The Reaper's Helper (1x3)
I recently discovered that one of my favorite tv review sites has stopped carrying reviews/snarky recaps of Law & Order. So I thought, hey, I could do that, I'm a good writer and I can be snarky. So I decided to do one on an episode that Vicki & I watched the other night. What do you think, quality enough writing that I could do it every week?
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The Reaper's Helper (1x3)
Oddly, this episode opens not with a woman walking her dog and finding a body, but with the detectives themselves climbing a flight of stairs, noting that the neighbours complained about the smell. They enter a ransacked apartment where old hand Profaci clues them into the situation: the vic, lying on the floor, took a shot in the back of the head. Profaci in his donut-eating wisdom proclaims that this automatically indicates that the shooting was the work of a dealer. Max doubts this airtight logic, and Mike proposes that maybe a “robber who gets surprised” also falls into the shoot-in-the-head MO. The wallet is still there, leading Max to make the Opening Scene Quip that the robber was so surprised he left a full wallet behind. Credits.
As the detectives exit the apartment our standard helpful nosy neighbours observe that a guy was seen running down the stairs at 1 AM but, typically, deny seeing anything because they were too afraid to really look. The detectives visit the doc at the hospital who, besides nagging my memory like I know him from somewhere, adds the puzzle piece that he didn't shoot himself because there were no powder marks or GSR anywhere.
A visit to the parents of the late lamented Bobby Holland nets two gems of wisdom: Mama Holland observes that Bobby was “big. I read they never go after the big ones.” Max nods understandingly; being a big man himself he knows the truth of that statement. Papa Holland is close-mouthed and non-responsive so you know something's up there. Papa comes down to the station to claim Bobby's possessions and notes that Bobby's watch is missing, and reflects that he thought Bobby would be safe after he bought him a gun... a .38 caliber which is the same kind that killed him.
Detectives and the captain argue about who killed Bobby, and the cap as usual shows why he's a captain and they're not by observing that maybe they should, you know, talk to the victim's acquaintances. I'm not sure why this brilliant idea only occurs to the detectives about half of the time. In any event they head down to the docks where Bobby's manager says that Bobby didn't “cat around” with women, but he did like to have lunch every once in a while with a coworker, Angel Suarez. Angel lives up to his name, looking like an underwear model who's only working the docks because Hanes is going through a rough financial market. Angel wasn't in the neighbourhood the night of the murder, but somehow knows who Bobby was drinking with the night of his murder, a girl on the East Side. The girl opines about Bobby's classical music tastes, and tells us that Bobby went to A Certain Bar downtown after finishing their drinks. Max's gaydar finally starts working again and he shoots Mike a significant look. Mike, however, is still oblivious even after the girl tells him in a heavily-loaded tone that she Really Wasn't Bobby's 'girl'. So she beats him over the head with it. “Bobby was gay,” she says, and Mike looks incredibly surprised, like maybe the ghetto salesman he picked up his gaydar from was maybe a little flimflam on the warranty and he should go back and demand a refund.
The M's luck out and the Bartender is the friendly talkative type rather than the kind who believes in Bartender-Drunk Privilege. Bobby left the bar in the company of a slick-looking guy in a silk jacket. Back at the precinct everyone trades bad gay jokes, and then Cragen drops the not-bombshell that they recovered the weapon and it (drumroll) belonged to the victim. Cragen knows that he deserves a treat for this tidbit so he helps himself to one of Max's donuts. Max looks disgustedly at his captain's retreating back and hurls his own donut back into the bag. It's like in taking his donut Cragen is getting his revenge for Max forcing him to go to AA all those years ago. Take that!
Mama Holland continues to deny her son was gay, displaying her usual stunning logic by observing that Bobby had Playboy magazines under his bed. Apparently she doesn't know this is a trademark gay-hiding technique. I half-expected her to come out with the defence that big people aren't gay. Papa takes the M's outside and admits that he knew and Mama was in denial, and that he mentioned going out with this guy named (wait for it...wait for it...) Angel! OMG I never would have guessed that the pretty-boy dockwalker who had romantic lunches with the victim was also gay! The twists are coming too fast to handle. Angel's annoyed because Bobby ditched him for somebody named Jack a few weeks ago. Max vaguely, really vaguely, remembers that he read about somebody getting shot in the head out in San Francisco a while ago so they must be connected. Also apparently another guy was shot in the head with a trashed apartment in LA a little while after that. San Fran's cops fax over the address book, but when Mike decides to be totally hostile and yelling at the LAPD from the moment they pick up the phone, they are surprisingly uncooperative. So Cragen has to go play good cop to get that vic's address book.
