I’d like to be able to claim that the process of choosing what to write about each week in Law & Ordocki is an intelligent, exquisite one, a careful determination based on years of sitting on the couch and soaking in the Dick Wolf televisual universe. I’m actually just subject to the whims of intermittent inspiration, and when that doesn’t work, I beg others to think of something for me. Friend of the feature Gena Radcliffe responded to my abject begging with “Have you covered the one with Jim Gaffigan in a serious role?”. I had not, and a visit to IMDB established him as a classic Wolfverse actor, meaning he appeared four times over two shows in a different role each time. I picked the most recent, 2009’s “Reality Bites” of Law & Order because I remember seeing it before and I remember it being absurdist farce wrapped in a dying show’s attempts to take shots at programs that are killing them in the ratings while wrapped in the twisty wackadoo plotting that thrived on SVU. From what I can tell, Supernanny was kicking the show’s ass and NBC in general was amid its genius decision to allow The Jay Leno Show to exist, making things horrible for everybody. Things were grim; given the choices made by NBC at the time, it’s not a surprise Law & Order was cancelled and Law & Order: Los Angeles became the one season clusterfuck (that through out of order airing killed and then resurrected Skeet Ulrich, a crime that cannot be forgiven) that it was. But that’s an issue for another time. In this episode, Jim Gaffigan, America’s dad, plays… a dad. Those folks at Law & Order sure know how to cast!

Sam Waterston’s eyebrows look haggard because to cut costs they started to recycle them. By the end of the season they look like brown toothbrush bristles.

Before we get into “Reality Bites”, I want to spend a little time on the makeup of this final season, because it is very different from any other lineup of the original I’ve covered in this column. The detectives are Lupo and Bernard, respectively played by Jeremy Sisto (Wicked City) and Anthony Anderson (Kangaroo Jack). Sisto has the honor of quickest transition from guest star to starring role; he was a lawyer in the season finale prior to him becoming junior detective. It’s very disconcerting when binge watching. Bernard was introduced during Jesse L. Martin’s exit storyline as one of those dreaded Internal Affairs motherfuckers and serves penance by becoming a real detective. Van Buren’s still around, though she got cancer from her philandering ex-husband and is now banging Ernie Hudson. Cancer, banging Ernie Hudson, that seems like a wash to me, personally. Jack McCoy became district attorney after Fred Thompson left the show, while Jack’s role is filled by Linus Roache (was the pilot that got killed in the Liam Neeson air travel picture)’s Michael Cutter. Alana De La Garza (Do No Harm, the upcoming Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders) takes the role of the ADA whose legs won’t quit. It’s an ensemble marked with a relative lack of tension in that the detectives get along, and even both had facial hair until Van Buren became George Steinbrenner, and the main character storyline on the Order side of things is McCoy learning to play politics and how fucking infuriating it can be to deal with a version of himself. This lineup is the Kansas City Royals of Law & Order: there’s no real superstars (so what if they got Janet Reno for sweeps? She’d be gone even if there was a Season 21), but everyone’s good at what they do and the national media severely underrates their prowess. NBC is the Ned Yost in that it does a terrible job but keeps on keeping on regardless.

“I swear, if he starts talking about Keyser Soze…”

Like most episodes of television, this one begins with Jim Gaffigan and a van full of retarded children. Gaffigan goes into the house first and finds the wife dead, beaten to death with a Special Olympics trophy. Actually, it’s “Special Athletics”; my guess is someone in production calling up the Special Olympics and asking “can we use your organization in the context of an award used as a murder weapon?” was met with a dial tone. Detectives Jeremy Sisto and Anthony Anderson determine one suspect quickly – the eldest of Gaffigan’s menagerie, the autistic high schooler Tim, whose backpack is already at the house. I cannot imagine how rough it is for an actor to play someone with mental disabilities, because there is such a fine line between being true to life, true to people who have these conditions, and just embarrassing bullshit (see: Sean Penn in I Am Sam, Rosie O’Donnell in Riding The Bus With My Sister, multiple offenders in The Other Sister, etc.). Cole Escola is somewhere closer to embarrassing bullshit, with his elevated voice, lack of eye contact and his gesticulating neck being all the signposts of TV autism. He watches a lot of crime shows and wants to become a detective. Dick Wolf missed out on ratings gold by not creating the spinoff Law & Order: “Special” Crimes Unit or Law & Order: Autisdick.

