Welcome to the second week of Jim Gaffigan Month here at Law & Ordocki. You may be wondering why it took so long for the second week to come out, well, I’m going to diverge from my usual format to briefly explain my slack in obligations. I owe it to you, the reader, to be truthful. One day my laptop wouldn’t work; specifically it turned on but nothing happened, no picture, no Windows loading, just a weird sound. Naturally I took it to the computer repair shop across the street. A week later they determined my fan needed replacing, so I had to wait on the new fan for a week. Then it turned out they ordered the wrong part and had to do the whole process again. By the time I got my laptop back in working order, it was almost 3 weeks later and I was sans $234. In conclusion, learn how to replace fans yourself and never enlist the services of Madison Computer Works. They’re fuckers who’ll give you a pamphlet for a monthly remote access anti-virus they offer before apologizing for not even knowing how to order things. There. Got it off my chest. Let’s all settle down and travel back in time to 1998. The World Trade Center was alive. Jerry Orbach was alive. Jay Leno was doing Lewinsky jokes, as opposed to 1999-2014 when he was making outdated Lewinsky jokes. What a time to be alive. Season 9 for Law & Order was a transitory period for the show, as it was the last season of Benjamin Bratt’s Rey Curtis and the first season of Angie Harmon’s Abbie Carmichael. It’s also the last year Law & Order stood alone; for the rest of its run it was flanked by one, two or three spinoffs. I think it’s important to mention because it’s the last time Law & Order covered all crime, instead of it being split so one gets sex crimes, another gets Vincent D’Onofrio eating scenery that would transform him from a stringbean to a behemoth, and whatever the fuck Trial by Jury was trying to do got cases related to that. Without further ado, here’s Season 9’s “Flight”, which should’ve been called “Lennie and Rey vs. The Staph Infection”.

Said staph infection, which is immune to antibiotics, first claims the life of a preschooler. Homicide detectives are on it because this strain isn’t from the United States, so either someone let it loose deliberately or there’s a sucker walking around, killing kids on accident. Turns out the process of getting a sample is so easy that “any idiot with a PC and a printer” can get it because the credentials screening isn’t very good at these bio-supply houses. I like how resigned Van Buren is to the possibility that her detectives may get killed in this investigation. “What can I tell you?” she shrugs when Curtis asks what they should do if an infected sneezes on them. She’d be an excellent authority figure in the zombie apocalypse, unencumbered by human connections and therefore capable of making the tough decisions. Law & Order fucks things up pretty early on by casting Dylan Baker in the role of the dead kid’s father. The casting in and of itself raises suspicions because when the fuck does Dylan Baker ever play a good guy or even someone who’s not a creep. The man was J. Edgar Hoover in Selma, there’s no creepier role than that. (And fortunately he didn’t have to wear hideous makeup like Leonard DiCaprio did.) So his presence immediately draws suspicion on the family as opposed to any half-assed terrorist cell. 1999, terrorism was this underground thing that only diehards looked to – basically its Dark Side of the Spoon period. Obviously “Flight” goes down some different avenues of inquiry, but when a guy whose turn as a pedophile in Happiness is one of his more sympathetic roles is involved, you know he’s up to something.

I like this guy who played the nonsense CDC/Department of Health guy. What’s he been up to lately… “Berg committed suicide in his home by turning on a hibachi grill in his bedroom and succumbing to its carbon monoxide fumes.” Well, um, glad they clarified it was hibachi?

A second person winds up dead, but we’re not to feel righteous indignation since he’s a heroin user who’d probably end up dead anyway. Whatever! They grill the junkie’s only friend, a fat guy who makes art installations out of garbage and pulls out the “it’s not illegal” argument against Lennie’s desire to violate some civil rights. Art aficionado apparently sold the junkie a needle he found in the trash and in spite of claims that he “wiped it”, this needle seems to be the same one that killed the little boy. With the help of an NPC whose repetitive path of movement reminds me of every shitty RPG I played in 2002, they find that one of the tenants shares a company with Dylan Baker…and also a BED. Cue Married…With Children-esque hooting and hollering. Baker admits to the affair but is incredulous at the thought that Theresa (played by the shitty mom of the shitty kid in the shitty movie filled with shit Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers And Also Shit) would kill her son because he’s treating the affair like an affair. “I’ve been there, pal” intones Lennie, and I wish at that he would regale the captive audience of the time his mistress tried to kill his children. With Jerry Orbach you do believe that could happen on a Tuesday and he’d be wisecracking by Thursday, that’s the thing. Anyway, Baker claims he’s fine with leaving the wife but not the son. Suspicion falls on Theresa again, and she cops not to giving the kid the one vaccination that really could kill him but to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from work, in cooperation with Dylan Baker’s Aaron Downing. We’re going from the boring world of child death by pandemic to the exciting, madcap world of insurance company embezzlement. I better take a valium to cool myself off.

