Path: Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2024 12:03:23 +0000
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Tony Goldwyn episodes Law and Order "Balance of Power" S23E07 "Facade" S22E08 (spoilers)
From: Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net>
X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.12N (x86 32bit)
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2024 04:30:42 -0400
References: <utkdr9$31qge$1@dont-email.me>
 <utkhig$32arl$6@dont-email.me>
 <818210182.732824925.484153.anim8rfsk-cox.net@news.easynews.com>
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID: <Ubkdr2$3aqge$1@dont-email.me>
Injection-Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2024 08:30:42 -0000
Lines: 239
X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com
X-Trace: sv3-EC1mZYgpQ5kWTVsd+0zHWzFFbCH2kT8LYusPeKj8/OlGc3RvIesOBN4dQpBKcZZdYrWIWYzr1JCP2PC!KEy/M+XAIVHRt+eyAi6hrGBI5NPC4NczJVNIJDpTiSHdJzJuclSBLQ==
X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com
X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html
X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers
X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly
X-Postfilter: 1.3.40
Bytes: 12782

anim8rfsk@cox.net wrote:
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

>> s
>> p
>> o
>> i
>> l
>> e
>> r
>> 
>> s
>> p
>> a
>> c
>> e
>> 
>> We all, er, fondly remember the John Nathan-Turner era of the original
>> Doctor Who series. Introducing the Sixth Doctor, JNT thought it would be
>> absolutely hysterical to hire a decent actor, Colin Baker, saddle him
>> with the same terrible terrible scripts we got since the Fourth Doctor's
>> final season and throughout most of the Fifth Doctor's run, then add to
>> it all new elements, especially the hideous multi-colored costume.
>> 
>> To top it all off, let's make the audience absolutely hate the new
>> character.
>> 
>> JNT's ghost has returned from the dead to find all-new ways to make
>> season 23 of Law and Order suck. Tony Goldwyn was introduced as the
>> interim District Attorney Nicholas Baxter. We meet him on "Balance of
>> Power" tromping through the crime scene, hysterically barking an order
>> "Don't touch anything without a warrant!" Riley and Shaw give him looks
>> of contempt while the viewing audience wants him to return Broadway
>> before the end of the episode. I don't recall either Riley or Shaw
>> saying anything particularly memorable. The investigation isn't terribly
>> interesting. At one point, having issued a bulletin to watch for a
>> vehicle because they want to speak to a suspect (who becomes the prime
>> suspect and then the defendant), a beat cop is ordered to secure the
>> vehicle that the woman fled from. She left her cell phone.
>> 
>> Prediction: Evidence from the cell phone will be excluded. I've seen
>> this show once or twice before.
>> 
>> Sure enough, the moron beat cop picked up the cell phone. Instead of
>> immediately putting it in an evidence bag, he picks it up to answer when
>> it rings. Defense argued that he had to unlock it and therefore had
>> access to other evidence on the phone.
>> 
>> A woman murdered a man who caught her ripping off his substantial wealth
>> and was going to call the police. The problem was that she was hired by
>> him as his dominatrix, a financial dominatrix. (Googing it leads to some
>> pr0n fiction, so it may not be a thing in real life.)
>> 
>> They serve a subpoena on the bank in Panama to which she transferred
>> funds. Oh for fuck's sake. There's no jurisdiction in a foreign country.
>> Much much later in the episode it's revealed that bank refused to
>> cooperate. Well, duh, but that didn't stop them from threatening to use
>> the evidence they had not yet obtained to get a confession. It didn't
>> work.
>> 
>> Everything about the case is stupid. At one point, the case is going
>> poorly for the defense, so the defendant offers video evidence from
>> another S&M session of a man who she claimed was a serial rapist. The
>> evidence had zero details but because the man was famous, Baxter wants
>> to pursue the case and to make a sweetheart deal with the defendant.
>> 
>> Massive STOOPID: A rape is a crime of control over the victim. The
>> perpetrator DOES NOT have the kind of personality in which he himself
>> craves domination.
>> 
>> Baxter, Price, and Maroun start having serious discussions about whether
>> it's important to pursue a case for murder, or even more important to
>> pursue a serial rapist. This is a thing to discuss? Maroun actually
>> argues that the public is in greater danger from the rapist. Wait. What?
>> You can make a case against a rapist if the victims come forward. There
>> were lots of victims, supposedly. This was nonsense. Odelya Halevi is so
>> pretty. Why is her character so hateful? It's said in dialogue that
>> Baxter is thinking about what he'll need to do to become well known
>> enough to get elected, so prosecuting the celebrity would help.
