grr…
I think Miami Vice was more fond of the courthouse shooting, myself. Law & Order’s shtick was Adam getting a five second phone call in his office, then telling Jack and Paul/Claire/Jamie/Abbie that a central character in that week’s episode has just committed suicide.
Yes, the magic phone tag got obscenely funny after a while. Who the heck is making all of those calls?
Regardless, the police and DA’s in Law and Order really need to go back to school. Usually, you arrest the defendant after you have some actual evidence pointing to him/her. In L&O, they first arrst the suspect, then investigate, arrest several more suspects, investigate more, go to trial, investigate, arrest some more suspects, investigate, and finally convict whichever ones actually did it. Sometimes they leave the last part out.
Supposedly done by Olivia D’Abo’s character. She’s done that a few times in different episodes, once I think swapping insulin with poison in a target’s pocket.
There was one episode where a woman shot the man who kidnapped her daughter. It turned out she had hired him to kidnap her daughter because she wanted to hurt her ex-husband and wanted to keep him from implicating her.
There was an SVU episode where a courtroom got shot up, and in that episode a defendant turned out to be working undercover for ATF.
It’s sort of required to make the “law” part interesting. Law & Order takes all the insane, exciting things that have ever happened in a criminal trial and puts them in each and every trial they conduct. Otherwise it’s just too boring. It’s filing motions and doing discovery et cetera.
L.A. Law actually tried to present the law just as boring as it really was, that show survived on the sordid lives of the lawyers outside court.