Season 1, Episode 1 "Prescription for Death"
Nov 20, 2013 23:36:56 GMT -5
Liz n Dick and Wolf like this
Post by sharculese on Nov 20, 2013 23:36:56 GMT -5
Law & Order
Season 1
Episode 1
"Prescription for Death"
“Prescription for Death” tells the story of its central murder twice before we learn the name of either of the detectives investigating it. That makes it a perfect introduction to Law & Order, a procedural drama that succeeded by downplaying the personal lives of its central cast the better to focus on the case of the week.
In the opening scene, we see a young woman die of sudden cardiac arrest while her father (John Spencer, a few weeks before he would join the cast of L.A. Law) watches in horror. After the title sequence, he’s telling his story to two unnamed cops. He was a medic in Vietnam; he knows his daughter wasn’t that sick.
Only as the pair recounts this to their captain do we learn that one of them is Max. That’s fitting, since George Dundza’s Max Greevey is the member of the team we’ll learn most about from this episode. That’s partly because Greevey’s suspicion of doctors drives the investigation, but also because Dzundza already seems at home in his character in a way the others don’t. An early scene in which he relates the false cancer diagnosis that made him suspicious of the medical profession could have come off as a dry info dump, but Dzundza’s distinct physicality and sense of storytelling save it.
One of the strengths of Law & Order was that it allowed its cops and prosecutors to be incredibly fallible. They were by and large competent professionals, who sometimes made errors of judgment, and sometimes their competence would save them and sometimes it wouldn’t and they would get things very wrong. In “Prescription”, Greevey is saved by his competence. His prejudice blinds him to the very real insecurities expressed by all of the subordinate doctors at the hospital, so confident is he that they think they know better than him. But his competence allows him to make the deductive leaps that lead to Chief of Medicine Edward Auster, who got into the habit of practicing medicine while drunk and ended up making a fatal error.
“Prescription” is tasked with establishing the bifurcated nature of Law & Order, with the first half of the show devoted to the investigation and the other half to the trial. To that end, the midpoint of the episode finds Greevey and Mike Logan heading over to the courthouse to report their findings to the District Attorney. Then next scene begins with Logan and Greevey state their case; we hear Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone only off screen. Slowly we pan left to Stone and his subordinate Paul Robinette, physically handing the story over to them.
Stone and Robinette get less characterization, which makes sense, given that this is not a case either seems particularly passionate about. The courtroom sequence also feels a little dry and perfunctory. We get some levity from Ron Rifkin as Auster’s showboating lawyer, but mostly it’s experts drily laying out the case against the doctor.
As it turns out, that only serves to set up the final twist, in which Stone shows Auster to be drunk in court. That could easily have come off as a cheap trick, but in the context of the episode it works. Lacking any defense for his actions, Auster puts on a show for the jury, counting on his air of authority to carry the day. He’s charming, to be sure, but it depends completely on the fact that he buys into his own mythic stature. Stone succeeds not by blowing a whole in the jury’s perception of him, but in his own perception of himself.
Here is some other shit I think about Law & Order!
• Like a lot of people, my first exposure to Law & Order was in endless reruns on TNT, so I ended up getting a lot of the back story out of sequence. I’ve watched the show in order before, but this time I’m trying to go through and pretend I’ve only got the character details that have been revealed so far. If this ends up not making sense I’ll probably stop doing it.
• Another great little bit of physicality from George Dzundza: When the handwriting analyst says that the style is particular to the colonies, you can see him making the connection and then waiting not particularly patiently for the other two to catch up.
• In Dr. Raza’s ‘twice as good’ speech, he complains that nobody bothers to know whether he’s Indian or Pakistani. Later, Greevey, as if to prove that he wasn’t listening, calls him “Gunga Din.”
• *Do I really need to do spoilers for minor bits of Law & Order characterization* Logan’s concerns about going after Auster are presumably less about being drunk and more about impulsively making terrible decisions, something that’s going to be a consistent problem for him on the job.
• I praised George Dzundza already for nailing the physicality of Max Greevey, but Michael Moriarty is also on point in the courtroom scenes, absolutely nailing the slow movements and stork-like posture I associate with Ben Stone.
