Battle Lines

It's entertaining. It never fails to keep my interest and yes it's sometimes predictable. I love as much as I did when it started. I like Jeffrey Donovan in this role and Mehcad Brooks. This formula works. I will continue to watch as long as it remains this way. The fact that it comes to a conclusion keeps me watching. No matter how unrealistic that is. I suppose closure whether i like the outcome or not.

The situation is believable. Typical politicians. Cops are sometimes better than we know they and sometimes they are worse. Yes they mention current media personalities but it's not incorrect. Like I said, I'll keep watching.

This was a potent and powerful show that touched on essential political and social issues. For the most part, it was on target. I thought the first season of this revival was kind of weak and I was ready to write it off. With the departure of the eternally annoying Detective Bernard, and with this episode, I'm ready to give the series another chance.

Yes, I thought that Detective Bernard was one of the most grating characters in the huge Law and Order universe. Of the many detectives they could have brought back for the resurrection, he would have been my last choice. I'm not sure whose decision it was to write him out but it was a wise one.

Shifting my focus back to this particular episode, yes they essentially painted Fox News and Hannity as the right wing propaganda garbage they are. At the same time, by having the characters talk about watching Fox and Hannity, they were legitimizing them. Most intelligent, educated people I know, especially fellow New Yorkers, would never turn on Fox News for any reason. Maybe they had to, in order to thoroughly investigate their case. I'll give them slack for this one but the next time someone mentions watching Fox, I might once again reevaluate my opinion of this show.

Finally, this is my sacred city, New York. It's not Wisconsin or Kentucky. You wouldn't see that many right wing activists, especially violent ones, protesting outside the court building. I don't want to say what the protests were about because I don't want to give the story away. I'll only point out that, when the ku klux klan was granted permission to hold a rally in New York, essentially on the same spot as the final scene of this episode, six klansmen showed up and something in the neighborhood of a million people came out to protest their presence. I was there. The klansmen were confined to a tiny stage. The anti-klan people stretched at least a couple of square miles.

Yes, there might have been ten people out protesting for the right but there is no possibility that there would have been a 50-50 split, as the scene seemed to indicate. Fox News loves to demonize New York, in spite of the facts that they're based here and that their heroes, Trump and Giuliani, both spent much of their lives trying to be kings of the city. Talking about watching Hannity as if it's the normal thing to do, along with the right wing extremist protesters, almost feeds Fox's rants.

Again though, for the most part, this was right on target. However, there are ways of showing the flip side without legitimizing it.

The Texans are portrayed as simple cartoon characters. Panders to liberals who need to see themselves as sophisticated sources of truth and all others as subnormal. They would be so much better off taking stories from truth instead of phony stories configured to scratch somebody's political need. This story just contributes to the high level of devisiveness we already have. The episode just revels in it's own bigotry. Hoping for better. And now I'm out. 600 characters is way too long for a review of this show. The entire story could be told in a few hundred. How many words can you use to review an episode where none of the characters seem like real people.

Is it possible anymore for the Law and Order franchise not to do an episode that has some angle to sex crimes? I mean, I get it, the well has run dry, so they're just recycling stuff. I'm assuming Law and Order must have lost much of its male audience, too, because no matter which show you're watching, there's going to be a sex crime angle, abortion, gender, patriarchal verbal abuse, "slooot shaming," etc.

No, these topics are not restricted only to women, but if you watch Law and Order, you'd think good ol' fashioned murder doesn't happen anymore. Plus you can see in the advertising between the snippets of programming that the meat-and-potatoes guy with more than half a brain who might have cheered on Michael Moriarty and Sam Waterston has been replaced by people who shop ecstatically for lamps at Target and say, "Charge it, charge it, charge it!" with whatever credit cards are being pushed.

This episode has a bit more energy than some. I mean, it seems like Sam Waterson got a good night's sleep and his Geritol, for starters. "Derp" Donovan derp derpy derp derps with the new giant they hired (just imagine how easy a target such a hulking guy is for some street gangster with a 9 mm and you can see the incongruity).

Some kind of murder goes on -- someone is pushed off a bridge -- but really, you'll lose sight of the actual crime because of all the pontification about abortion and victim blaming. If there's any suspense in this episode, it mostly gets lost because you have to listen to speeches about the social issues involved. Here's a test: When the episode is over, write down what you recall about the arguments over abortion. Then, write down the names of three guest characters. Which list did you find easier to create?

There's more of that SVU-style super sensitivity going on. Are the ADA's crack legal minds going after the accused with gusto? No, they're extra-careful and even apologetic if anything they say might in any way be interpreted as adversarial (even though they have by definition an adversarial relationship with the accused) and even the defense attorney follows suit. I'm sure it's meant to be all warm and fuzzy, but in what fantasy world does Law and Order now exist?

Remember, when the show debuted more than 30 years ago, the concept was to do a procedural; that is, a show that mimicked reality, without the forced melodrama of other shows, so that it seemed more like a documentary. Boy, we've a long way from there. Now the show seems to take place in an alternate universe where the cops and prosecutors are not just Boy and Girl Scouts, they're the sort of Boy and Girl Scouts you only meet in the handbook.

And at the same time, the show very, very carefully dodges the reality of police corruption and brutality, not to mention the baked in racism. The same goes for the District Attorney. While all parties involved nauseatingly wax on about their crusades for the downtrodden, the lack of diversity is hopelessly lost. (This is a show that defines diversity 1950s style, which is whites in all the top positions and a few black and brown people here and there so they're not called out for their racism.)

Man, I miss when shows were entertaining. I'm a loyal, long time L & O fan but this season is challenging that.

This episode wreaked of desperation to see how many hot button roofs they can fit into 25 minutes. It's embarrassingly cliche.

And because the show is so blatant with its agenda, I predicted this entire plot within 6-7 minutes.

If you love watching sensationalized news, this show is for you! If you don't need or desire to have to think about constant current events while trying to watch a tv show, you should pass on this, that is unless you're an impressionable teenager who can be molded by actors.