SVU Episode #13-15: Hunting Ground

23 February, 2012 By 1 Comment

Recap: This episode provided an intense mashup of some fictional and real serial killers, including Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, General Zaroff from “The Most Dangerous Game,” the Craiglist Killer, and the Long Island Serial Killer.
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We open with Olivia and Harry Connick coming out of a movie theater.  They banter about how many memos they’ll have to write in order to have this relationship, but seem to be having a great time on their date.  Enjoy the moment, folks, because things are about to get decidedly more disturbing.
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Filed Under: Blog, SVU Episodes

SVU Episode #13-14: Home Invasion

16 February, 2012 By 23 Comments

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Recap:  The episode opens with a family scene so happy, cheerful, and functional, that any seasoned SVU connoisseur knows something dark and rancid is hidden in the depths of that plush beige carpeting.  Mom, Dad, and 14-year-old daughter Emmy are watching a basketball game in a bright family room while awaiting a delivery of Chinese food.  When the doorbell rings, Mom doesn’t find the Kung Pao she expected, but a masked man who holds a gun to her nose and pulls the trigger.  Yikes.  After the commercial break, we learn that Dad has also been shot dead, and Emmy is in critical condition, with a bullet lodged in her frontal lobe.
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The investigation takes Olivia, Nick, Amanda and Finn through a typically twisty path.  At first, we think this was a hate crime, because Mom worked for a gay-rights organization and had an affair with her female boss, and the killer spray-painted “Queer” on all the walls.  Then we suspect the murders are tied to Murphy, a shady bookie with a sexy Scottish accent, with whom Dad routinely gambled seven-figure sums.  Then we think it’s the buxom housekeeper who was beefing with Dad about where Mom’s diamond earrings went – or maybe it was the housekeeper’s brother, an dashing ex-con-turned-preacher. Finally, we wonder if it was Emmy’s squeaky young boyfriend and his overprotective father.  Squeaky expected Emmy to hang with him that night, but his father put the kabosh on those plans.  The mention of Emmy’s “chastity vow” to Squeaky and their mutually-assured virginity got my crime-drama bells ringing.
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Emmy soon recovers from the shot to her head, and the entire flock of SVU detectives fly into the hospital to interview her.  She’s doing miraculously well.  Except for the Mommy-Dearest cone of gauze wrapped around her skull, Emmy seems more like a diabetic who’s eaten too many fun-size Snickers than a girl who’s taken a bullet to the brain.
 But she claims not to remember anything.  Nick notices that Emmy’s on antiviral medication and asks the doctor why.  “She has herpes,” answer the doctor, thereby violating HIPAA and a dozen other rules she should have learned in her medical ethics class.
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Armed with that unhappy information, the detectives have Dad’s corpse tested.  He had the same strain of herpes as his daughter.
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Meanwhile, in loosely-related plot that our good writers must have struggled to tie to this case, Murphy beats up Amanda outside a gas station.  Can you believe it?  Our newest female detective has a gambling problem and owes $20,000 to the very same bookie that Emmy’s Dad patronized.  What a coincidence!  Still, I have to hand it to Amanda – she can take a punch to the gut.  (There used to be a convention that female characters didn’t get beat up on TV shows – they were too delicate.  Kudos to SVU for renouncing that kind of sexism.  Um… I think.)
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Captain Cragen once again displayed his managerial chops, correctly referring Amanda to IAB while giving her a second chance in SVU, signing her up for Gamblers Anonymous, and telling her he understands how the job can wear down a cop.  In fact, he admits, he used to drink too much.  In under two minutes, Cragen was strict but kind, understanding but a tad intimidating, vulnerable but a solid leader.  What a great boss.  I’m a sucker for Cragen’s backstory, or maybe I have a closet crush on Dann Florek – this is the second time this season he’s brought me to tears (the first was when the widower reminisced about his late wife, while falling in love with that Russian prostitute he later had to arrest.  Okay, I’m definitely a sucker).
Anyway…
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Olivia goes back to the hospital and interviews Emmy.  Using her patented empathetic head nod and firm-but-gentle prodding, Olivia gets Emmy to admit that Dad molested her.
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And, it turns out, the family’s buxom housekeeper knew about the incestuous assaults.  It was eating her up.  She tried to tell Mom, but Mom wouldn’t listen.  Our detectives haul in the housekeeper’s ex-con-turned-preacher brother.  Nick lies to the ex-con and says Emmy died from the bullet.  Then Nick delivers a suave “If you’re a man of God, confess your sins” speech, and the ex-con sobbingly admits he shot Emmy’s parents.  (The “Queer” graffiti was just to throw off the cops.) But, he cries, Emmy wasn’t supposed to be home.
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Wait!  How did he know that?
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Turns out, Emmy asked the housekeeper/brother duo to kill her parents.  They complied because they loved her and wanted to protect her.  They didn’t think she’d be there  - she’d told them she’d be at Squeaky’s house.  When the ex-con shot Dad, the bullet went right through Dad’s head and hit Emmy, who’d been hidden standing behind Dad.
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Aha.  It all makes sense now.
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Because if there’s anything we’ve learned from watching thirteen season of SVU, it’s this: If a fourteen-year-old girl appears in the show, she must have been the ultimate perpetrator of the crime in question.  Even if the crime in question was her own attempted murder.
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Verdict: B
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What they got right:   
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There were references to some classic law-school cases tonight.  One-L’s take note!
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Police can lie to extract a confession, just like Nick told the ex-con that Emmy was dead.  In Frazier v. Cupp, a 20-year-old marine went drinking with his cousin.  They met a guy in a bar, got in a fight, and Frazier killed the guy.  When the police questioned Frazier, they falsely told him that his cousin had already confessed.  Then Frazier admitted to the murder.  The Supreme Court said that was fine.  Since then, police have used all kinds of deception to elicit confessions.  Opponents argue that this tactic increases the chances of false confessions.  The Supreme Court has set some limits.  For example, in a case where the police told a woman she’d lose her children and her government benefits unless she confessed, the Court threw out the confession.
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 The pious way Nick appealed to the ex-con reminded me of the famous “decent Christian burial” case of Brewer v. Williams. Williams was a religious mental-hospital escapee who was seen walking out of a YMCA carrying a bundle with two little legs sticking out of it.  A 10-year-old girl went missing at the Y that day, and Williams was soon arrested.  His lawyer instructed him not to answer any questions while the police transported him from Des Moines to the jail in Davenport, 160 miles away.
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During the long drive, a police officer got Williams to show them where the little girl’s body was buried by giving him this speech:
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“I want to give you something to think about while we’re traveling down the road. . . They are predicting several inches of snow for tonight, and I feel that you yourself are the only person that knows where this little girl’s body is, that you yourself have only been there once, and if you get a snow on top of it you yourself may be unable to find it… the parents of this little girl should be entitled to a Christian burial for the little girl who was snatched away from them on Christmas Eve and murdered.”
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The Supreme Court overturned the conviction based on the suspect’s right to have a lawyer present during custodial interrogation and to avoid self-incrimination.
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Nick’s speech tonight, however, was fine.  He took all the best elements of the Christian-burial speech but didn’t make the mistake of messing with the suspect’s constitutional rights.  Well done.
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What they got wrong:
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The scenes in the hospital needed some critical care – stat.  On walking into Emmy’s hospital room, Nick just happened to notice that she was on antiviral medications.  He must be telepathic, because medical records are not available to the police without a subpoena.  There are strict medical-privacy rules, including federal and state law, preventing hospitals from turning over medical records.  In every case I tried, I had to get authorization to see any patient’s medical records.  Usually, that came from the patient herself signing a medical release form.  If she wouldn’t or couldn’t do so, I could petition the court the allow me to see them.  That can be a long and arduous process.  Even with a release, it can takes weeks for a hospital to get all the records together and turn them over.
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Similarly, the doctor would never tell the police the Emmy had herpes without a subpoena.  She could lose her job.  And when Emmy is charged with double homicide, the girl will not be grateful about the unauthorized disclosure of her STD, which led to her arrest.  That doctor better have some good insurance.
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Finally, I laughed at the scene where Nick somberly pushes some paperwork toward the ex-con and says,  “The DNA results came back.”  As if he expected the ex-con to be able to read and interpret what’s on the report.  In reality, a DNA report contains charts full of numbers and symbols which are  indecipherable until you’ve taken a DNA training course.  This ex-con won’t be able to look at that paper and say, “Oh, I see the bullet went through both Dad and Emmy’s brains!  You got me!”  He might try to play Sudoku on it.
Filed Under: SVU Episodes Tagged With: , , , , ,