Next week: Law & Order is willing to go for a controversial story fairly early on in its run. “Subterranean Homeboy Blues” takes on the Bernard Goetz shooting with an episode that presupposes – what if Bernard Goetz were a pretty, blonde ballerina?
Season 1
Episode 1
"Prescription for Death"
“Prescription for Death” tells the story of its central murder twice before we learn the name of either of the detectives investigating it. That makes it a perfect introduction to Law & Order, a procedural drama that succeeded by downplaying the personal lives of its central cast the better to focus on the case of the week.
In the opening scene, we see a young woman die of sudden cardiac arrest while her father (John Spencer, a few weeks before he would join the cast of L.A. Law) watches in horror. After the title sequence, he’s telling his story to two unnamed cops. He was a medic in Vietnam; he knows his daughter wasn’t that sick.
Only as the pair recounts this to their captain do we learn that one of them is Max. That’s fitting, since George Dundza’s Max Greevey is the member of the team we’ll learn most about from this episode. That’s partly because Greevey’s suspicion of doctors drives the investigation, but also because Dzundza already seems at home in his character in a way the others don’t. An early scene in which he relates the false cancer diagnosis that made him suspicious of the medical profession could have come off as a dry info dump, but Dzundza’s distinct physicality and sense of storytelling save it.
One of the strengths of Law & Order was that it allowed its cops and prosecutors to be incredibly fallible. They were by and large competent professionals, who sometimes made errors of judgment, and sometimes their competence would save them and sometimes it wouldn’t and they would get things very wrong. In “Prescription”, Greevey is saved by his competence. His prejudice blinds him to the very real insecurities expressed by all of the subordinate doctors at the hospital, so confident is he that they think they know better than him. But his competence allows him to make the deductive leaps that lead to Chief of Medicine Edward Auster, who got into the habit of practicing medicine while drunk and ended up making a fatal error.
“Prescription” is tasked with establishing the bifurcated nature of Law & Order, with the first half of the show devoted to the investigation and the other half to the trial. To that end, the midpoint of the episode finds Greevey and Mike Logan heading over to the courthouse to report their findings to the District Attorney. Then next scene begins with Logan and Greevey state their case; we hear Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone only off screen. Slowly we pan left to Stone and his subordinate Paul Robinette, physically handing the story over to them.
Stone and Robinette get less characterization, which makes sense, given that this is not a case either seems particularly passionate about. The courtroom sequence also feels a little dry and perfunctory. We get some levity from Ron Rifkin as Auster’s showboating lawyer, but mostly it’s experts drily laying out the case against the doctor.
As it turns out, that only serves to set up the final twist, in which Stone shows Auster to be drunk in court. That could easily have come off as a cheap trick, but in the context of the episode it works. Lacking any defense for his actions, Auster puts on a show for the jury, counting on his air of authority to carry the day. He’s charming, to be sure, but it depends completely on the fact that he buys into his own mythic stature. Stone succeeds not by blowing a whole in the jury’s perception of him, but in his own perception of himself.
Here is some other shit I think about Law & Order!
• Like a lot of people, my first exposure to Law & Order was in endless reruns on TNT, so I ended up getting a lot of the back story out of sequence. I’ve watched the show in order before, but this time I’m trying to go through and pretend I’ve only got the character details that have been revealed so far. If this ends up not making sense I’ll probably stop doing it.
• Another great little bit of physicality from George Dzundza: When the handwriting analyst says that the style is particular to the colonies, you can see him making the connection and then waiting not particularly patiently for the other two to catch up.
• In Dr. Raza’s ‘twice as good’ speech, he complains that nobody bothers to know whether he’s Indian or Pakistani. Later, Greevey, as if to prove that he wasn’t listening, calls him “Gunga Din.”
• *Do I really need to do spoilers for minor bits of Law & Order characterization* Logan’s concerns about going after Auster are presumably less about being drunk and more about impulsively making terrible decisions, something that’s going to be a consistent problem for him on the job.
• I praised George Dzundza already for nailing the physicality of Max Greevey, but Michael Moriarty is also on point in the courtroom scenes, absolutely nailing the slow movements and stork-like posture I associate with Ben Stone.
Next week: Law & Order is willing to go for a controversial story fairly early on in its run. “Subterranean Homeboy Blues” takes on the Bernard Goetz shooting with an episode that presupposes – what if Bernard Goetz were a pretty, blonde ballerina?
