I honestly never realized how ridiculous this show was until I read this thread.
I have to believe it’s gotten worse over the years. I remember getting disillusioned with it after seeing the episode with Swoozie Kurz as the corrupt judge. The writing was so ham-handed. Early on I swear it was better.
If you ask for a lwayer before answering questions or demand that your 4th or 5th ammendement rights be respected, it means you’re guilty. Maybe not the “main” crime but at least you’ve been getting blowjobs from smuggled teen Albanian sex slaves.
Yeah, as was mentioned, some times there will be some really heinous crime discovered in the investigation and then it’s kind of set aside because immediately someone shows up with proof that *this *suspect/victim/crime are *not *the ones around which the primary plot was built, they just sort of stumbled into it by association. You are left to wonder what *did *become of the smuggled teen Albanian sex slave blowjob case.
It looks to me as though those posting have plenty of criticism for the cops but none for pedophiles, rapists, or murderers. Shows me which side the posters are on.
Please, won’t someone think of the poor child actors?
Hey, that brings to mind a question. What about those child actors? Do they usually have any idea what sort of show they are working for? I wonder how much context they get for the roles they’re playing, or if they have to have special briefings to explain what sex abuse is. That would be a weird experience as a parent.
If the pedophiles, rapists, and murderers got as shrill and strident, I’d have plenty to say about them, but with the exception of the NAMBLA knock offs, they’re generally not too obnoxious to listen to.
Bear in mind, the cops and prosecutors on L & O shows are only judgmental about CERTAIN types of crimes and criminals.
I remember an episode in which a former hippie terrorist, who’d killed a cop while carrying out an armed robbery decades ago, was finally found and arrested. DA Sam Watterston wanted to be lenient on her- it was the SIXTIES, man! She was fighting for truth and justice, dude! A dead cop was a small price to pay! And after all, the woman had been living as an ordinary housewife and soccer Mom since then.
Get this- her lawyer was William Kunstler. THE real life William Kunstler, playing himself!
The ONLY character in the episode who had ANY qualms about treating this killer leniently was Texan Angie Harmon, but she kept getting slapped down by idealistic liberal Watterston.
UNTIL… it was revealed that the ex-hippie terrorist did deserve a long prison sentence. NOT because she was a murderer but because (HORRORS!) it turned out she’d become a REPUBLICAN in the meantime!!! At that point, even Kunstler couldn’t find it in his heart to defend her any more!
THAT is the philosophy of Dick Wolf. Murder is forgivable, as long as you’re a leftist. But being a Republican is grounds for life imprisonment.
That episode was hilarious because we got to see McCoy get all tangled up in moral relativism. Repeatedly. And the voice of sanity was Angie Harmon.
The first season or two was really good, but yeah, the writing has got very ham-handed.
Detective Benson seems ridiculously lenient when it comes to hostage takers. Seriously, kill a kid or something and she’s pissed, but take a bunch of hostages, and she’ll bend over backward to come in with you and talk it over, confide how she herself was a child of rape.
And if you’re killing/assaulting a rapist or child molester, they’ve got to arrest you, sure, but they will NOT be happy about it.
So pedophilia, rape, and murder are pardonable to your way of thinking, but being shrill and strident are downright inexcusable. That’s a peculiar set of values.
I know what awaits these cases of arrested development once they set foot in Rikers. Don’t whine to me about cops’ “poor judgment.” :rolleyes:
That was a Claire Kinkaid, not an Abbie Carmichael. And the issue wasn’t whether the woman had been a Republican, it was the fact that she’d signaled one of her co-conspirators to kill a cop. The “she’s been a Republican” was what they used to try to get the other women who’d been in on it with her to testify against her.
McCoy is pretty condescending to Claire, though. He tells he she can’t possibly understand the case because she didn’t live through the sixties, when “Young people thought they were a force in history.”
The episode was called “White Rabbit.”
…and the Gen X’ers watching the show all said to their TV’s “…who turned into pompous windbags.”
At least, that’s what happened in my house. 
I don’t think anyone here actually thinks that. Just that, yeah, of course the rapists/murderers are bad guys. They’re by definition bad people. But Benson, Stabler, and the gang are meant to be the good guys, so when they go getting all righteous and irritating, it’s…well, righteous and irritating. It’s not a question of values, more a question of writing. Why write these characters to be such pains when we’re meant to sympathize with them?
The more I watch, the more I realize that pretty much everyone gets a caricature treatment. Evil corporate white guy! Dumbass teenagers. Blinged out rapper. It’s lazy writing, but it’s hella addictive. Voyeurism at its best.
Though again, to be fair, I will never not sympathize with Ice T and Munch.
<<Though again, to be fair, I will never not sympathize with Ice T and Munch.>>
Yeah…they are the quintessential odd couple.
That they are. 
The one where the girl shoots her mother’s rapist/killer and then Stabler shoots her? I liked the follow up, where IAB investigates Stabler (upon which he quits), and the captain, with a straight face, says something like, “I could stand by him if it was his first or even second good shooting, but it was his sixth good shooting.” Ah, Stabler, you knucklehead.
You watch it to see a cop get shot? What did you think of The Onion Field?
You never actually read what you are responding to, do you?