But as any autistic or non-autistic watcher of crime television can tell you, the first interviewed suspect is never the culprit when there’s an hour of airtime to fill. And since the episode does not take a turn for the experimental and become a stylistic homage to the 1994 film of same name (Jeremy Sisto is so Troy Dyer), the motive for murder seems to revolve around a proposed reality program that would either star Gaffigan and kids or a bouncy Hispanic woman and her ten biologicals. The plot thickens when they go back to talk to Gaffigan only to find shooting of Gaffigan & No Wife Plus 10 underway. The show’s got a good setup, with a kitchen in the basement where the kids can sit down and Jim Gaffigan can just riff on how not shaking the orange juice container will leave you with one big orange. No wonder he’s such a beloved comedian! He’s beboppin’ and scattin’ and the cops are mystified at where the fuck everything’s going.

The “DL” stands for “dad laughter”.

A quick trip to Michael Showalter confirms that Stella is still cancelled and that the contract for the reality show would’ve required signatures of both parents until the wife licked those poison envelopes or whatever. Showalter also suggests Gaffigan might’ve been slow to sign in an effort to negotiate for more money and that he would’ve been a better host for Cheap Seats. “Reality Bites” starts adding layers upon layers of plot: Gaffigan’s in real estate and trying to transition out of it due to, you know, the unpleasantness and he’s getting his dick wet with the occasional babysitter. Reality shows! Real estate! Infidelity! Where will it end? If you guessed “Jeremy Sisto and Anthony Anderson questioning a room full of retarded children, with autistic detective Tim in the wings”, you’re a goddamn Medium. Or Ghost Whisperer. One of them always wore a nightgown. Normally the kids rush out the van to hug mom, whereas the day of the murder Gaffigan went in first and forbid the kids from accompanying him. It’s incontrovertible evidence provided by moppets only the slimiest of defense attorneys would cross-examine. “That’s a wrap”, says Anthony Anderson as he spikes the camera and we’re supposed to feel all rah-rah about it. Fuck you, reality TV! None of this new shit can compare to COPS!

Hahaha, the show’s chyron doesn’t let her have a name

One thing I love is that the reality show continues to air while Jim Gaffigan’s in jail. The show even uses footage of him being arrested. Now, I am a man of the world. I know of many reality show controversies, and I don’t recall any channel ever standing behind the main participant getting locked up for murder. Those molestation allegations killed the Duggars’ show, and it did the same for Honey Boo Boo’s. TLC didn’t just keep filming the fucking thing with voiceover from Josh Duggar at his “Don’t Molest Your Siblings” Hootenanny providing color commentary. Also, how fucking long was this show on? It started after the wife was murdered. So that’s at most maybe two weeks of shooting before dad gets popped? Nothing adds up, and I’m not sure it’s supposed to, as the script more or less treats it as “shorthand for all those reality shows that trounce us in the ratings”. I made a joke show title earlier, but it literally is Larry Plus Ten in the episode. Next thing I love, for which I must thank our good friend hindsight, is Jack’s response after seeing the show: “very entertaining. Whatever happened to the Cosbys?”. Take a seat, Jack, this is gonna take some time…

With the success and controversy over Serial and Making a Murderer, “Reality Bites” does seem a touch relevant when Michael Showalter leverages going to college with Connie Rubirosa (the hottest of Jack’s Angels I’d daresay, though by this time she’s of the much less distinguished Cutter’s Angels) into turning the Disabled Kiddies Hour into The People of New York v. Larry Johnson (the white doughy one, not the black basketball player who was in Space Jam): Payback. In exchange, the DA’s office gets some reality show audition tapes of the Johnsons’ as well as an opportunity to tell their side of the story, you know, in places other than press conferences, newspaper articles and the actual trial. Alana De La Garza does a nice job playing the mounting frustration of having to “perform” for a reality program and Linus Roache’s light teasing of her is genuinely funny. The plot line as a whole doesn’t come together well enough, nor does it make any real insight. It takes all of three minutes for Showalter to be unmasked as a devil dealing evidence to both sides. The bouncy Hispanic (seriously, that’s her initial description) loses credibility when defense shows video of her saying she’d kill to get a reality show. How convenient it was that specific word, instead of a synonym like “murderize”, “187”, “annihilate” or “drop a big boulder on their head”.

“I’ve got…15 seconds before my next line of expository dialogue.”

Rubirosa notices a hole in the defense when Showalter mentions that he received a call from Gaffigan’s accountant who was a man, not a woman like the actual accountant. That leads them to the Stan Lee-named Sammy Shiner, a loan shark with a proclivity for killing people tardy with payment whom Gaffigan owed big, crystallizing the financial motive for the murder. Just as soon as they’ve got that Hot Pocket loving bastard admitting on the stand he’s not in money trouble, Sammy Shiner skips the country and their material witness plan is fucked. The culprit? Reality TV again. They must edit and air these things as quickly as possible, as freeze framing and zooming in on an exchange between Michael Showalter and Rubirosa reveals the contents of her yellow notepad. All those years of stopping for Simpsons sign jokes paid off! I kinda wished whenever a setback occurred either Rubirosa or Cutter do a Wrath of Khan-esque “REALITY TEVEEEEEEE!!!!!!”. So of course Silvermane or whatever’s absence causes a mistrial and chances of a successful retrial look lousy. Of course, Law & Order cannot let sleeping dogs lie and end on a down note. It must end on an insane note! The network behind Larry Plus Ten, let’s call them The Pursuit Of Achieving Knowledge Network, wants to retool the show so that both the Gaffigan family and the bouncy Hispanic family live in the same mansion on Long Island. The families will live with a “human lie detector”, one of Marv Wolfman’s less successful Daredevil villain creations, and compete for prizes with the ultimate goal being the determination of who killed Gaffigan’s wife. The viewing audience gets to vote! The producers have asked Fred Thompson to be the competition reality show’s judge!

