One of the downsides of SVU being the last Law & Order show on the air is that crossovers don’t happen much anymore. Yeah, there was that terrible five minutes where Ice-T and Rollins showed up in Chicago PD, but back in the good old days there’d be stories that began on Law & Order and wrapped up on Homicide: Life on the Streets. When SVU came into existence, NBC could make two hour events by pairing the show up with the original or the short-lived spinoff Trial by Jury. There wasn’t a Criminal Intent crossover because Vincent D’Onofrio is so big none of the actors would be able to appear on screen with him, thereby ruining the point of the endeavor in the first place. “Entitled”, which corresponds to SVU‘s first and Law & Order‘s tenth season, actually follows up on a crime in Season 4’s “Mayhem”. I’ll quick summarize the relevant information: there’s a serial killer out there who’s kind of a doughy nerd version of Son of Sam. They found someone matching the description without an alibi, but it turns out he has one, he just doesn’t want to admit he’s a homosexual. Before they can get him released, he’s killed in prison. Whoops, or as they say in the Big Apple, only in New York! Six years later, that plot point is finally resolved, and along the way Dick Wolf gets some shots in at the Kennedys. I’d like to “thank” Can We Just Be Friends? Facebook group member and possible Vandal Savage Phil Gonzales for choosing I do this crossover. You’re responsible for all that results.
At certain angles you can see moss cultivating.
A man is found dead in his vehicle with his pants down, which is enough to consider it a sex crime. Pantsing people falls under Manhattan SVU jurisdiction. The conversation between the two mounted police who find the guy is classic incidental Law & Order bullshit: one cop brags to the other about getting a George Foreman grill off eBay. Back then, black people endorsing products was novel and so was purchasing things online. A later scene of a waitress at a restaurant smoking inside the restaurant secures the “wow, this was before Michael Bloomberg’s reign of terror” hat trick. Suspicion falls on Stephanie Mulroney, and the name “Mulroney” is said so often it’s a crime Dermot didn’t show up even as a dead body or a guy whose job is too taxing for him to stop things and talk to the cops for a scene. She checked herself into a clinic for trauma, has prior arrests for cocaine possession and her account of what happened in the car is pretty threadbare. Oh, she also accused the guy of raping her in college, meaning it was a woman scorned type deal. I love the subtlety of the writers here (Dick Wolf receives a story credit); Munch goes so far as to invoke Chappaquiddick. It’s like when LA did the episode of the philandering golfer and still mentioned Tiger Woods. The Law & Order universe is filled with less famous knockoffs of people. I hear Jeff H. Mulroney got a harpoon thrown through him by a man on a dusty balcony in 1963…
Chris Orbach, giving nepotism a bad name
The 27 and SVU must team up to find the guy with glasses like Buddy Holly who committed the murder. (Yes, in a Season 12 SVU episode, the guy with Buddy Holly glasses would be Buddy Holly somehow, who for some reason becomes an episode about Don Imus saying “nappy headed hos”.) He’s also responsible for a similar murder of a dude in the garment industry, and there’s a big conspiracy involving organized crime, the garment industry, the moon landings, Climategate, whatever. It is complex insofar as it is needlessly convoluted. Here you have the pitfall of a two-parter episode; the franchise is so plot based that the plot must be elongated, with more twists and turns, more new evidence dredged up that implicates whoever pisses Dick Wolf off that week. But the plot doesn’t really matter; the fun is seeing all your favorite characters meet, have a brief scuffle based on a misunderstanding, and then team up to defeat the combined forces of Dr. Doom and Magneto. Munch and Briscoe, Benson and Green, Cragen making his case in front of million year old golem Adam Schiff, Dann Florek in the same room as the actress hired to replace him when NBC realized “holy shit, this show literally has no women on it”. The novelty contributes about 40% of the crossover’s value.
“No, I’m NOT associated with They Might Be Giants!”