>> 
>> During the trial, at the point at which Price will have to offer the
>> deal to the defendant, he makes repeated calls to Baxter to see if he's
>> still pursuing the offer. Baxter blows him off.
>> 
>> Yeah, now the audience completely understands that we are supposed to
>> despise Baxter.
>> 
>> At no point is the most obvious defense pursued: She had access to all
>> of the victim's accounts because it was with his permission. Therefore
>> she hadn't stolen monies. The state had no evidence that she had
>> transferred monies for her own use to that account in Panama so the jury
>> wasn't even going to consider that this was stolen money and Price
>> presented no other examples of monies that she'd stolen. The jury wasn't
>> even going to consider her scheme so all they were left with was that
>> she had access to his money and he was NOT going to call the police. She
>> had no motive and wasn't the murderer.
>> 
>> If the defense had argued that, she should have been acquitted. But she
>> was convicted even though what little evidence there was generally
>> pointed in her favor.
>> 
>> The episode ends with a dramatic confrontation between Price and Baxter,
>> in which Price doesn't actually threaten to quit.
>> 
>> "Facade" is massively stupid in different ways. The episode opens like
>> a horror movie with a young pretty female victim willingly going into
>> scary situations to meet her fate, except she hasn't first had hot sex
>> with a teenage boy. She enters an empty subway station with no one on
>> the platform except maybe a homeless guy. I thought she'd find a corpse.
>> On the train, some tallish guy in distress falls against her; she
>> apologizes. Cut to the crime scene in which he's the murder victim.
>> 
>> Turns out he's a comedian. Riley also thinks he's a comedian but cannot
>> pull off the gallows humor like Greevey, Cerreta, and especially
>> Briscoe.
>> 
>> They find evidence that he'd gotten into an altercation with an older
>> comedian. That was a red herring. It leads to the dead guy's boyfriend.
>> 
>> Then there's this, well, it's not exactly a dojo. It claims to be MMA,
>> but it's this weird training academy for men that, later in the episode,
>> we learn is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force (do
>> they literally do investigations or coordinate investigations being done
>> by member law enforcement agencies?) as part of a nationwide domestic
>> terrorist recruitement center for the evil white supremicists trying to
>> take over the country.
>> 
>> At one point they think the owner of the academy is a white supremicist
>> on the basis of some tatoo, but he's said nothing and done nothing and
>> had an alibi for the crime. But one of recruits sort of confesses to the
>> killing.
>> 
>> Price calls the boyfriend as a witness because the defense made all
>> sorts of claims about what the dead guy was saying. Here we have yet
>> another witness, as we've seen on multiple episodes this season, giving
>> testimony without offering evidence. At one point he offers the opinion
>> that the dead guy wouldn't say what he was accused of. Defense's
>> objection was sustained. I vaguely recall defense putting on a witness
>> who similarly had no evidence to offer but maybe I'm thinking of
>> something else.
>> 
>> Nothing about the crime makes any sense. The coroner's finding was that
>> the death was caused by an arm across the throat compressing blood
>> vessels and cutting off his air, while he was having an asthmatic
>> attack. Brain death occurred more quickly due to the asthmatic attack
>> but the strangulation was the primary cause of death.
>> 
>> But the victim was relatively tall compared to the perpetrator, and they
>> thought he was killed whilst upright during the fight and not on the floor.
>> He couldn't have been killed like this.
>> 
>> All along, the defendant claimed he acted because a woman was attacked.
>> Finally, just as the defense is about to put on its case (I think she
>> was a defense witness and not called as a rebuttal witness) she makes
>> herself known.
>> 
>> Price objects to the surprise witness. If she weren't a rebuttal
>> witness, then defense had to give notice to the prosecution, right? She
>> should have at least been interviewed. Denied.
>> 
>> In her testimony, she's credible and keeps calling the defendant her
>> hero. But in the one moment that didn't entirely suck, Price takes her
>> through the situation and gets her to realize that she wasn't being
>> attacked, that the guy was in respiratory distress and fell on her. In
>> the tiny bit of the scene was saw in the cold open, it appeared to the
>> audience that she didn't think she was being attacked. On the stand, she
>> came to realize that she was at fault.
>> 
>> She screamed. That's when the defendant came to her aid.
>> 
>> Let's pause for a moment and think. That she got it wrong and wasn't
>> being attacked does not change anything about what the defendant did as
>> he was motivated to rescue her.
>> 
>> Getting back to the fight, somehow the guy in respiratory distress is
>> able to fight off, for a time, the shorter guy with a bit of fight
>> training. The fight actually goes on long enough that the train makes it
========== REMAINDER OF ARTICLE TRUNCATED ==========