“Oh, uh, I did this of my own volition. I figure if you want to make me a secret monster like you did with Profaci we could start with some mustache foreshadowing.”

Dr. Skoda, this time out rocking a ridiculous mustache, claims Downing suffers from “Jimmy Buffett syndrome”, in that he wishes for a life disconnected from his own. Hence the embezzling, hence the girlfriend, hence the dead kid. It’s an incompetent, half-assed version of The Stepfather. So it turns out Downing thought his life was a pile of shit, had plans to fuck off to Fuji, and went so far as to say children would be better off not existing than be subject to the misery that is life. (His response to his wife maybe being pregnant again, ladies and germs!) That last nugget of wisdom came from his and the wife’s marriage counseling. Jack McCoy and Abbie Carmichael intuit that Downing killed his son and did it as both a mercy killing and a way to cut that last tie that bound him to New York City. They manage to arrest the dude before he can flee, but all the revelations from marriage counseling are thrown out as they’re privileged, either by marriage or by doctor-patient. Noted rock formation Adam Schiff has a nice one-liner, “when I’m in the dumps, I have a scotch and put on Louie Armstrong”. His character is the glue that holds the show together and explains why no season after the tenth manages to hit that level of quality. Basically his characterization is he doesn’t give a shit about Jack McCoy and grumbles at him to stop being terrible at his job, the father figure that is never proud or reassuring. Fun fact: Greg Weisman saw an episode of Law & Order in the wee hours of the morning. The next day he came up with the pitch for Gargoyles. Coincidence? I think not!

oh shit he’s gonna camoflague into that chair

just watch it dude it’s supposed to be creepy

Since Jack can’t use the testimony of the wife, he needs to find a way to tie Dylan Baker to the bacteria, which means going to Allgen corporation (the same deft touch in naming as, say, Chairman of the Board) to confirm they sold a highly dangerous thing to a fucking insurance guy. Not surprisingly the order sheet is nowhere to be found, confirming by omission they did sell to Baker. Here comes McCoy with some grandstanding to charge Allgen with manslaughter and then take it down to criminally negligent homicide. “No jailtime” is the promise that gets Allgen’s attorney sealing the deal. I like how in this bit of the episode Schiff asks Jack if charging gun manufacturers for selling to shooting spree killers is next, when in fact that’s something he does in the Season 10 premiere. I doubt it’s foreshadowing because Law & Order is not that kind of show, but it’s amusing nonetheless. Why yes, I do want Jack to take to court the people who manufactured the cardboard for the boxes in which bullets are placed. Sounds like a funky adventure. So instead of the slap on the wrist in exchange for Allgen “finding” the Dylan Baker order, McCoy wants double the corporate profit Allgen made ever since starting selling the bacteria. He talked to a fired employee and everything and know the company doesn’t give a shit about keeping their wares out of the hands of terrorists and possible lizard-men if Sam Raimi continued directing Spider-Man films. This fails immediately, despite a sympathetic judge, when the company files a temporary restraining order against said judge and Schiff mutters something about an election year, Yancy Street, Aunt Petunia, etc.

All in all it’s a pretty good episode and may be the best I’ve ever covered on Law & Ordocki. When it comes to the original flavor, Law & Order Classic, I ask for two things: some wisecracks by the detectives and McCoy pulling off a ridiculous, barely legal, perplexing legal gambit. Waterston’s performance prevents the character’s frequent efforts at making a point not come off as preachy or self-righteous. It doesn’t hurt that nearly all of his over the top antics are complete failures, meant to show the mendacity of corporate America is outweighed by its influence and power. The conclusion of “Flight” bears it out. The mother of the dead kid files a civil suit, and the DA gang is pessimistic that anything will come of it; after all, it’s one woman and the lawyer she can afford against a battalion of legal goons. Sure, Dylan Baker hangs himself in a hotel room, but that’s not exactly a victory. Mid-life crisis suffering men can still snuff out their children’s lives through an easy ordering process that only requires a modicum of faking credentials. Who hasn’t put a fake letterhead on stationery before? I sent letters of varying coherency to FOX about the cancellation of The Lone Gunmen under the fake aegis of the Perot/Stockdale campaign for years. No one received justice. Law & Order does downbeat endings well – they don’t wallow in it, they acknowledge shit in a “life goes on” sort of way.

