Law & Order fails to do the right thing with disappointing Cosby-inspired episode
The season 21 premiere is such a mess, you’ll need to binge-watch past seasons as a palate cleanser.
TV Reviews Law & Order
The best Law & Order cold opens are like a minute-long, one-act play: A couple argues about an upcoming visit from in-laws; construction workers talk about striking it rich in the lottery; some kids skip school to see a movie. We’re quickly pulled into their New York stories, and then… they find the body.
Law & Order’s season 21 premiere, “The Right Thing,” abandons the classic cold open format and focuses instead on the unsympathetic victim, Henry King (Norm Lewis), an obvious Bill Cosby stand-in. There’s no horrified discovery of the body or any mystery over motive. Detectives Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) and Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan) can head straight to the obvious suspects, the 40 women who King is accused of raping.
“The Right Thing” is the series’ 457th episode and at least 456 of those were better plotted. Classic Law & Order might’ve ripped stories from the headlines but the resolutions were never pedestrian. You might’ve safely assumed that King’s killer was anyone but one of his victims or that the murder would have nothing to do with his crimes. Unfortunately, it’s just that straightforward.
I briefly thought we might get a shocking twist worthy of Law & Order at its best: A woman caught on film arguing with King before he died is none other than Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), who starred on the show during its seventh and eighth seasons. Ross was lead prosecutor on Fox’s rape trial, and she fills in narratively for the Pennsylvania DA who offered Cosby immunity in exchange for his testimony in a civil case. She feels guilty because King’s conviction was vacated, and once released from prison, King vowed to destroy her. Did a fan favorite character kill King? No, of course not. That might’ve been interesting.
When the detectives speak with Ross, Cosgrove asks her point blank if she killed King because she screwed up the case against him. This is blunt-force interrogation that only works on bad cop shows, which Law & Order never was. He doesn’t subtly ask where she was when King was murdered. He just insults her and she promptly throws them out of her office. That’s some solid police work, Frank.
This whole episode is a master class in “How To Make Audiences Hate Your New Character.” Cosgrove is an insensitive jerk to someone longtime viewers know and like. Earlier, he gets pissed off when people whip out their phones when he’s aggressive with a Black witness. He whines that because he’s white, if he says or does the wrong thing, his career is over. Statistically, he has a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice in the same spot than he does of getting fired because he pushed around a Black kid.
What passes for a conflict in the episode hinges around a confession Cosgrove coerces from the killer. He flat-out lies and claims no prosecutor would pursue a case against one of King’s victims. This is far different from when male detectives would play to a rapist’s arrogance and vanity or pretend to understand why a suspect killed his unfaithful wife. Cosgrove emotionally manipulates a rape victim, one who another man already violently betrayed. Maybe we could forgive Eddie Green for this a few seasons into his tenure, but it’s Cosgrove’s first episode. I hate this guy.
Law & Order has been accused of promoting “copaganda.” The show’s cops are depicted as noble and reasonable when their real-life brethren in the NYPD often aren’t. They are avengers, not enforcers. They don’t patrol the streets looking for petty crimes, even during the peak of Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policies. We don’t see them stop and frisk random people of color. It’s unclear, though, if the returning series seeks to perhaps puncture this myth or has simply failed to create likable new characters. Where Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson) were personable with an endless supply of dry wit, Cosgrove and the detectives’ new supervisor Lt. Kate Dixon (Camryn Manheim) are stiff and distant. Past detectives were mostly relatable as working-class stiffs who did their job every day without complaint or any expectation of glory. Cosgrove and Dixon have visible contempt for a seemingly ungrateful public and are suspicious of anyone outside the force, even the prosecutors.
This becomes an issue when Executive Assistant DA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) chooses not to use Cosgrove’s corrupt confession, even though DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) points out that it’s perfectly legal for cops to lie. Price is apparently one of those “progressive crusader” DAs that Dixon resents. There’s no clever legal maneuvering here, as the killer’s defense is effectively “I didn’t do it.” In the past, the defense attorney might’ve gone for “not guilty by reason of mental defect” or a more plausible self-defense argument (her rapist is free and has sworn revenge against those who helped imprison him). We might’ve had a more compelling courtroom debate over whether confessions given without a lawyer present should count at all. Instead, the inevitable conviction feels completely unearned.
It’s absolutely mind-boggling that Law & Order’s first episode after a 12-year break features its so-called “progressive” prosecutor successfully convicting a broken woman who killed her rapist, a powerful man who escaped actual justice. Is that what anyone wants to see? McCoy and his predecessor Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) and McCoy convicted serial rapists and racist murderers. They went after the mob and the gun manufacturers. Former cast members referred to each episode’s conviction as “killing the bull.” I’d rather have seen a fictional Cosby definitively answer for his crimes.
The episode closes with Price and ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) feeling conflicted over their legal victory. Price gives a short speech that invokes the episode title and then stares wistfully at the courthouse. It’s a blah ending to a blah episode that only superficially resembles the series I love.
Stray Observations
- S. Epatha Merkerson is a regular on Dick Wolf’s other series, Chicago Med, so she couldn’t return as Lt. Van Buren. Her absence leaves a gaping hole in series that feels even larger than when Jerry Orbach quit in 2004 for health reasons. That’s probably because Camryn Manheim’s Dixon is absolutely dreadful. Her approach to the character reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Constanza explains how you can convince coworkers you’re busy by looking annoyed all the time.
- Ross left the DA’s office to work as defense attorney. She was last seen as a judge in Law & Order: Trial By Jury. It’s not clear when and why she became a prosecutor again.
