> I'm a bit addicited to these shows for some of the reasons you mention. I
> watch the Law & Order reruns late at night (they're on every night!). I'd
> add The Practice to the list too.
David Kelly needs to learn ONE word: rewrite.
Every damn script looks like a first draft. Interesting ideas, a few really good bits, all jumbled together and mostly cancelling each other out. The few times he doesn't do this, when there's a really carefully thought-through script, then it's really a marvel. But it's only happened twice: The two episodes with John Larroquette.
> However, I actually find them pretty right-wing. The liberals
> seem to have their mushy liberal ideals tested even
> more than the conservatives do,
Yes, well, that's the price of having ideals that require something of YOU, rather than of someone else. I don't think it makes the shows at all rigthwing to show this. I just think it makes them honest. Gooey liberalism makes me puke. These shows don't.
> and there seems to be much more angst about letting a possibly
> guilty person escape justice than about punishing the
> innocent, tho there's a bit of both.
Hey, Liza, if you want to micromanage either, I'm behind you all the way in getting a staff writing job, honest I am!
> And often when a black person is prosecuted the L&O DAs are
> agonizing about how "the black community" will
> react -- not a realistic obsession for most DAs
> offices I dont think.
No, not most. But the backstory in "Law & Order" makes it clear that the DA's political base is under attack, and he can't afford to lose that support. Without that backstory your objection would be spot on. The fact that Wolfe put that backstory in, thus making those concerns more believable, is the kind of detail work that's typical of what makes "Law & Order" a really special show.
And, of course, Baltimore is Baltimore. It doesn't have the megalo-corporate uberstructure that can allow it to ignore the neighborhoods with impunity. It does have the visible black politicos whose reps depend on keeping up their images. The layout makes the special circumstance believeable.
> But it was cool on the Practice recently when they rejected
> that asbestos manufacturer client and explained why it was
> OK to reject bad corporate clients but you still had to
> represent street criminals even if you thought
> they were icky.
Yes, it was. One of the better episodes.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
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