Monsters of Television

“I think the show’s just starting.”

When Dollhouse got cancelled, and with USA shifting its schedule around, my Friday nights were going to be pretty dead (sorry, Caprica fans!). But Law & Order was on Fridays, so I decided to start tackling the old war horse when it came back from the Olympic break. When NBC said it would be moving to Mondays to cover for the widely mourned The Jay Leno Show, I wasn’t thrilled because it meant my Fridays would be really dead (resulting in me occasionally looking at Caprica).

I tuned in for both of Monday’s episodes in a mildly snarky mood. The promos drove home that Debra Winger was guest starring, to which I felt was a little silly since many in the post-Chuck audience wouldn’t know Debra Winger from a hole in the ground. As the episodes progressed, I realized that the show was still beholden to its 1990s heights. As Alisa and Max Dawson conversed with me over Twitter, we bandied about the rough idea of Law & Order as a ’90s period piece.

And I’m fairly certain that much of the time that’s exactly what the show is.

“Steel-Eyed Death” is perhaps most indicative of the behavior. The episode deals with a set of murders (6 to be precise) and the killers turn out to be fans of horrorcore as well as manga (though Lupo re-identifies them as graphic novels, a number of which he has read). In this move, the show has followed a tradition of many narrative shows, portraying current cultural trends (and their fans) as negatives that lead to dangerous and violent behavior, in much the same way rap music, hip hop, and comic books have been portrayed in the past (including on this show).

These new cultural trends are looked at through an old lens, a 90s lens, of cultural critique without thought to to how people may actually engage the trends. That the show makes no case for people who aren’t murderously aggressive and like horrorcore and manga, the show continues to perpetuate the idea that fans of these objects will be driven to horrible and unspeakable acts (at least Bones, when it dealt with black metal, showed how fans and participants move in and out of those discourses). This is fitting for the single-mindedness crusading nature that the show can lapse into. The formula allows for little room to innovate like that, having the detectives talk to suspects or experts discuss in court, provides an alternative to the view of the trend presented.

The crusading nature of the show, for me, has always been one of the more interesting parts of the show for me as it is one of the few broadcast shows that deal directly with social issues in very specific ways, without burying them under allegory or metaphor. It’s not always rewarding because the show applies the ’90s rubric of cultural standards to the show, when the show was it its height, and we’ve moved beyond that (or at least I should like to hope so) rubric.

Indeed, what the episode actually highlight is how the ’90s rubric is applied Millennials. In “Steel-Eyed Death,” the massive amounts of violence depicted in the news, including two wars and planes crashing into the World Trade Center, leads to the killer offering a post-traumatic stress disorder defense. Here, again, a ’90s crusade for media decency is applied to protect the media-saturated Millennials who cannot escape its reach. It’s desensitized them to violence, the show argues, creating a cycle of increasingly bloody and personal violence.

Maybe it’s more of an ideological period piece than costume period piece, but it’s a thought to consider as I move forward with the show (and, indeed, the idea of what constitutes a period piece). To close, I want to just discuss characters and formula.

Like I’ve discussed before, what people end up tuning in for on Law & Order are the characters working within a formula to make it pop. While “Boy on Fire” provides more traditional L&O experience, “Steel-Eyed Death” gives character depth within the formula. This week Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) is front and center. Bits of personal business work their way into the formula (like Lupo wanting his tie to be just right after Van Buren came down on both of them a few weeks ago to start looking more professional, including shaving their beards (which they had)), but also sizable character defining traits. This isn’t new to L&O in any way. Lennie Briscoe was given a fairly sizable backstory (compared to many of the characters), chronicling his alcohol recovery and family life (Van Buren’s cancer treatments have been a recurring issue this season as well).

“Steel-Eyed Death” deals with grisly murders (especially grisly, I thought, for this show) and the investigation and footwork necessary to find the killer(s) and achieve a conviction. The grisliness, thankfully, serves a narrative purpose. It is revealed, as the episode progresses, that Lupo, while at an also gruesome crime scene a number of years ago, fled that scene and drank excessively to cope with it. He would appear in court concerning the case thoroughly intoxicated. Later he was diagnosed with, and received treatment for, post-traumatic stress disorder.

The reveal occurs in a car as Lupo is dropping off Bernard. Lupo recounts the event to Bernard, who provides him with some measure of solace, as Lupo will have to recount the tale on the stand in front of a number of people, by telling Lupo to tell the story directly to him in court, and no one else. It’s the type of semi-mawkish male melodrama that we don’t often get from the show, but works well in defining Cyrus Lupo beyond the short asides.

At the end, the episode allows us to see that Lupo has reached a degree of closure on this particular piece of emotional baggage. We’ll see if it reaches a degree of closure about protecting people from the scary 2000s and 2010s.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I’m aware I’ve dropped the second episode, “Boy on Fire,” but I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to that episode (I was pretty worn out after “Steel-Eyed Death”). It did, however, win the L&O line of the night contest: “Is that enough extra credit to make up for an F?”
• If only to drive home my idea about characters being more important than formula, NBC has a trivia game devoted to 20 years of character details and show trivia. (Hopefully Alisa will play this and let me know how she does.)
• Seeing J.K. Simmons is always a treat, and it’s nice to see him find a character after being away from it for 6 years.
• I know I’ve called Jack McCoy sexy, and I still stand by that, but Cutter was rocking that suit/vest combo at the end of “Steel-Eyed Death.”