The Magic Connection Chalkboard comes into play, and they eventually connect from phone numbers that Holland knew a “J. Curry”, SF knew a “John C.” from New York, and LA had a JRC from New York. Three murder vics know the same guy? Mike calls BS, Max agrees, and they have a full beat-down-the-door-with-a-battering-ram exercise. Max bursts into the apartment first since he knows that even a serial killer won't shoot at a big guy, but it turns out to be anticlimactic because Jack is having a romantic dinner with an unnamed guy to the strains of Baroque music.
***
The police and Robinette interrogate Curry in the presence of his Hotshot Civil Rights Lawyer who immediately proves the value of her high pay by complaining about how unreasonable it was that her client should have to share a cell with...you know...criminals, for heaven's sake. Curry has Holland's watch in his possession but claims it was a gift in exchange for helping Holland shoot himself since he had AIDS. The robbery was staged to keep the truth from his mother, allegedly. Confronted about the California killing, Curry crumbles and admits to assisting them for the same reason but his lawyer quickly jumps in and says her client has nothing to say about that. However she wasn't quite quick enough to stop him from saying rather obliquely that CA-1 and CA-2 pulled the triggers themselves. Robinette sees that bone and pounces on who exactly pulled the trigger on Holland. Curry could claim fifth amendment here, I think I would have, but instead of not answering decides to answer vaguely and completely unsatisfactorily. Hotshot Lawyer had nothing to say there.
Papa Holland tells Stone not to prosecute because AIDS is ugly and he knows Bobby wanted to die because he asked him to do it first. Like any good father Papa couldn't pull it off. Mama Holland is also typical and says in a separate interview that Stone should make sure that Curry rots in hell, though it's unclear to me quite whether that's because Curry killed her son, or slept with him.
After a typical episode of media circus shows on the TV screen in the DA's office, Schiff pulls his standard “this is going to be ugly, what are you going to do?” speech and Stone replies with his standard moral high horse that allowing assisted suicide for AIDS patients shows not respect for gay people, but pity, and that's one step away from ridicule.
Robinette visits an AIDS clinic worker who insists that Bobby didn't want to die, he just thought about it because everybody with AIDS thinks about it. The worker makes the valid point that he's had HIV for years and is still reasonably ok so that it's not right to commit suicide until you go into terminal decline.
There follows the standard confrontation in Stone's office, where Hotshot Lawyer proposes that they plead to something ridiculously low, and Stone counters with something that concedes nothing but is of course cloaked like he is making an incredibly generous concession. Since the lawyer is, after all, a Hotshot Lawyer, she sees through that and says that “we're done here.” But of course, we're not done, because we're never done UNTIL the defendant has thrown in a last defiant personal attack against the DA. Curry does this in fine style, voice dripping with something that is either contempt or silky menace, I'm not sure which, saying that he hopes Stone never has to go through AIDS, and that if he does, he'll be able to find somebody to shoot him like Holland did. He doesn't quite offer to do it himself, but since Stone's a lawyer and therefore by definition smart, he can probably read between the lines there.
The trial segment commences with the HL calling a hospice worker who describes the ugly effects of cancer and admits over Stone's objections that they counsel people to go to England and get assisted suicide there. Stone in cross cogently pulls out that he hasn't counselled anyone to do it in the US because it is, in fact, illegal here.
The guy from the media circus does the standard gay-activist speech for the HL about gay people having the Right to take power into their own hands by committing suicide. Stone attempts to improve upon a very weak cross-examination by doing it all in a tone of high moral outrage but I don't think it really compensates. Leaving the courthouse that night Stone is assaulted by someone with AIDS who calls him a gay-bashing son-of-a-bitch. The next day the powers-that-be meet in Stone's office, discover that Jack Curry himself has AIDS, and Stone says things are getting out of control and they need to get the heck out. Remind me to hire somebody to assault the DA the next time I get in trouble with the law, it's a perfect defence!