- Not-so-minor quibble: A separate prosecutor ignored the deal a previous DA made with Cosby. Here, Ross makes the deal in good faith and then changes her mind after more victims come forward. No wonder the conviction was vacated. It’s a miracle Ross still has her license.
- “The Right Thing” pretty much ignores the racial issues surrounding the Cosby case.
- I pity Det. Bernard having to work with two obvious Trump supporters.
- I’ve had nothing positive to say about Frank Cosgrove, so this might seem especially petty: But not even the guy’s name works. “Mike Logan,” “Lennie Briscoe,” “Rey Curtis,” “Ed Green” were all descriptive and fitting of their characters. They said “New York detective,” while Frank Cosgrove sounds like a mad scientist.
- I’m disappointed that Jack McCoy would buy the “defund” hysteria. In reality, the New York City police budget increased last year. The homicide department certainly never lacked for resources. The closest the police came to “defunding” was when all municipal budgets faced cuts because of COVID-19. New York public schools were hit hard.
147 Comments
Ugh, I was afraid of this.
Yeah, it was not great. I think the biggest problem was Donovan’s character was practically a cartoon, but they didn’t do Jamie Ross any favors either, by making her betray the Justice System, completely inconsistent with her character.And how on earth did she get a job as ADA anyways after she pulled that stunt betraying her client in the OG series?Plus, how did we NOT get a scene with Jack and Jamie? Just Jack glaring at her in the courtroom.Well, I guess the only way to go is up from here.Edit: Oh yeah, I completely agree with the “defund” McCoy angle—his Jack McCoy was frequently accused of trying to take down the police department, and now he’s in lockstep with them? Completely inconsistent with his character.
Yeah, it was bad that it wasn’t Jack who went to talk to Jamie…and ridiculous that they didn’t even consult him about how to approach her.
Maybe their parts were filmed separately for a COVID issue?
They needed a scene of Jack and Jamie talking over scotch at some hoidy toidy private club.
Was Jamie actually a popular character back in the day? I remember the Jack/Claire pairing (with its innuendo) being popular, and Abby’s conservatism butted up against Jack’s politics effectively, and then Serena was sort of the voice of the people even if she wasn’t wholly beloved…but Jamie was just kind of overly serious and ostensibly politically liberal but mostly just a rule follower. I suppose I buy that she’d be most likely to stick to the letter of the law without considering the nuances.
I liked Jamie.But then again, I also like Licence to Kill, so I might not be illustrative of the general consensus.
No I’m with you. Jamie was great, but I’m also a huge Licence to Kill fan. I liked her way more than Abbi, thought Jamie was a more fleshed out character.
Ross left the DA’s office to work as defense attorney. She was last seen as a judge in Law & Order: Trial By Jury. It’s not clear when and why she became a prosecutor again.Being on the bench made a lot more sense for her character, someone trying to juggle the demands of a legal career and being a single mother.But maybe I’ve hit on the solution. When her daughter left home, she could go back to the DA’s office, which she always seemed to enjoy.
Jack/Claire wasn’t innuendo. They were in a relationship, and her death fucked him up. He went for blood and collaborated with a corrupt judge on drunk driver case because of it. I’ve always loved the Jamie seasons. I always saw her character as an idealist losing her motivation. Someone who loved the law trying to maintain that love as the law continually fails to meet her expectations.
I don’t think she was around long enough to be beloved—-2 seasons, IIRC.
I think your read is correct. I’m fairly sure this is a part they felt fine to include Jamie for, but isn’t something they’d have been prepared to do to Abby or Connie. Jamie was likely chosen because it’s another recognizable character to include in the first episode, but a disposable one too.
The cast had gelled so well in the final two years that it’s hard to watch the new crew. Connie and Cutter were perfection together. Lupo and Bernard were a great buddy comedy. McCoy was starting to grapple with aging and Van Buren had a health scare and a lovely late-in-life romance. When I heard Hugh Dancy give up on hiding his accent I decided that no one gave a crap.
Jamie Ross had mix reaction from fans. One hand, there was a lot of people who were bitter at how they got rid of Claire Kincaid (killing her off randomly). But she was an interesting character, the former defense attorney turned DA. Sadly they FUBARed the character after the Not-OJ three parter by suddenly having her mired down in a subplot where her ex-husband was suing for custody of their kid and wrote her off as far as her giving up her career to keep her kid from living with her obnoxious moralless defense attorney father.
She had her moments but her actions in the return episode make sense in that Jamie was a person who was radicalized when she realized that the monsters she was defending in court were going back out onto the streets to kill again.
People hated her at first because Claire was so popular and then Abby completely dominated, but she’s had a lot of people warm up to her in the years since, enough to appear in Trial by Jury.
I think the problem with Jamie Ross was the show never missed an opportunity to beat you over the head about how “good looking” she was.Like that episode where the old judge hit on her and McCoy got tossed in lockup.
I get that she’s not going to be part of the regular cast, but how did this episode not end with a conversation between McCoy and Ross….or anything more than a disappointed glance from across the courtroom?
I’m confused by the Cosgrove character because they tried it before with Fontana before and it didn’t work then either. Even when Dennis Farina effectively sold Fontana’s temper as a symptom of having seen too much and losing faith in people, he was still unpopular enough that the writers had to lighten him up. Plus Bernard was always the more conservative one in the Lupo/Bernard pairing so I’m confused as to why his new partner leans even more in that direction. The last few years of the show were great for McCoy; he had to grapple with his former hotheadedness in the form of Mike Cutter. It wasn’t fun to see him show up only to defend shitty police work.
