When “Law & Order” first hit the airwaves in September of 1990, I was an immediate fan. The concept, the ignoring of the personal lives of the lead characters, the wonderful acting and especially the endless plot twists hooked me a few seasons before the public would catch on and make the show a regular ratings hit. The first four seasons are among four of the best ever produced for dramatic television, thanks mainly to Michael Moriarty’s exceptional work as Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone, a resourceful, Robert F. Kennedy-style hard-nosed prosecutor determined to see justice done (though the whole cast was top-notch).
After 88 episodes Moriarty left, Sam Waterston (one of my favorite actors) took his place, and while the show was never quite the same, it remained regular viewing until around 2002.
The program’s eventual deterioration was a case study in the boiling frog theory. The quality of the production and acting remained, but the politics slowly shifted to the far left almost without my noticing. And it wasn’t the actual politics that first became apparent; it was the negative effect of those politics on the quality of the storytelling.
The fun of the show, especially in those early seasons, was that you never knew how the story would end. Certainly, there were political moments, but the overriding theme of every episode was the determination of smart, dedicated people who carried a respect for the law doing their best to bring the guilty to justice. This was what the show was “about,” the agenda was to tell a helluva story, therefore the plot could go anywhere, and did.
But as the year 2000 closed in, this agenda slowly turned more towards the political, making the plot-twists predictable to the point that once the detectives interviewed a white businessman or anyone wearing a crucifix, the game was pretty much over. This all-too common phenomenon in all branches of fictional storytelling today is what I call the “Liberal Tell,” and the “Liberal Tell” sucks the suspense out of everything. Simply put: Once you understand the politics of the entertainment industry, you know the story can only conclude one way.
Living with the “Liberal Tell” is much easier than living with the “Leftist Sucker Punch,” and after September 11th, “Law & Order” went off the rails. Increasingly, and from out of nowhere, one of the show’s characters would invariably launch a jarring partisan shot at President Bush, the Iraq War, or the Patriot Act… and things quickly got to the point where sitting and waiting for the sucker shot made it impossible to relax and get lost in the show.
Last week, and for the first time in 6 or 7 years, I tuned in for a new episode. Someone tipped me that the season premiere revolved around the indictment of the Bush Administration, specifically Dick Cheney, for the so-called “Torture Memos.” The episode was titled “Memos from the Darkside.” Here’s a synopsis:
When young war veteran Greg Tanner is found murdered in a Hudson University parking garage, Detectives Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) connect the murder to law professor Kevin Franklin (Guest Star David Alan Basche), an attorney who formerly worked for the Department of Justice. But when the case is brought to court, it seems Tanner (Guest Star Creighton James) may have been more affected by the war than his discharge stated. Lupo and Bernard find that the pieces start to fit when Franklin’s memos from the Bush Administration are leaked.
Well, that’s only half the story. Jack McCoy (Waterston, who’s been promoted to D.A. since I last watched) loses the murder case against the law professor/former Justice Department lawyer and decides to prosecute him for writing the “Torture Memos,” which outlined the legalities involved in the enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Essentially, McCoy tries to put a lawyer in jail for interpreting the law at the request of his boss.
The episode is worse than partisan, it’s stupid. You don’t have to be Clarence Darrow to understand that interpreting the law isn’t illegal but McCoy’s malicious prosecution probably is.
Worse than that, the show was awful. And this may not be the case every week, but on this particular episode everyone’s acting meter was broke (including the normally reliable Waterston), the score was over-the-top with melodrama and the story was ludicrous to the point of intelligence-insulting.
The show’s theme was also the very worst one any storyteller can choose: Sanctimony. McCoy’s unbearable superiority and smugness penetrates every scene. It was like listening to George Clooney accept an Oscar for an hour.
So what happened to this once must-see show whose ratings last season were less than half of their 2001 peak?
In two words: Rene Balcer.
Balcer not only co-wrote last week’s “Indict Cheney” episode, he’s been the show’s executive producer since 1996, and judging from this 2005 interview, what he calls “the so-called War on Terror” seems to have affected his approach to the show. He has nothing but contempt for the Bush Administration’s efforts to keep us safe and isn’t shy in stating how his show is used to promote his Bush Derangement propaganda:
“There’s a balance, but anyone who’s been watching knows our best shows make the public question what’s going on. We don’t necessarily give them the answers, but we do encourage them to question what’s going on.”
Balcer truly does believe television can sway the way people think. Later in the interview he actually claims, quite seriously, that the use of torture as a dramatic device on “24” could influence an Iraqi insurgent to torture an American soldier.
And if you’re wondering if Balcer’s Leftist extremism extends only to national security, here’s another video where he complains about the L.A. Times and New York Times not being liberal enough:
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Using “Law & Order” as his own personal Leftist-Wet-Dream-Machine is not only an abuse of the public airwaves, it tarnishes the legacy of a once great show and insures it will limp off the field remembered as just another “liberal Hollywood” punchline.