Monsters of Television

“Everybody’s lying except you?”

How do you make the spiral of the American economy make sense to the American people? Goodness knows that The Daily Show has tried every other week only to have Jon meet someone at Camera 3 and then give up in frustration. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense. And then Law & Order comes around and just nails it.

Instead of stocks and houses, it’s about comic books. And instead of mega-banks inflating their profits, it’s husbands trying to deflate their profits to keep money from their wives. What could be more accessible to American audiences than three semi-geeky guys trying to hide profits from their wives?

Three guys invest in a comic book collection, specifically obscure ones like Gay Ghost (“He was cheerful.”) instead of stocks, and let their values slowly build over time until the guys can sell them for a fortune. And it’s a pretty smart idea, though by no means a new one. But here’s the rub: it turns out that the husbands have been deflating the value of their comics in their portfolios so that when (not if) they divorce their wives, they don’t lose as much money, and can sell the comic books to make back what they lost in the divorces.

Of course, that scheme doesn’t unravel itself until near the end. For much of the episode we’re led to believe that flighty and crazy and fashionally inept Marielle killed her husband (who it turns out wanted out of the comic book scheme because he really loved kooky Mairelle) due to their predilections for violent sex games (like stuffing your spouse inside a dog cage and hand-cuffing him while you jaunt off to Connecticut) and that she and David conspired to kill her first husband, who she now wears in a ring on her finger.

This is pretty classic Law & Order, though the ripped from the headlines aspect is decidedly fuzzier than most. But it is one of those episodes that does keep you guessing up until the killer, played with delicious amounts of sleepy slime by some actor whose name wasn’t in the press release and isn’t listed on IMDb yet. Another thing I’ve noticed the season if the desire to bring perps and potential perps into the DA’s office conference room and make them sweat each other out. Indeed, it’s a pseudo-interrogation set-up, just with Cutter hoodwinking folks in and out of various deals as opposed to Nichols getting at the root of the criminal’s deep-seated psychological issues.

One more to go. Sad.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Yes, the ploy the husbands use, a daisy chain, isn’t exactly the same time of scheme deployed by the mega-banks in the United States, but the general plot all but screams “Here’s kind of how this worked, but on a very small scale!”
• Any show that involves mocking What Not To Wear, one of my least favorite shows in the world, I’m all for. I long for the day when Stacy and Clinton discover a murder victim instead of a fashion victim! chung-CHUNG! (Also, episode was gunning for reality TV with Cutter’s jibe at The Real Housewives franchise.)
• Apologies for not reviewing “Immortal.” I was distracted for much of the episode and my notes are as incoherent as some of the twists were in that episode.
• If you missed my tweet about it, Tom Shales over at the Washington Post argued that Law & Order is “almost entirely actor proof.” Way back in January, I explained why he’s totally wrong without even knowing he was going to write this article. It’s like I’m psychic.