At least Fontana had a sense of humor and that flashy is-this-cop-on-the-take style to make his character more entertaining. Cosgrove is uptight and actively unpleasant so far with no personality to make up for it. I’m also cracking up at the stray observation about his name, although for me I’m annoyed because “Cosgrove” reminds me of Ken from Mad Men so this Cosgrove sucks even more in comparison.The whole episode was weak, but was it just me or did the cop half feel especially boring? There wasn’t much in the way of interesting leads/interviewees (besides Ross) or banter between the partners. Not that all the old episodes were gold but it seemed like there were a lot of key elements missing from this episode.
The Mad Men thing is on point. Perhaps Frank is Ken’s racist conservative nephew?
I felt like they were drawing a distinction between Fontana (who they presented as dirty) and Cosgrove (who they presented as a dick but who wasn’t actually dirty in this episode.)
My five dollar bet is that they’re setting Cosgrove up as an abrasive jerk who’s ultimately a “good apple” (see, for instance, his “phones DO make us accountable”) and my twenty dollar bet is that they’ll solidify this in episode five by having him be the one driving investigation of a “bad apple.”I agree the cop half was a bit by the numbers, but I don’t think that’s so out of the ordinary. My impression is that the cops are supposed to be fun enough to spend time with that you enjoy watching them go through a by the numbers investigation, but Cosgrove was just mind-blowingly off-putting. Fingers crossed they tone it down fast.
You’re probably right about how they’re setting up Cosgrove. And/or they’re going to give him a backstory or family life with hardship to make him more sympathetic. He just feels so blah, hopefully they figured out in future episodes how he can better click with Bernard.Yeah, Law & Order has their standard template and this is a network procedural after all, but past episodes typically had more intriguing things turning up in the investigation, or at least interesting interactions with potential suspects. Jamie Ross and the dead guy’s wife were great but it felt like they jumped to the actual murderer pretty quickly and easily. Just “hey we happened to find this perfect camera angle, and the cigarette butt is still there with a viable DNA sample!” And the cops weren’t entertaining enough, like you said, to make up for it. Briscoe is the gold standard, but cmon, no wry comments at all?
When the episode was airing, a number of people thought on Twitter that Cosgrove deliberately mentioned the confession in spite of Price saying not to not because he wanted to be a dick to Price, but because he was deliberately trying to engineer a mistrial, thus keeping his promise to the lady.
That would have actually been a cool twist.
The writing was abysmal – particularly for the cop half. The scene in the park or whatever, shortly after Gosgrove roughs up the young black man, and the two detectives talk/argue… the dialogue is so damn clunky. The show also just doesn’t feel like it takes place in a lively city at all. The environments around the actors feel dead and lifeless and overly polished. The old seasons had stuffy sets filled to the brim with people moving around and lots of activity to make the city feel really alive. This episode had nothing at all like that – and it felt super dead.
Well said, I agree completely. That slice of life feel was sorely missing. I don’t watch SVU much but caught the first ten minutes last night and found myself appreciating that for the most part, they still have the classic L&O vibe there.And yeah that scene in the park was corny as hell. I mean part of the charm for me is seeing the corny ways Law & Order attempts to be be relevant but that felt especially uninspired.
Agreed on the corniness of it, too. I don’t have an issue if they go corny with it, I guess, but there has to be SOMETHING substantive, but there was nothing. The show felt like a shadow of… well, not even its old self, frankly. It felt like a cheaper, crappier version of some other crappier network show that has no history. Someone mentioned elsewhere in these comments that the old episodes had that 70’s cinematic feel to it, and I think that’s right. During the Briscoe era, those New York interview scenes really felt alive, and it wasn’t just because of the witty comments, but also because there was strong pacing, and the city itself was a lively character in the first half of every episode. Absolutely none of that was on display in the new episode. It’s a shame.
I agree, it felt like someone’s fan-fic idea of a Law & Order episode. Law & Order got 2 things right – the genuine mystery of the crime procedural as they peel back the onion, and the thoughtful discussion of law. It was such a great format and why people still can turn it off but I fear SVU’s melodrama has dragged the original into the mud. They kind of re-tooled the cold opening back in Lupo’s first season, so I’m disappointed they didn’t reinstate the blank canvas discovery.
This episode was so broadly written, there was never anything to ponder, no focus as to what made this case worth exploring. I thought the coerced confession would be explored, but there were so many balls in the air – including a completely wasted appearance by Jamie Ross just to up the drama. The whole thing felt rushed. Maybe it’s what the network thinks viewers in 2022 wants L&O to be, maybe prestige TV writers are no longer working on network shows.If I had never seen an episode of Law & Order before seeing this one, I would not want to watch another (let alone binge it all day long).
Yeah, agreed on all counts. I never could get into the other spinoff L&O series for similar reasons. For SVU specifically, I didn’t have much interest in the characters or the notion of constantly seeing sex crimes. I also think it loses my interest a bit due to the lack of the courtroom and legal stuff. The original show’s formula is damn fantastic.I also agree that it’s likely that the strongest writers are probably not working on network shows. I can’t exactly say it’s a shame, because I haven’t cared about network TV in quite a long time for that very reason. But when bringing back a classic like L&O, it does make me sad a bit to think this was the best they can do.
The minimal sets is likely for Covid safety reasons.
Man, I hated Fontana. Good comparison here. He sucked. Just surly for no fucking reason, and also suspiciously slimy.