This is a good point at which to discuss how incongruous the first season of Law & Order: SVU is when placed against what comes next. It’s downright normal, like Law & Order but focusing on sex crimes as opposed to homicides and robberies and such. It was also a true ensemble, meaning characters like Munch actually received more than 3 lines of dialogue, and not all of it was wry remarks. Shit, in “Entitled” Munch gets scenes where he and his partner take lead of the investigation! He takes center stage and does more acting in 45 minutes than he did in his last three years on the show. Stabler and Benson were subdued, the former especially. Would you believe he doesn’t beat anyone up the entire crossover? The most tooled up he gets is telling a guy to “stop the crud”, which is fucking adorable. Season 1 SVU is the Bob Hoskins to the rest of the show’s Toon Town. Another 20% of the crossover’s value comes from seeing how down to Earth the show started out. I’m not overstating Richard Belzer’s contributions, he really does run away with the episode. For instance, when interrogating Buddy Holly he shifts into bad cop mode, shouting “I’ll Mike Tyson you, you bastard!” and hissing “kill you, kill you, kill you” while up close and personal with the guy. It’s hilarious and a testament to how decades of playing the same character and doing the same things will eventually suck the life out of you until you scream “HAVE SOMEONE ELSE TALK ABOUT JEWS! I’M NOT YOUR GODDAMN YIDDISH SPEWING PUPPET!” to Warren Leight. This is also the first and possibly the last appearance of Michelle Hurd in this column. She does fine and is yet another character discarded under the pretense of impropriety that Stabler and Benson call “Tuesday”. SVU decided black woman cast members were unnecessary after her exit. “We did 17 years of S. Epatha Merkerson! Isn’t that ENOUGH for you fucking jackals?!”
lookit his little hands
Seriously, Jesse L. Martin is America’s greatest hand actor.
The second part of “Entitled” largely sidelines the detectives in order to highlight the District Attorney’s office. As with every third episode of Law & Order, Adam has a relationship with the rich so-and-so’s, he grumbles about reelection, and Jack McCoy doesn’t give a shit whose feathers he ruffles because apparently he has tenure. Angie Harmon as Abbie Carmichael fills the role of dark haired, leggy ADA, with her conservatism, husky voice and love of the death penalty serving as a corrective to charges that Law & Order‘s a liberal, Jew-y bastion that doesn’t reflect the reality of the melting pot of race hatred that is New York City. Additionally, Sam Waterston is guaranteed not to fuck her cause she cums pure Texas oil. You can see her on Rizzoli & Isles, also known as Two Women Are Gonna Fuck, Just Kidding. Anyway, they uncover a preposterously involved conspiracy that makes you realize Joseph P. Kennedy really knew how to get things done easily and without fuss. Stephanie Mulroney killed the victim because he didn’t want to stay around after bangin’, called the family lawyer, he arranged for a mob connection to take the body out of the apartment and stage it as a Buddy Holly killing (mob guy having been cellmates with him previously, so obviously they talked M.O. Particulars), then kills another guy and a “model” to make it look like more than an isolated incident. To make things even crazier, the family paid off the victim’s ex-wife and someone from his company who never actually worked with him to make rape allegations. “We’d like you to smear the father of your children as an abusive rapist. How many zeroes you need?” Also, you know, always nice to see a show advocating for sexual abuse victims’ rights and dispelling the myth of widespread false reporting…have women falsely claim abuse and rape in exchange for money. I also like to think that was Dick Wolf’s contribution to the story. That and writing “FUCK ETHEL KENNEDY” on the writing room whiteboard. I’ve read his book (The Intercept, better known under its working title of Jack Bauer Fanfic for Dumb Fascists). I know how that Republican piece of shit operates.
Alan Tudyk looked rough for a stretch in the 90s.
