In one of her two (corrected from my post above) guest star appearances as a defense atty, (Justice) she twisted the law and her ethics into a knot trying to get the titular justice for a wrongly-convicted person without violating her oath and atty client privilege. She ended up before the ethics board in that one, So what she did in this new episode is within her wheelhouse.
But there’s no way a prosecutor should be able to plead the fifth AND keep her job.
She can always go back to being a judge. I guess they forgot she was. Or Trial By Jury has been determined to not be canon.
Season 1 to 3 or 4 had a longer, more jazzy theme. Criminal Intent switched to a “Power theme” somewhere around season 7. Not sure if Mothership used it as well. At least, until the next season 20 episode I see on WE,
Whoever she looked like, looked good for 61. She just didn’t look like Carey Lowell.
Ripped from the headlines (Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos) with a chunk of #MeToo, but it couldn’t keep a narrative. It was a prosecutor-centric episode, but they didn’t seem to have done any prep work or strategizing AT ALL before going to trial. It was all reaction.
At least Cosgrove wasn’t an asshole this time. He wasn’t much of anything. Manheim’s Lt Dixon is still even more useless. She’s worse than Cragen. She arrests without sufficient evidence and taunts Price to prosecute. That’s not how it works! Anthony Anderson is still sleepwalking through the eps.
All in all it looked like it was written by a rookie screenwriter.
Sounds like they’re using SVU’s “2 for one” style of writing where if they don’t think the original plots are strong enough with the main story they’ll add another subplot … Like when Svu did its take of the high school “pregnancy club” they added a second act thing of having one of the other girls’ mom bully one of the girls to suicide as revenge for disgracing her kid
Both were real-life incidents on the news at the time
Agreed. Possibly even worse than the premiere. Law & Order was never exactly subtle but it’s startling how dumbed-down and expository this episode was. There’s so much declaiming and speechifying about the political significance of every plot point there’s barely any time to have a plot. The Holmes stand-in character was thinly sketched even by L&O standards; the show has served up so many wealthy narcissists as defendants in the past it’s like they don’t feel they have to try anymore.
Episode 3. Did they fire all their legal advisors?
Ripped from the headlines of Gabby Petito.
Why did defense put the defendant on the stand? Why didn’t she ask for a summary dismissal (and get one)? Why was Jack so gung ho for a case with no actual evidence (or even a body)? What was the hurry?
More important, plot wise, if the guy actually did it, why did he keep the empty bag of lye, the shovel, the excess zip ties? Was he just frugal? Why was the boot in his house, but yet the body could never be found? Who posted the fake photo of the dead girl, and are you telling me no one in NYPD could expose it as a fake?
Sloppy writing, again.
Frank is still an inconsistent hot head, and Anthony Anderson still looks like he wishes he was in some other show.
Fun fact: Milena Govich (detective beauty queen) directed, and her aunt has a role as the trial judge.
These episodes are like a HS knockoff version of L&O, written by 17 year olds. In “real” Law and Order, a murder case without a body would be acknowledged to be a tough sell, and yet here the show just shrugs and the jury says “guilty”. To be fair, the empty bag of lye really can’t be explained away, but should it be enough to convict?
And your telling me that in winter, they can’t find a fresh grave? It’s not like this guy is going to lug a body over his shoulder three miles from the road. The body is certainly not far from a road, or his tracks could easily be followed off road. This is his first “spurned date” murder, and he leaves no evidence? Quite the learning curve. And he doesn’t just bash her head in and leave, no he publicly grabs her off the street, drives her around (for what purpose) and murders and buries her. How does he go from “you must love me” to “if I can’t have you no one can” in a matter of…hours? And this is just ignored in the episode. Good writing could have fixed all these issues.
Note that L&O (Criminal Intent) has already did the internet sensation who might have faked her kidnapping (with bonus murder!), though they didn’t have the word “influencer” back then.
I’m hoping in five or 6 episodes, we’ll have a follow up and find she’s not dead. Probably not with this writing group, though.
Yeah. In the Stephen Hill days, there were times when Adam Schiff pushed McCoy to charge police with more serious crimes than McCoy thought was appropriate.
Though by no means a great episode, this last one did not strike me as so glaringly ill-conceived and mishandled as the first two. Though I cringe at hearing characters say things like “It took me a year to reach influencer status!”, like they send you a certificate in the mail or something. Still, the killer was memorably chilling and most of the proceedings were pretty grounded and realistic so long as nobody was taking about social media.
The two detectives are pretty cool, and do find the killer fairly quickly. The Lieutenant ( Camryn Manheim) is wasted as her entire role is to say something like “Bring him in”.
But then, there is little solid evidence the killer did it. However, the killer pleads to some weird ass defense which means he admits it (which isn’t necessary at all, as the cases is weak), such as he ate too many twinkies.
3, Then Price decides to do some crazy end run around the law, and comes up with something new, like charging the twinky company with crimes against humanity. Price is also a huge asshole who treats his brilliant assistant like some used toilet paper he stepped on in the subway.
The great Sam Waterson then offers a word of caution, but always goes along with the crazy end run. Always. Sam then is also wasted, along with poor Camryn Manheim. They might as well just do prerecord bytes of their roles, and the director can splice them in when needed.
Prices big prosecution is simply to make an emotional appeal to the jury, who, inevitably turn in a Guilty verdict (except the one time there was a rather relatable defendant) .