Funnily enough, before playing Fontana on Law and Order, Dennis Farina was a real-life police officer for 18 years in Chicago including being a detective.
Fontana was hated because he wasn’t Briscoe. Simple as that. He came on, was a wiseass, and said the one-liners. People thought he was a shallow replacement of Briscoe at the time.
Sam Waterston looks way too old to still be working that gig in the show. Love him, but…
He actually doesn’t look that much older than the last time we saw him in Season 20. Looks like he had some work done.
I thought this too. How long is he supposed to work? In Season 5, he already has 24 years of experience when he’s hired by Adam Schiff. Then he’s there for 15 seasons (assuming a season is at least a full year), then we have the twelve year show hiatus (where I assume he’s still working) and then this season. That’s 51 years!
Well, Biden has been in politics for 50 years.But yeah, it would make more sense to have McCoy as NY Attorney General or a higher office instead of still being the DA.
The DA’s office retirement plan must suck.
his pension must not have a cap
It’s not without precedent, Robert Morgenthau (the Manhattan DA from 1975-2009) was 90 when he retired.
In real life, Robert Morgenthau was New York DA from 1975-2009. He retired at the age of 90 (and was partial inspiration for Adam Schiff).
Yep. Lawyers are known for working until they just fucking die at their desks. I’m a lawyer and I’ve already decided that’s not happening to me. I don’t know what’s wrong with those mofos. Enjoy your life, damn.
Ever heard of Robert Morgenthau? He was 90 — 90 — when he left the position of New York district attorney. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morgenthau
He’s about as old as Adam Shiff was when he left the show.
Original L&0 has been off the air for 12 years. That’s long enough that they should have to start numbering seasons from scratch again like Doctor Who.
I love Jack McCoy, and I admit I haven’t watched this–but everyone in the system buys the “defund” hysteria. I support it myself, but I know it’s a minority opinion that is often at best a rhetorical handicap with any one who doesn’t already agree.
FFS – Camryn Manheim? Really? She’s an absolute black hole in everything she show up in. My interest level just dropped substantially.
She was good in Person of Interest.
Now shes just the Least Person of Interest.
Also The Practice.
I’m choosing to believe she’s playing the same character she did on Stumptown, despite a complete lack of supporting evidence.
She was good on Person of Interest.
You’re a fucking loser
Trying to determine the confluence of thoughts that led to this reaction to this comment.
You should learn to write like less of a dipshit.
Is it just me, or does Hugh Dancy look like a parallel universe Neil Patrick Harris in that photo above.
Yeah I thought he looked a bit weird in that photo. Has it really been that long since Hannibal ended?
I thought he was the little boss guy from Murphy Brown tbh. I forgot that guy is probably 80 by now.
I thought he was the guy who played Dewey Crowe on Justified.
Definitely not just you. Thought it was NPH until I saw the caption.
Seeing Dancy in the episode made me think that the producers wanted to get Linus Roache back and he said no. Dancy really seemed to be emulating Roache.
I was thinking more Willem Dafoe myself.
Hah – I scrolled down to post that the guy in the header image looked like NPH and Willem Dafoe merged into one person.
Yep, me too. I keep looking at it, it’s like that optical illusion where you see a duck and then a rabbit. Darcy, Patrick, Darcy, Patrick. Weird. They don’t look anything like each other, but in this picture they sure do.
He looks like someone at the cloning facility mixed together the samples of NPH and a Malcom in the Middle era Bryan Cranston…
Correct me if I’m wrong but surely the investigation of the death of a rapist would be investigated by Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, right?
No? They’d investigate the rapes.
It was a homicide, not a rape. SVU would have handled the previous rape cases against him, in theory.
So basically, this was a bungled SVU investigation turned homocide.
Well, this is depressing. I’ll wait for the review of episode 2 before I bother with this.
Episode 2 was better, but not great. Episode 3 finally felt like old-school L&O, the case had a chance to breath.
I’m a huge fan of classic Law and Order so I was very excited about this.There were a few issues but overall I enjoyed it. It moved at a solid clip and it was great to see Jack again.
I agree! Review’s a bit harsh. Give it a few episodes to tone down Cosgrove and the let the detectives gel. I thought the Order side was pretty solid from the jump, actually.
Big fan of the Original Recipe also, but this episode wasn’t very good. Cosgrove is an asshole, and Bernard’s role appears to be simply to react and comment on Cosgrove’s assholery. The ADA’s were boring. They had Ross take the fifth on the stand but never brought it up again.I’ll give it a couple more episodes, but really a terrible start. Maybe that’s why I almost never watch anything on the big 4 networks anymore except for sports.
Fully agree. The Ross taking the fifth thing was really annoying. I’m pretty sure that there’d be a chambers conference or something with the judge to decide on some details about that. Instead, we got the prosecutor asking questions and the judge immediately telling the prosecutor to “back off” during questioning, with zero followup.The writing in this episode was really pretty bad. Also, McCoy’s takes throughout seemed in sharp contrast to his behaviors in some of the older seasons when he was far more willing to shit on cops who did a bad job or who seemed like bad seeds.Major network shows do really suck, and I’m not sure why, but I feel like those shows ONLY ever have hacky writing.
Moreover, the 5th is an all or nothing deal. Once you start giving testimony, you can’t plead the 5th.
Oh really? I did not know that. Cool to know, though that also means that the scene in question is even more of a deviation from reality.