The courtroom scene’s some classic Sam Waterston acting, to the point I thought there was a good chance he’d produce a whiskey bottle and huck it at a defendant who wasn’t giving him what he wanted. It’s also the time for Jane Alexander to shine, to the tune of receiving an Emmy nomination for her role as Mulroney matriarch. Frankly, it’s not an impressive performance. She’s a distinguished actress who gets a lot of ACTING moments, from shouting to on the verge of tears. It’s not a character, though that’s largely the fault of the writing. Just as the performance fooled the idiot Emmy people, Jane Alexander’s pity party (her son died in Kosovo in a plane crash oh god really you’re invoking JFK Jr. seven months after he died jesus fucking christ) compels the jury to go “not guilty” on every charge except for Stephanie Mulroney’s evidence tampering. It’s a classic Law & Order verdict in that the show loves to make the point that the rich receive a lot more leeway than us plebeians. The problem is it’s common, as is the “jury is composed of morons”. I know you can only have so many possible endings to a court case, unless you go courtsteps execution crazy like SVU‘s later seasons, but still. If the Kennedys always win, Dick Wolf, then how come none of them are in political office anymore?
This is some of the best fake camaraderie a Law & Order opening has ever had.
Despite neither series (up to that point) being character driven, the value of “Entitled” comes from the character interactions. In addition to the regular casts of each show, there’s also Leslie Hendrix’s medical examiner, the only woman who can immaculately deliver the line “there’s semen but don’t get too excited” without bursting into laughter at any possible juncture. Briscoe and Munch partnering up is so natural that the original idea was to have Munch replace Benjamin Bratt after Season 9 until Jesse L. Martin was cast. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Briscoe and Munch having it out when it’s revealed the former slept with the latter’s ex-wife, it’s still two dry, sarcastic old guys bouncing off each other. If that beautiful bastard Jerry Orbach lived longer, he and Belzer would’ve acted the fuck out of a Briscoe ‘N’ Munch USA dramedy. They gave 19 seasons to Psych, after all. Green and Benson is a good pairing too, especially when he mentions that his nickname is Fast Eddie. The look Mariska Hargitay gives him is both priceless and the flashpoint of dozens of fanfic about the two getting it on. Plus, you know, the characters namecheck Chris Noth’s Mike Logan twice. That may not seem like much, but considering Ben Stone was swallowed in a hole of exile into Canada where he posts anti-abortion screeds and portrays a man who thinks he’s Hitler, it’s a nice touch. (Someday I might have to cover Exiled: A Law & Order TV Movie With The Budget Of A Rold Gold Pretzels Commercial. Profaci is pointlessly a dirty cop! Ice-T plays a pimp! The unresolved sexual tension between Briscoe and Logan boils over!)
I appreciate the enthusiasm of the porn actresses in the background. They really got me to believe they were schoolgirls in need of corporal punishment.
“Entitled”’s plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and it’s an incoherent hatchet job against the Kennedys (that exists for no other reason than fuck it) that pays off a six year plot point as “whatever, some guys used his schtick and paid people to say it was him”, but it’s entertaining enough and certainly the best crossover that doesn’t involve Homicide: Life on the Street. Richard Belzer gives a shit, Dann Florek gives a shit and Sam Waterston does what Sam Waterston does. You can’t not love an episode where Munch doesn’t know how to answer his own cell phone, holding it up to his ear, saying “hello?” with no result until his partner takes the phone and presses the talk button. Give that man the $10,000! Or I would say that if not for this: “I see enough criminals at work.” says Munch to Briscoe about a chance to go to a 76ers/Knicks game. I don’t remember the roster makeup of each team in 2000, but that sounds kinda racist. I do wish Law & Order and SVU continued the crossover thing long after it was necessary cross promotion, as obviously this was an effort to get fans of the original to check out the spinoff. How would the largely grounded, largely competent original twist itself to create tonal continuity with the nonsensical horsewater that SVU became? It’d probably involve Dennis Farina and Ice-T going into virtual reality to stop a rapist whose rapes in the game becomes rapes in real life.