The cops go back over the apartment and find Holland's fingerprints on the back of some overturned bookshelves, indicating that he did in fact help trash his own apartment, thus proving that he wanted to die and actively assisted in the process. Stone explains to Schiff how they're going to take HL's initial plea offer, Curry will do no time. But that of course wouldn't make for good drama so Schiff interrupts the conversation to take an Important Phone Call, which tells him that a lady in Queens just copy-catted Curry by killing her retarded son. This of course changes everything and Stone realises he has to keep up the prosecution or open the door to a whole raft of people using the assisted-suicide defence to kill their neighbour's puppies who bark too loudly in the middle of the night.
The trial resumes, and the HL produces Bobby's bartender and also his father. The bartender notes that Bobby ran a tab for years but settled his tab shortly before his death - conclusive evidence if ever such existed. Bobby's father relates the story of his son asking him to kill himself, and Stone again can't do much with the witness other than get him to admit that Bobby was afraid to kill himself.
Curry testifies in his own defence, playing very close to his incredibly scary-looking lawyer's playbook by not talking about whether suicide is legal but rather describing in graphic detail the ugly symptoms of AIDS in decline. It's telling because it shows how the defense's case is actually very weak - reliance on pulling people's heartstrings because the facts utterly damn you. Stone's cross consists of a single question, getting Curry to admit that he pulled the trigger all on his own.
The HL then calls a surprise witness, Mike Logan, who very hostilely relays the contents of his discussion with Stone wherein Stone asked them to find him a reason to scotch the charges. Unsurprisingly when it has been demonstrated that even the prosecuting attorney doesn't want to prosecute, the jury finds Curry not guilty on everything except reckless endangerment which nets him a suspended sentence. On the steps, Curry confronts Stone and rather arrogantly demands to know who gave Stone the right to use him as a warning against other assisted-suicide attempts. Stone observes that “unfortunately, sir, you did - not once, not twice, but three times.”
Stone and the HL confer and she wonders aloud who told someone in Stone's office to call her and spill the beans about the conversation, and Stone very smugly sniffs that he'll “have to look into that,” all but admitting that he sabotaged his own case on purpose.
Ryan's rating: B-
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The Reaper's Helper (1x3)
Oddly, this episode opens not with a woman walking her dog and finding a body, but with the detectives themselves climbing a flight of stairs, noting that the neighbours complained about the smell. They enter a ransacked apartment where old hand Profaci clues them into the situation: the vic, lying on the floor, took a shot in the back of the head. Profaci in his donut-eating wisdom proclaims that this automatically indicates that the shooting was the work of a dealer. Max doubts this airtight logic, and Mike proposes that maybe a “robber who gets surprised” also falls into the shoot-in-the-head MO. The wallet is still there, leading Max to make the Opening Scene Quip that the robber was so surprised he left a full wallet behind. Credits.
As the detectives exit the apartment our standard helpful nosy neighbours observe that a guy was seen running down the stairs at 1 AM but, typically, deny seeing anything because they were too afraid to really look. The detectives visit the doc at the hospital who, besides nagging my memory like I know him from somewhere, adds the puzzle piece that he didn't shoot himself because there were no powder marks or GSR anywhere.
A visit to the parents of the late lamented Bobby Holland nets two gems of wisdom: Mama Holland observes that Bobby was “big. I read they never go after the big ones.” Max nods understandingly; being a big man himself he knows the truth of that statement. Papa Holland is close-mouthed and non-responsive so you know something's up there. Papa comes down to the station to claim Bobby's possessions and notes that Bobby's watch is missing, and reflects that he thought Bobby would be safe after he bought him a gun... a .38 caliber which is the same kind that killed him.