Not quite. You can give testimony then take the 5th when you’re asked something you don’t want to answer. However, once you’ve taken the 5th, you can’t start answering questions again; you have to take the 5th for EVERYTHING thereafter. Prosecutors will try to trip you up by asking you a seemingly innocuous question after you’ve taken the 5th, because you’re hosed if you answer it. When the mob-connected Vegas casino manager Lefty Rosenthal was called before Congress, he took the 5th for dozens of questions, even one asking him if he was left-handed: they were trying to get him to answer SOMETHING so they could claim he’d waived his protections. This was also used to great effect in the OJ trial when defense attorney Gerald Uelmen asked Mark Fuhrman “Did you fabricate any evidence?” after Fuhrman had already taken the 5th a few minutes earlier. Uelmen knew damn well Fuhrman had to take the 5th for everything afterwards. If Judge Ito wasn’t such a pathetic starfucker, he never would have allowed that last question.
Same. A total kitchen sink episode so there was no time to explore the actual case. Just a lot of mindless melodrama. Law & Order may not have been subtle, but it was usually thoughtful, and this episode never explored any of the legal or social issues it clunkily brought up.
“It’s absolutely mind-boggling that Law & Order’s first episode after a 12-year break features its so-called “progressive” prosecutor successfully convicting a broken woman who killed her rapist, a powerful man who escaped actual justice. Is that what anyone wants to see?”Law and Order barely ever resulted in an outcome everybody was happy with, especially the viewer, sometimes even being a real downer. It was what made the show good in the first place. If you’re watching it to get “vengeance” on current topics you never got it really.
Yep. SVU is definitely the wish fulfillment leg of the franchise.. I remember with the mothership often feeling like, “Okay, we’re halfway through the season, is it time for a token ‘satisfying ending’ episode yet?” They were rare.
I don’t know about rarely. I’d say they more often than not achieved “justice.”
Well, looks like some things are better off left in the past after all…[ScottyEnn closes the door of his office and walks into the elevator, shaking his head ruefully at the state of the world. Fade to black.]EXECUTIVE PRODUCERDICK WOLF
Seriously, though, they got rid of the scene where a couple of random schmucks discover the body? Good to see that they’re apparently making it clear this new version is bullshit from the start, then.
Do they still have scenes where they ask random bartenders if they’ve seen this woman, last Friday, on a night when over 500 people came through the bar, and said bartender immediately knows her and exactly what she did, wore, and who she met with?
I don’t know, but apparently they’ve doubled the budget for guys whose only job appears to be lifting boxes into the back of trucks.
“Yeah, Jim. Good guy. Taught me to lift wit’ ma knees. Strange, he didn’t show up to day. Hey, he’s not in any kinda trouble, is he?”
“He’s got bigger problems than back-ache right now.” [/Lennie Briscoe]
“I don’t get it. How does a family man from Queens, good box-stackin’ job, end up tied to a Chevy engine block in the Hudson?”
Ugh, they do, except it happens offscreen. They roll into a scene having just talked to the bartender and he remembers seeing her and also they’re good friends!
Yup, they had a similar scene. Although we didn’t get to meet the bartender directly. There was just a passing remark about how the bartender corroborated that the dead guys wife was in the bar at 10pm, so it couldnt have been her that killed him.
And what they talked about and how she ran off crying and he then asked to use the phone.
There was a bartender who provided an alibi – OFF SCREEN.
I mean have these people even seen a Law & Order?
“Boy, I sure do hate emptying these garbage pails.”“You and me both pal. AW JEEZ!”[cut to whirling police siren]
They actually got rid of that in the last few seasons of the original, thanks to the success of SVU and CI. There were a couple episodes where it was done magnificently, though.
They actually elminated the random discovery in the cold open in Lupo’s first season, which is when the show first started going down hill. I was hoping they’d reinstate it and correct that mistake with this season but nope. It’s like eliminating the pre-credit sequence in a Bond movie. The whole procedural was missing – no dock worker answering questions while he continues to unload bananas or whatever? Come on.
There are plenty of L&O episodes where we don’t see random people discovering the body – the victim is introduced (still alive), and then we see the cops on the scene being shown the body. This was used just as much as the “random people discovering the body” intro.
This episode really sucked. It seems like whenever shows like this come back, the creators (often ones who were never among the more prolific writers of the shows when they actually aired) feel honor-bound to write a bunch of episodes and they’re always the worst ones. (A big example is The X-Files whose reboot episodes actually written by Chris Carter were uniformly terrible.) Let’s hope he doesn’t write much more, because it seems like he doesn’t have the greatest read on what people who aren’t septuagenarian multi-multi-millionaires want to see. It feels like he’s writing to scold us all on not being so mean to police and choosing to do so by introducing some of the least sympathetic cops this show has ever had.Almost nothing in this episode worked. Price is treated like a spineless schmuck for being one of the few characters with actual, y’know, ethics. The female ADA whose SISTER WAS RAPED AND MURDERED is like “Pfft. Whatever, dipshit, let’s just use the coerced confession.” Dixon and Cosgrove (my name issue is I can’t hear it without hearing “I’m Ken! Cosgrove! Accounts!” don’t work at all and I’d already love to see both bounced for a quick retool like when they realized Law & Order: LA sucked and they killed Skeet Ulrich, randomly moved Alfred Molina from DA to detective and like ditched everyone else but Corey Stoll. McCoy (literally everyone’s favorite Law & Order character ever) might have come off as bad if he’d been in more than a minute and a half of the episode.
Yeah, I was so annoyed by McCoy saying, “If it’s legal, it’s ethical.” NO IT FUCKING ISN’T. McCoy from 12 years ago would never say that.