Law & Ordocki #8: Crisis in Multiple Precincts
Note: I drew a picture for you
One of the downsides of SVU being the last Law & Order show on the air is that crossovers don’t happen much anymore. Yeah, there was that terrible five minutes where Ice-T and Rollins showed up in Chicago PD, but back in the good old days there’d be stories that began on Law & Order and wrapped up on Homicide: Life on the Streets. When SVU came into existence, NBC could make two hour events by pairing the show up with the original or the short-lived spinoff Trial by Jury. There wasn’t a Criminal Intent crossover because Vincent D’Onofrio is so big none of the actors would be able to appear on screen with him, thereby ruining the point of the endeavor in the first place. “Entitled”, which corresponds to SVU‘s first and Law & Order‘s tenth season, actually follows up on a crime in Season 4’s “Mayhem”. I’ll quick summarize the relevant information: there’s a serial killer out there who’s kind of a doughy nerd version of Son of Sam. They found someone matching the description without an alibi, but it turns out he has one, he just doesn’t want to admit he’s a homosexual. Before they can get him released, he’s killed in prison. Whoops, or as they say in the Big Apple, only in New York! Six years later, that plot point is finally resolved, and along the way Dick Wolf gets some shots in at the Kennedys. I’d like to “thank” Can We Just Be Friends? Facebook group member and possible Vandal Savage Phil Gonzales for choosing I do this crossover. You’re responsible for all that results.
At certain angles you can see moss cultivating.
A man is found dead in his vehicle with his pants down, which is enough to consider it a sex crime. Pantsing people falls under Manhattan SVU jurisdiction. The conversation between the two mounted police who find the guy is classic incidental Law & Order bullshit: one cop brags to the other about getting a George Foreman grill off eBay. Back then, black people endorsing products was novel and so was purchasing things online. A later scene of a waitress at a restaurant smoking inside the restaurant secures the “wow, this was before Michael Bloomberg’s reign of terror” hat trick. Suspicion falls on Stephanie Mulroney, and the name “Mulroney” is said so often it’s a crime Dermot didn’t show up even as a dead body or a guy whose job is too taxing for him to stop things and talk to the cops for a scene. She checked herself into a clinic for trauma, has prior arrests for cocaine possession and her account of what happened in the car is pretty threadbare. Oh, she also accused the guy of raping her in college, meaning it was a woman scorned type deal. I love the subtlety of the writers here (Dick Wolf receives a story credit); Munch goes so far as to invoke Chappaquiddick. It’s like when LA did the episode of the philandering golfer and still mentioned Tiger Woods. The Law & Order universe is filled with less famous knockoffs of people. I hear Jeff H. Mulroney got a harpoon thrown through him by a man on a dusty balcony in 1963…
Chris Orbach, giving nepotism a bad name
The 27 and SVU must team up to find the guy with glasses like Buddy Holly who committed the murder. (Yes, in a Season 12 SVU episode, the guy with Buddy Holly glasses would be Buddy Holly somehow, who for some reason becomes an episode about Don Imus saying “nappy headed hos”.) He’s also responsible for a similar murder of a dude in the garment industry, and there’s a big conspiracy involving organized crime, the garment industry, the moon landings, Climategate, whatever. It is complex insofar as it is needlessly convoluted. Here you have the pitfall of a two-parter episode; the franchise is so plot based that the plot must be elongated, with more twists and turns, more new evidence dredged up that implicates whoever pisses Dick Wolf off that week. But the plot doesn’t really matter; the fun is seeing all your favorite characters meet, have a brief scuffle based on a misunderstanding, and then team up to defeat the combined forces of Dr. Doom and Magneto. Munch and Briscoe, Benson and Green, Cragen making his case in front of million year old golem Adam Schiff, Dann Florek in the same room as the actress hired to replace him when NBC realized “holy shit, this show literally has no women on it”. The novelty contributes about 40% of the crossover’s value.
“No, I’m NOT associated with They Might Be Giants!”