Detectives and the captain argue about who killed Bobby, and the cap as usual shows why he's a captain and they're not by observing that maybe they should, you know, talk to the victim's acquaintances. I'm not sure why this brilliant idea only occurs to the detectives about half of the time. In any event they head down to the docks where Bobby's manager says that Bobby didn't “cat around” with women, but he did like to have lunch every once in a while with a coworker, Angel Suarez. Angel lives up to his name, looking like an underwear model who's only working the docks because Hanes is going through a rough financial market. Angel wasn't in the neighbourhood the night of the murder, but somehow knows who Bobby was drinking with the night of his murder, a girl on the East Side. The girl opines about Bobby's classical music tastes, and tells us that Bobby went to A Certain Bar downtown after finishing their drinks. Max's gaydar finally starts working again and he shoots Mike a significant look. Mike, however, is still oblivious even after the girl tells him in a heavily-loaded tone that she Really Wasn't Bobby's 'girl'. So she beats him over the head with it. “Bobby was gay,” she says, and Mike looks incredibly surprised, like maybe the ghetto salesman he picked up his gaydar from was maybe a little flimflam on the warranty and he should go back and demand a refund.
The M's luck out and the Bartender is the friendly talkative type rather than the kind who believes in Bartender-Drunk Privilege. Bobby left the bar in the company of a slick-looking guy in a silk jacket. Back at the precinct everyone trades bad gay jokes, and then Cragen drops the not-bombshell that they recovered the weapon and it (drumroll) belonged to the victim. Cragen knows that he deserves a treat for this tidbit so he helps himself to one of Max's donuts. Max looks disgustedly at his captain's retreating back and hurls his own donut back into the bag. It's like in taking his donut Cragen is getting his revenge for Max forcing him to go to AA all those years ago. Take that!
Mama Holland continues to deny her son was gay, displaying her usual stunning logic by observing that Bobby had Playboy magazines under his bed. Apparently she doesn't know this is a trademark gay-hiding technique. I half-expected her to come out with the defence that big people aren't gay. Papa takes the M's outside and admits that he knew and Mama was in denial, and that he mentioned going out with this guy named (wait for it...wait for it...) Angel! OMG I never would have guessed that the pretty-boy dockwalker who had romantic lunches with the victim was also gay! The twists are coming too fast to handle. Angel's annoyed because Bobby ditched him for somebody named Jack a few weeks ago. Max vaguely, really vaguely, remembers that he read about somebody getting shot in the head out in San Francisco a while ago so they must be connected. Also apparently another guy was shot in the head with a trashed apartment in LA a little while after that. San Fran's cops fax over the address book, but when Mike decides to be totally hostile and yelling at the LAPD from the moment they pick up the phone, they are surprisingly uncooperative. So Cragen has to go play good cop to get that vic's address book.
The Magic Connection Chalkboard comes into play, and they eventually connect from phone numbers that Holland knew a “J. Curry”, SF knew a “John C.” from New York, and LA had a JRC from New York. Three murder vics know the same guy? Mike calls BS, Max agrees, and they have a full beat-down-the-door-with-a-battering-ram exercise. Max bursts into the apartment first since he knows that even a serial killer won't shoot at a big guy, but it turns out to be anticlimactic because Jack is having a romantic dinner with an unnamed guy to the strains of Baroque music.
***
The police and Robinette interrogate Curry in the presence of his Hotshot Civil Rights Lawyer who immediately proves the value of her high pay by complaining about how unreasonable it was that her client should have to share a cell with...you know...criminals, for heaven's sake. Curry has Holland's watch in his possession but claims it was a gift in exchange for helping Holland shoot himself since he had AIDS. The robbery was staged to keep the truth from his mother, allegedly. Confronted about the California killing, Curry crumbles and admits to assisting them for the same reason but his lawyer quickly jumps in and says her client has nothing to say about that. However she wasn't quite quick enough to stop him from saying rather obliquely that CA-1 and CA-2 pulled the triggers themselves. Robinette sees that bone and pounces on who exactly pulled the trigger on Holland. Curry could claim fifth amendment here, I think I would have, but instead of not answering decides to answer vaguely and completely unsatisfactorily. Hotshot Lawyer had nothing to say there.
Papa Holland tells Stone not to prosecute because AIDS is ugly and he knows Bobby wanted to die because he asked him to do it first. Like any good father Papa couldn't pull it off. Mama Holland is also typical and says in a separate interview that Stone should make sure that Curry rots in hell, though it's unclear to me quite whether that's because Curry killed her son, or slept with him.