If you think Cops weren’t lying to suspects on the show pre-hiatus…you and I watched different versions of Law & Order.
Of course they were. I don’t think I suggested they weren’t. But the law and ethics are two different animals. There are plenty of things that are legal but unethical. A prime example are US campaign finance laws.
The issue is not that the cops never lied to suspects on Law & Order before, it’s that this dude did it in such shitty way. And from a story perspective, it felt way too easy. I’d expect a survivor who was already failed by the justice system to be a lot more skeptical. That was another flaw of this episode, I feel like old episodes would’ve spent more time exploring her anger and bitterness about the situation (along with the public’s—I can just picture Schiff throwing a newspaper with a headline sympathetic to the woman onto McCoy’s desk).
Yes it is
McCoy did a ton of shady shit to get convictions. The fake trial after Borgia was murdered, challenging the legality of a gay couple’s marriage to avoid spousal privilege, etc. Not out of character.
Except it is out of character. There were plenty of instances where McCoy argued that things were unethical even if the law allowed them. Many episodes and qualms he had with defense tactics, etc., or with the police’s tactics, etc., kind of tackled those questions.
It’s especially hilarious considering how many times McCoy got dragged before the Disciplinary Committee for being unethical and stretching the rule of law.
Still better that the last 5 years of SVU. Jeez, let the whole stabler-benson thing go. ruined the series when that became a thing. I liked when they wrote Olivia WITHOUT him around. sounds like the author just wants this show to be a bad fanfiction
Well, as their key audience demographic is dead of old age, not sure the network cares about what the critics are saying.
I think what this show actually needed was the perspective of the public defenders office and how they deal with evidence provided by the police and actually show less of the police. With good writers that could really showcase how flawed police procedure is, it could even show how often it hurts the DA’s chances too, it doesn’t always have to have the perspective of a falsely accused person.
You’re not talented and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
lol
Yeah, it’s funny that they were going to make a show called For the Defense, I think, that centered on defense attorneys, but it got cancelled before an episode even aired. I guess they realize there’s no taste for that sort of thing on shitty network TV.
There was going to be a show about that, but it got scrapped and is currently being reworked into a different, unannounced spinoff.
I actually thought the Cosgrove character was fine. If you’re going to depict police at all accurately, they aren’t going to act like the officers in Brooklyn Nine-Nine — universally agreeing that the Black Lives Matter movement is good and that it shatters their positive view of policing. I think the bigger problem is the Price character (Dancy). He’s clearly meant to be idealistic, but he comes off as high-handed and incompetent. I say that as someone who would likely agree with Price over beers a lot more than Cosgrove.
Sounds like Dick Wolf is mad at “woke” culture.
If you died tomorrow it would be a net positive for the world.
Everyone has said everything I pretty much agree with, but also: why does this show look like this? It’s shot so blandly and flat, and the colors look… weird? Not that SVU or OG are DP stalwarts but their looks are specific and snapped to the tone of their respective shows, so when they do go for broke, it’s worth noting (there’s a moment in OG where Stabler is speaking with a therapist and it’s shot with the light cleaning focused on one side of his face so he has this light/darkness Two-Face vibe going on, and it’s really distinct).
But this looked bland and boring. Where’s the hard close-ups? The handheld shakey cam? The sharp use of rack focusing? Why is it both brightly AND darkly lit? Original Recipe L&O maximized it’s look to reflect the casual grittiness of NY and its grisly MOIDERS. This looks silly. (The shot that tracked Cosgrove and Price towards the bright-ass windows as they argued in between those paintings was really good though.)Also I would bet this was a rejected SVU script repurposed for this episode.
I haven’t seen the episode yet, but this doesn’t surprise me and confirms my fears for this reboot. Original L&O was filmed like a 70s cinema, the audience was an observer on the streets and in the court room. But not only did the final season of L&O back in 2010 slowly ditch the iconic format that made it so memorable, it also looked increasingly cheaper. It’s definitely a trend in network TV to look less like film (maybe it’s cheap digital cameras?) – you can practically see the set lights in the courtroom overhead.
I watched the episode after this and completely agree that it looks… weird. It’s also too quiet. Where’s the bustle and background noise? I noticed that in a scene in the police station, and while people did eventually appear in the background, it didn’t look or sound like any of the characters were in an actual room full of other people.
I. I…I googled “MOIDERS”, dammit.
In my own defense, I do that so often reading political articles that it’s a very swift, instinctive – not to say lazy – reaction that happens before I give something much thought.Moreover, I believe it is correctly spelled “moiduuuhs”.
Ok, so I’m caught up. Episode 01 was abysmal. Episode 02 was better, but still bad – the number of camera angles in some scenes was headache inducing. Episode 03 finally had some room to breath, it felt close to classic L&O. They still need to tone down the dramatic music but I’m hopeful the show has its legs back.
I hope that they don’t cancel it before we get the episode where [person from main cast member’s past played by past L&O cast member/big tv/movie star] shows up accused of a crime and asks them to “help them out for old time’s sake” and the main character says “no.”
I was a big OG fan since I was in high school. This was bad on MANY levels. Writing was bad. New characters didn’t work. ZERO humor. And what was going on with the lighting and filming? It looked completely different, and not in a good way.