“I look like an amalgamation of all the Republican candidates who were turned away for being too moderate! You can trust me.”

It’s instructive to take the show and contrast it with modern television and the differences are astounding, even when compared to other procedurals. There aren’t character arcs, not really; the continuing plotlines (none of which are mentioned or furthered in this episode) move at a glacial pace and any vestiges of character development is reliant on fans piecing the disparate parts mostly tossed off as asides together in hopes of conclusively proving “Lennie Briscoe thinks global warming is a scam” or “Rey Curtis doesn’t wear socks because he was sexually abused”. In an age where all cable is trying to be prestige TV, and all network TV is trying to be cable TV, it’s refreshing to watch television that doesn’t have the pacing of a NetFlix original series nor arc-reliant storytelling. Single episodes with their own identity is becoming more of a rarity when it comes to dramas. The subdued tone helps Law & Order as well. I suppose it’s how the show managed to use real life incidents as storytelling fodder without seeming superficially sensationalistic, like pretty much every episode of SVU in the last 15 years.

While doing the minimum of research on this episode (checking IMDB and the Law & Order Wikia), I found out “Flight” is actually ripped from the headlines, based on a guy, Brian Stewart, infecting his 11 month old with HIV tainted blood. I love that the judge told him “injecting a child with the HIV virus really puts you in the same category as the worst war criminal” and “when God finally calls you, you are going to burn in hell from here to eternity”. That judge does not mince words. Stewart got life in prison and the judge still said that wasn’t enough. The apparent motive was to avoid paying child support. I may not be a negligent father, but I can think of about a dozen easier ways of ducking child support than INFECTING YOUR FUCKING CHILD WITH HIV. Christ, what an asshole. Anyway, “Flight” is a positive example of the ripped from the headlines setup, because it takes the basic premise and uses it as a springboard, and there’s no cutesy reference like “gee, this case is pretty similar to the Brian Stewart case, because we apparently live in a world where there’s a shittier knockoff of everything everywhere”.Another thing I liked: Briscoe and Curtis didn’t go over the top like certain other detectives would’ve, this case involving kids and all. If you slot in Stabler you’d have Dylan Baker sporting a few broken limbs and he’d have to struggle out of no less than three headlocks. Both detectives have children so they’d have “personal investment” or whatever the hell, but they stay coolheaded and do their jobs. Praising bare minimum professionalism seems askew, but after watching almost two decades of Special Rape Rape: Rapeity Rape I welcome anything that doesn’t sensationalize and throw out red meat like it’s fucking chum.

The most physical labor Jim Gaffigan has done before or since.

All About The Gaffigans: In keeping with his profile at the time of the episode’s making, Jim Gaffigan plays a minor role here. I think he has a name, but my notes call him “Pipes Guy” and I prefer that moniker, no matter his Christian, Muslim or Wizard name. Gaffigan performs the platonic ideal of interview subjects on Law & Order: he’s interviewed while doing something, he keeps on doing it while being questioned, and then he sort of wills the detectives away when he’s done doing his job. He kinda looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman with attitude or with something to prove, a statement I never thought I’d make. He also has more dirt and grime on his hands than Jim Gaffigan has ever had or will have ever again. It goes to show the upward mobility that America still features, despite what Commissar Sanders will say on State TV: in a decade Jim Gaffigan goes from a guy who fixes showers and gives non-committal suspect identifications to a man with his own reality about his adopted brood of the mentally challenged. It’s like noted homosexual drifter Andy Warhol once said: “in the future, everyone will be on a reality TV show while under investigation for murder”.

Ever the method actor, Dylan Baker actually hanged himself. He was dead for 14 minutes.

I suppose we learned from “Flight” that Dylan Baker is inherently untrustworthy, that shoddy ordering procedure probably led to those Anthrax attacks and Lt. Van Buren doesn’t give a fuck about anyone under her command, whether they get exposed to deadly bacteria or not. According to IMDB, Dylan Baker “gets better” and becomes a defense attorney for a string of episodes a few years down the line. I look forward to covering some of those, because they can help with my theory that upon death in the Law & Order universe, you don’t descend or ascend to any sort of afterlife but instead become an attorney. I’ve got a lot of charts and spirographs in my closet… Okay, okay, fine. Maybe another time.