This is a good point at which to discuss how incongruous the first season of Law & Order: SVU is when placed against what comes next. It’s downright normal, like Law & Order but focusing on sex crimes as opposed to homicides and robberies and such. It was also a true ensemble, meaning characters like Munch actually received more than 3 lines of dialogue, and not all of it was wry remarks. Shit, in “Entitled” Munch gets scenes where he and his partner take lead of the investigation! He takes center stage and does more acting in 45 minutes than he did in his last three years on the show. Stabler and Benson were subdued, the former especially. Would you believe he doesn’t beat anyone up the entire crossover? The most tooled up he gets is telling a guy to “stop the crud”, which is fucking adorable. Season 1 SVU is the Bob Hoskins to the rest of the show’s Toon Town. Another 20% of the crossover’s value comes from seeing how down to Earth the show started out. I’m not overstating Richard Belzer’s contributions, he really does run away with the episode. For instance, when interrogating Buddy Holly he shifts into bad cop mode, shouting “I’ll Mike Tyson you, you bastard!” and hissing “kill you, kill you, kill you” while up close and personal with the guy. It’s hilarious and a testament to how decades of playing the same character and doing the same things will eventually suck the life out of you until you scream “HAVE SOMEONE ELSE TALK ABOUT JEWS! I’M NOT YOUR GODDAMN YIDDISH SPEWING PUPPET!” to Warren Leight. This is also the first and possibly the last appearance of Michelle Hurd in this column. She does fine and is yet another character discarded under the pretense of impropriety that Stabler and Benson call “Tuesday”. SVU decided black woman cast members were unnecessary after her exit. “We did 17 years of S. Epatha Merkerson! Isn’t that ENOUGH for you fucking jackals?!”
lookit his little hands
Seriously, Jesse L. Martin is America’s greatest hand actor.
The second part of “Entitled” largely sidelines the detectives in order to highlight the District Attorney’s office. As with every third episode of Law & Order, Adam has a relationship with the rich so-and-so’s, he grumbles about reelection, and Jack McCoy doesn’t give a shit whose feathers he ruffles because apparently he has tenure. Angie Harmon as Abbie Carmichael fills the role of dark haired, leggy ADA, with her conservatism, husky voice and love of the death penalty serving as a corrective to charges that Law & Order‘s a liberal, Jew-y bastion that doesn’t reflect the reality of the melting pot of race hatred that is New York City. Additionally, Sam Waterston is guaranteed not to fuck her cause she cums pure Texas oil. You can see her on Rizzoli & Isles, also known as Two Women Are Gonna Fuck, Just Kidding. Anyway, they uncover a preposterously involved conspiracy that makes you realize Joseph P. Kennedy really knew how to get things done easily and without fuss. Stephanie Mulroney killed the victim because he didn’t want to stay around after bangin’, called the family lawyer, he arranged for a mob connection to take the body out of the apartment and stage it as a Buddy Holly killing (mob guy having been cellmates with him previously, so obviously they talked M.O. Particulars), then kills another guy and a “model” to make it look like more than an isolated incident. To make things even crazier, the family paid off the victim’s ex-wife and someone from his company who never actually worked with him to make rape allegations. “We’d like you to smear the father of your children as an abusive rapist. How many zeroes you need?” Also, you know, always nice to see a show advocating for sexual abuse victims’ rights and dispelling the myth of widespread false reporting…have women falsely claim abuse and rape in exchange for money. I also like to think that was Dick Wolf’s contribution to the story. That and writing “FUCK ETHEL KENNEDY” on the writing room whiteboard. I’ve read his book (The Intercept, better known under its working title of Jack Bauer Fanfic for Dumb Fascists). I know how that Republican piece of shit operates.
Alan Tudyk looked rough for a stretch in the 90s.