Okay, there is a ridiculous amount to unpack here. If the original conception of Larry Plus Ten makes no sense, this is like what a Cracked Magazine parody of The TV Set would consider an accurate satire of reality television. It’s like being slapped in the face with a trout. The show’s still going on despite the patriarch being accused of killing his wife and the trial not even ending in an acquittal. WHAM! The other family’s joining Gaff ‘N’ Kids in a Long Island mansion. WHAM! A human lie detector that is an actual thing. WHAM! Competitions that will somehow lend credence to one or the other head of household being guilty! (Does winning a competition mean you get to burn a piece of incriminating evidence?) WHAM! The public votes! WHAM! Fred Thompson courted as the judge of I don’t even know what… Special Education Double Dare? WHAM! (Fortunately, we know that he opted for an even more embarrassing public display: running for president in 2008.) By the end of it the fish has turned your brain into an anti-drugs PSA. I don’t even really have to make jokes, the premise itself is so absurd and full of holes and announced by Rubirosa and Cutter with such a “what can you do?” tone I was astonished by the last 60 seconds of the program. Like, I get it. I hate reality shows too. I don’t watch ‘em, I think less of people who do, they’re garbage tabloid bullshit that should be beamed in prison camps, not American households. But man, when Cutter’s questioning Michael Showalter and going on about how, like, man, reality shows are fake, man, and they, like, edit things as opposed to just airing hours upon hours of context-free footage, I was just thinking who the fuck are they trying to convert here? You’re on a 20 year old show, obviously viewers will hate things that are new, strange and threatening, be it reality TV, transsexuals or that Sacajawea dollar coin. Anything “Reality Bites” has to say about the prevalence of reality programming has been said before and better by the likes of other episodes of Law & Order, EDtv, the MAD Magazine parody that never happened (“DeadTV”) and so on. It is great that this episode is the last time anyone ever mentions Fred Thompson’s Arthur Branch. Hopefully it was directed as a “fuck you”. You floundered as a presidential contender and now you’re down to be a pretend judge on reality television! (Ron Paul – the Jerry Orbach or Richard Belzer of 2008?)

That Kramer’s always up to something. Also, Rubirosa’s notes look more half-assed than my college notebooks.

It is unfortunate that the show ended on its 20th season, as the last few years was a renaissance of sorts, with a detective pairing sporting superb chemistry and a DA’s office having the same. That hadn’t been the case since, oh, Steven Hill’s last year? (Briscoe and Green were great in those later years, but post-Schiff it was a dumpster fire for the Order side. Oh, and the less said about Milena Govich the better.) This may not have been the best episode to use as an example of the show’s renewed quality as it does take several detours into crazytown, but that does go to show that the problem with “Reality Bites” was the plotting and not the character relationships. I mean, really, the hour never had a chance of being “good” in an objective sense, since it was co-written by a Smallville scribe, specifically the one who wrote the episode with the Kryptonite gatorade that somehow functions as a love potion. Anyone who makes that shouldn’t later write Law & Order. Someone responsible for that mess, though it gave us Allison Mack in a cheerleader outfit, shouldn’t go on to this show or The Good Wife. They ought to wipe down chimp loads at the local zoo. (Incidentally a volunteer job I once turned down. For real.)

This is the facial expression of most Law & Order viewers.

I’ll leave you with one thought: do you think Larry Plus Ten Plus Whatever Bullshit Road Rules Challenge would still be on the air? Some of those kids would age out so they’d need to be replaced, in sort of a retarded Menudo situation. From what I can tell, reality shows only end in controversy, like the examples I mentioned earlier. But maybe the network thinks the format of pitting murder suspects against each other in Nickelodeon slime-infused challenges is what’s successful, not the 20 kids of varying mental competency. I could see some interesting matchups each season: Amanda Knox vs. George Zimmerman! Robert Blake goes toe to toe with 9/11 beneficiary Gary Condit! Now that’s a show I’d watch, especially if Amanda Knox had to find a flag inside an oversized nose.