“I pity Det. Bernard having to work with two obvious Trump supporters.”Idk, Bernard was always a little trumpy himself. He was pro-life. He was softly anti-immigration. He was very religious.Also, so yeah I came in about 15 minutes late so I missed the beginning but boy was this dreadful. I’m a die-hard L&O Original Recipe fan; so much so that my friends make fun of me (“what are you doing? watching Law and Order I bet.”), but this was just bad. Burn Notice’s character was just godawful, I couldn’t figure out what Manheim thought she was doing, and wtf was up with Jamie Ross? No explanation as to how and why she ended up back at the DA’s office, and what was going on with her office? We spent 20 years looking at a New York ADA’s office and never was there this huge, pristine, white space for an ADA. Her office was bigger than McCoy’s and he’s the actual district attorney! Her office looked like a partner’s office at a blue chip corporate firm.Anyway, this was weird. I was so sad when the show was first cancelled but you know how in scary movies and someone wants to bring a loved one back from the dead and someone cautions “if you use this magic it won’t really be him…”? That’s this.
I wassure they said “ex ada” and I missed it when I saw that giant office. Plus Carey Lowell has had bad work done, I didn’t recognize her even though I saw her name in the credits until she spoke.
No, she’s still an ADA, though it could be implied she doesn’t work for McCoy anymore.
You know what they should have done instead of this dreck? A new L&O/Homicide crossover. Check in on some of the legends from Baltimore, have Jack interact with a new states attorney down there (presuming Danvers finally makes judge or something) etc
#JusticeForAdenaWatson
Bold choice to do a knock-off Bill Cosby story with your more sympathetic lead detective played by Anthony Anderson.
How is Anthony Anderson doing this and Black-ish? Did Black-ish already finish filming, and they’re filming this now, or the other way around?
Based on what could find Blak-ish finished filming in Dec. L&O started filming in Dec as well. There might have been some stuff at the start that they had to film without Anderson but it wouldn’t have been too difficult.
I recall reading a preview of the L&O reboot and Anderson said he just happened to be wrapping up Blackish when he read Dick Wolf was dusting off L&O and reached out that he was about to be available.
Flat as a pancake !
So Dick Wolf’s 2022 exercise in copoganda is even shittier than before. Cool story, bro. Will keep on not watching.
“ They don’t patrol the streets looking for petty crimes, even during the peak of Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policies. We don’t see them stop and frisk random people of color.” They are Homicide detectives.
Frank Cosgrove sounds like a mad scientist.Or a character from Ozark with that same name.
“They are avengers, not enforcers. They don’t patrol the streets looking
for petty crimes, even during the peak of Rudy Giuliani’s “broken
windows” policies. We don’t see them stop and frisk random people of
color.”In all fairness, they wouldn’t be doing that regardless. They aren’t patrol cops. They’re homicide detectives.Yea, as a return this episode was very, very messy. I can understand why they wanted to tackle the Cosby case, but they did it in a very hamfisted way. Previous seasons had sympathetic culprits, and even though McCoy still prosecuted them, he was more than willing to be lenient depending on the circumstances. Jack hates vigilantes, but he’s not completely heartless.As for the new people, I’m gonna have to withhold my judgement on Dixon and Maroun since we simply didn’t get enough material out of them this time. Hell, Maroun barely said anything until the final segment. I do like Price, though. He kinda reminds me of a more thoughtful Ben Stone. Cosgrove? I enjoy him in a Love to Hate way, but if he stays like this the whole season that will wear off quick.
I also find it hard to believe McCoy would act the way he did. Especially considering every 4th episode or so he bitched at Van Buren or the cops because they fucked his case up.
Elsewhere, I have to say that the sharper cameras and picture quality feels really odd with L&O. I know the old series ended in 2010, not 1999 or whatever, but it still feels too “new” for the show. Also find it extremely weird how every office now has big, wide open spaces for the cast to move in. Did the 2-7 and the DA’s office expand in the past decade? Also, where’s the secretary crammed into the end of the hallway?
C feels too generous. This episode felt like fan fiction. The new characters are an absolute mess. The old characters act in ways that completely contradict their established characters. Since when did the rebel McCoy become a cheerleader for the police? Why would Jamie Ross risk everything to protect a murderer? Since when was Bernard a champion of police reform? Why anybody would write the new detective and lieutenant like that in their very first introduction to the audience is beyond me. I give it a D tops.
Nailed it!
McCoy is a liberal so he probably would support reform if not defunding. And yeah I really don’t like Cosgrove. At least Logan had redeeming qualities. Cosgrove is just a bigot.
“Law & Order’s season 21 premiere, ‘The Right Thing,’ abandons the classic cold open format” There are literally hundreds of L&O episodes that have this same cold open format – the victim is introduced, and then we see the cops called to a crime scene where they discover the corpse. There is no “one cold open format” for this show.“He flat-out lies and claims no prosecutor would pursue a case against one of King’s victims. This is far different from when male detectives would play to a rapist’s arrogance and vanity or pretend to understand why a suspect killed his unfaithful wife.” L&O is full of examples of the cops lying to a suspect in the interrogation room to get a confession. We’ve seen them lie to both sympathetic criminals and reprehensible ones. This is L&O 101.Seriously, how much of the original L&O do you remember?
L&O only mixed up the cold open with a preview of the victim before discovery in the final 5 seasons. The latest 2 episodes thankfully restored the random discovery.