The courtroom scene’s some classic Sam Waterston acting, to the point I thought there was a good chance he’d produce a whiskey bottle and huck it at a defendant who wasn’t giving him what he wanted. It’s also the time for Jane Alexander to shine, to the tune of receiving an Emmy nomination for her role as Mulroney matriarch. Frankly, it’s not an impressive performance. She’s a distinguished actress who gets a lot of ACTING moments, from shouting to on the verge of tears. It’s not a character, though that’s largely the fault of the writing. Just as the performance fooled the idiot Emmy people, Jane Alexander’s pity party (her son died in Kosovo in a plane crash oh god really you’re invoking JFK Jr. seven months after he died jesus fucking christ) compels the jury to go “not guilty” on every charge except for Stephanie Mulroney’s evidence tampering. It’s a classic Law & Order verdict in that the show loves to make the point that the rich receive a lot more leeway than us plebeians. The problem is it’s common, as is the “jury is composed of morons”. I know you can only have so many possible endings to a court case, unless you go courtsteps execution crazy like SVU‘s later seasons, but still. If the Kennedys always win, Dick Wolf, then how come none of them are in political office anymore?
This is some of the best fake camaraderie a Law & Order opening has ever had.
Despite neither series (up to that point) being character driven, the value of “Entitled” comes from the character interactions. In addition to the regular casts of each show, there’s also Leslie Hendrix’s medical examiner, the only woman who can immaculately deliver the line “there’s semen but don’t get too excited” without bursting into laughter at any possible juncture. Briscoe and Munch partnering up is so natural that the original idea was to have Munch replace Benjamin Bratt after Season 9 until Jesse L. Martin was cast. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Briscoe and Munch having it out when it’s revealed the former slept with the latter’s ex-wife, it’s still two dry, sarcastic old guys bouncing off each other. If that beautiful bastard Jerry Orbach lived longer, he and Belzer would’ve acted the fuck out of a Briscoe ‘N’ Munch USA dramedy. They gave 19 seasons to Psych, after all. Green and Benson is a good pairing too, especially when he mentions that his nickname is Fast Eddie. The look Mariska Hargitay gives him is both priceless and the flashpoint of dozens of fanfic about the two getting it on. Plus, you know, the characters namecheck Chris Noth’s Mike Logan twice. That may not seem like much, but considering Ben Stone was swallowed in a hole of exile into Canada where he posts anti-abortion screeds and portrays a man who thinks he’s Hitler, it’s a nice touch. (Someday I might have to cover Exiled: A Law & Order TV Movie With The Budget Of A Rold Gold Pretzels Commercial. Profaci is pointlessly a dirty cop! Ice-T plays a pimp! The unresolved sexual tension between Briscoe and Logan boils over!)
I appreciate the enthusiasm of the porn actresses in the background. They really got me to believe they were schoolgirls in need of corporal punishment.
“Entitled”’s plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and it’s an incoherent hatchet job against the Kennedys (that exists for no other reason than fuck it) that pays off a six year plot point as “whatever, some guys used his schtick and paid people to say it was him”, but it’s entertaining enough and certainly the best crossover that doesn’t involve Homicide: Life on the Street. Richard Belzer gives a shit, Dann Florek gives a shit and Sam Waterston does what Sam Waterston does. You can’t not love an episode where Munch doesn’t know how to answer his own cell phone, holding it up to his ear, saying “hello?” with no result until his partner takes the phone and presses the talk button. Give that man the $10,000! Or I would say that if not for this: “I see enough criminals at work.” says Munch to Briscoe about a chance to go to a 76ers/Knicks game. I don’t remember the roster makeup of each team in 2000, but that sounds kinda racist. I do wish Law & Order and SVU continued the crossover thing long after it was necessary cross promotion, as obviously this was an effort to get fans of the original to check out the spinoff. How would the largely grounded, largely competent original twist itself to create tonal continuity with the nonsensical horsewater that SVU became? It’d probably involve Dennis Farina and Ice-T going into virtual reality to stop a rapist whose rapes in the game becomes rapes in real life.
“Hmmm…yeah, fuck it. Abbie, get me some rye!”
Ronnie Gardocki
Next ArticleThrowing Down the Gauntlet