After a typical episode of media circus shows on the TV screen in the DA's office, Schiff pulls his standard “this is going to be ugly, what are you going to do?” speech and Stone replies with his standard moral high horse that allowing assisted suicide for AIDS patients shows not respect for gay people, but pity, and that's one step away from ridicule.
Robinette visits an AIDS clinic worker who insists that Bobby didn't want to die, he just thought about it because everybody with AIDS thinks about it. The worker makes the valid point that he's had HIV for years and is still reasonably ok so that it's not right to commit suicide until you go into terminal decline.
There follows the standard confrontation in Stone's office, where Hotshot Lawyer proposes that they plead to something ridiculously low, and Stone counters with something that concedes nothing but is of course cloaked like he is making an incredibly generous concession. Since the lawyer is, after all, a Hotshot Lawyer, she sees through that and says that “we're done here.” But of course, we're not done, because we're never done UNTIL the defendant has thrown in a last defiant personal attack against the DA. Curry does this in fine style, voice dripping with something that is either contempt or silky menace, I'm not sure which, saying that he hopes Stone never has to go through AIDS, and that if he does, he'll be able to find somebody to shoot him like Holland did. He doesn't quite offer to do it himself, but since Stone's a lawyer and therefore by definition smart, he can probably read between the lines there.
The trial segment commences with the HL calling a hospice worker who describes the ugly effects of cancer and admits over Stone's objections that they counsel people to go to England and get assisted suicide there. Stone in cross cogently pulls out that he hasn't counselled anyone to do it in the US because it is, in fact, illegal here.
The guy from the media circus does the standard gay-activist speech for the HL about gay people having the Right to take power into their own hands by committing suicide. Stone attempts to improve upon a very weak cross-examination by doing it all in a tone of high moral outrage but I don't think it really compensates. Leaving the courthouse that night Stone is assaulted by someone with AIDS who calls him a gay-bashing son-of-a-bitch. The next day the powers-that-be meet in Stone's office, discover that Jack Curry himself has AIDS, and Stone says things are getting out of control and they need to get the heck out. Remind me to hire somebody to assault the DA the next time I get in trouble with the law, it's a perfect defence!
The cops go back over the apartment and find Holland's fingerprints on the back of some overturned bookshelves, indicating that he did in fact help trash his own apartment, thus proving that he wanted to die and actively assisted in the process. Stone explains to Schiff how they're going to take HL's initial plea offer, Curry will do no time. But that of course wouldn't make for good drama so Schiff interrupts the conversation to take an Important Phone Call, which tells him that a lady in Queens just copy-catted Curry by killing her retarded son. This of course changes everything and Stone realises he has to keep up the prosecution or open the door to a whole raft of people using the assisted-suicide defence to kill their neighbour's puppies who bark too loudly in the middle of the night.
The trial resumes, and the HL produces Bobby's bartender and also his father. The bartender notes that Bobby ran a tab for years but settled his tab shortly before his death - conclusive evidence if ever such existed. Bobby's father relates the story of his son asking him to kill himself, and Stone again can't do much with the witness other than get him to admit that Bobby was afraid to kill himself.
Curry testifies in his own defence, playing very close to his incredibly scary-looking lawyer's playbook by not talking about whether suicide is legal but rather describing in graphic detail the ugly symptoms of AIDS in decline. It's telling because it shows how the defense's case is actually very weak - reliance on pulling people's heartstrings because the facts utterly damn you. Stone's cross consists of a single question, getting Curry to admit that he pulled the trigger all on his own.
The HL then calls a surprise witness, Mike Logan, who very hostilely relays the contents of his discussion with Stone wherein Stone asked them to find him a reason to scotch the charges. Unsurprisingly when it has been demonstrated that even the prosecuting attorney doesn't want to prosecute, the jury finds Curry not guilty on everything except reckless endangerment which nets him a suspended sentence. On the steps, Curry confronts Stone and rather arrogantly demands to know who gave Stone the right to use him as a warning against other assisted-suicide attempts. Stone observes that “unfortunately, sir, you did - not once, not twice, but three times.”
Stone and the HL confer and she wonders aloud who told someone in Stone's office to call her and spill the beans about the conversation, and Stone very smugly sniffs that he'll “have to look into that,” all but admitting that he sabotaged his own case on purpose.
Ryan's rating: B-