I can see
from this review that Wokeness has, unsurprisingly, infected The AV Club, just
as it’s infected Law & Order: the writers,
like this reviewer, are more interested in Wokeness than in telling a good
story. The black partner and the white partner
of course have to talk about this crap, rather than being professional and
doing their jobs, and I was disappointed when Cosgrove, the white cop, cucks
out and says, contrary to his apparent opinion a few seconds earlier, that he
thinks people taking potentially out-of-context and misleading video of cops
will help keep them accountable. As
though otherwise they wouldn’t be. (I
guess we’ll have to hope that in the real world, from now on, criminals or
anyone not that interested in talking to the cops will in fact decide to talk
to the cops because the cops won’t be able to talk to them in a less-than-polite
way, ever.) The writers might be as
diverse as the diverse cast, though, maybe chosen for that diversity rather
than writing ability—it could explain why this episode is so tame, lacking the
balls to tackle a Cosby-like case in any interesting or surprising way. If a victim unlawfully kills their rapist,
they should go to prison. To this
reviewer, though, that’s not the case—she did a noble thing, I guess, and
shouldn’t be punished? (We never find out
for sure if he actually did it.) McCoy
is useless, and seems pretty frail and past it, and Hugh Dancy can’t compare to
the ADAs of the past—especially the then relatively young McCoy. With all the annoying Wokeness of this
review, one of the more annoying points is a Stray Observation: he thinks the calls to “defund the police”
are b.s., I guess all the people loudly calling for it were only joking. (McCoy doesn’t say they got anywhere, only
that they wanted to do it.) I can’t see
myself watching any more episodes, or not many more unless the quality vastly
improves—and that means The Message taking a backseat, which I can’t see
happening. I might instead go back and
watch some episodes from the first ten years or so, when it was good—when cops
and prosecutors, and viewers, wanted to put criminals in prison and didn’t
think they should feel bad about doing that.
I can see
from this review that Wokeness has, unsurprisingly, infected The AV Club, just
as it’s infected Law & Order: the writers,
like this reviewer, are more interested in Wokeness than in telling a good
story. The black partner and the white partner
of course have to talk about this crap, rather than being professional and
doing their jobs, and I was disappointed when Cosgrove, the white cop, cucks
out and says, contrary to his apparent opinion a few seconds earlier, that he
thinks people taking potentially out-of-context and misleading video of cops
will help keep them accountable. As
though otherwise they wouldn’t be. (I
guess we’ll have to hope that in the real world, from now on, criminals or
anyone not that interested in talking to the cops will in fact decide to talk
to the cops because the cops won’t be able to talk to them in a less-than-polite
way, ever.) The writers might be as
diverse as the diverse cast, though, maybe chosen for that diversity rather
than writing ability—it could explain why this episode is so tame, lacking the
balls to tackle a Cosby-like case in any interesting or surprising way. If a victim unlawfully kills their rapist,
they should go to prison. To this
reviewer, though, that’s not the case—she did a noble thing, I guess, and
shouldn’t be punished? (We never find out
for sure if he actually did it.) McCoy
is useless, and seems pretty frail and past it, and Hugh Dancy can’t compare to
the ADAs of the past—especially the then relatively young McCoy. With all the annoying Wokeness of this
review, one of the more annoying points is a Stray Observation: he thinks the calls to “defund the police”
are b.s., I guess all the people loudly calling for it were only joking. (McCoy doesn’t say they got anywhere, only
that they wanted to do it.) I can’t see
myself watching any more episodes, or not many more unless the quality vastly
improves—and that means The Message taking a backseat, which I can’t see
happening. I might instead go back and
watch some episodes from the first ten years or so, when it was good—when cops
and prosecutors, and viewers, wanted to put criminals in prison and didn’t
think they should feel bad about doing that.
The Jamie thing was the worst bit of it for me. Okay, no one watched Trial by Jury, so fair enough for retconning her being a judge (and that always felt a bit ridiculous because we knew she got strung up by the ethics committee during her first return ep… odds are really good she wouldn’t be nuts enough to put herself forward for that).But she left the DA’s office to teach / occasionally do defence work. Why in the world would she go back to the shitty ADA job she had TWENTY YEARS before? I guess her kid isn’t a concern anymore.
I’ve got no real issue with what Jack said about the defund movement, because that’s exactly what he said – that there’s people out there advocating it, and that they have to operate with at least some attention paid to it. He didn’t endorse or deny it.“They don’t patrol the streets looking for petty crimes, even during the
peak of Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policies. We don’t see them
stop and frisk random people of color.”Well… they’re homicide detectives. None of that fits in their purview.They have OFTEN painted rank and file NYPD members as shitty in their treatment of suspects.
There is not nor will ever be an episode of “Law & Order” that is worth the time or the thought to write an entire article on the AVClub.Why don’t you guys start reviewing interesting, off the beaten path shows like “Raised by Wolves”?“Law & Order” is the same turkey sandwich every episode. All future episodes will be the exact same bland, meaningless sandwich. Go and actively look for something that smells amazing and leads to an amazing hole in the wall restaurant where you eat something new and possibly amazing or possibly cause severe gastric distress for the first time. Either way it’s better than wasting time on crap like this.
Finally watched this and feel like none of these new characters work at all. Even Anderson doesn’t seem to be acting like he’s the same guy. Kind of feel like he’s become a bigger star and doesn’t remember how to play the character. And Dancy’s prosecutor character just struck me as being dumb. He seems to be mystified when certain things go wrong, when anyone else would expect it. But yes, Cosgrove is so damn 1-dimensional without any subtlety, it’s just stupid. I can imagine a more realistic character who’s an okay cop who feels persecuted, and maybe doesn’t quite get what’s going on.
Cosgrove seems like a single-episode cop character who the detectives talk to and find out he was a terrible cop and screwed up some past case.