SVU Episode #13-13: Father’s Shadow

9 February, 2012 By 7 Comments

Recap: A pretty young woman auditions for a spot in a singing reality TV show. The producer not only subjects her to the traditional casting couch, but spikes her drink with quaaludes before he rapes her and leaves her unconscious on a park bench, where a passing pervert sexually assaults her shearling coat. When SVU starts to investigate, the detectives walk in on the producer in the process of sexually assaulting yet another woozy woman. But the first woman doesn’t remember the assault, and the second woman doesn’t want to press charges – it might hurt her chances in the music industry. Nevertheless, our good SVU detectives gather enough evidence to arrest the sleazy producer and keep him at Rikers.

The producer’s redheaded son then freaks out and holds his own girlfriend and her daughter hostage. Red will only speak to Olivia. In the process, Red panics and shoots his girlfriend in the leg. But Olivia eventually talks him down, and he lets the hostages go. Olivia walks out of the building under the admiring gaze of DA Harry Connick Jr.

Verdict: B+

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Filed Under: SVU Episodes

Want to be a literary rock star? Live like a boy scout. A conversation with George Pelecanos.

2 February, 2012 By 8 Comments

George Pelecanos is an author at the top of his game. When he’s not writing bestselling crime novels, he’s creating some of America’s finest TV dramas: shows like “The Wire” and “Treme.” Stephen King called him “perhaps America’s greatest living crime writer”; Esquire anointed him “the poet laureate of D.C. crime fiction”; Dennis Lehane said, “The guy’s a national treasure.” In short, George Pelecanos is a literary rock star. So how can a new writer capture a little bit of that magic?

George’s answer surprised me.

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I recently sat down with him for lunch, and that question was at the top of my mind. My debut legal thriller, “Law of Attraction,” got positive reviews and some nice buzz – but no one’s calling me “a national treasure.” I’ve read George’s earliest books, written before he was nationally treasured himself. They showcase considerable raw talent, but they’re unrefined and inconsistent. Like the evolution of cell phone technology, George’s writing has developed from an interesting conversation piece to a body of work so smart and sophisticated, it makes you shake your head with wonder. I wanted to know: how do I make that happen to my own writing? Will I need a more apps and better ringtones, or just some writing seminars?

None of the above, George answered. To be a good writer, be a good person.

That’s not exactly what he said – more on the specifics below – but that’s what it boiled down to.

It wasn’t the advice I expected from this author. If you’ve read his novels, you know George Pelecanos creates worlds that are dark, testosterone charged, and dangerous. “King Suckerman” opens with a disgruntled employee using a shotgun to blow a hole through his boss. In “The Sweet Forever,” one man proves his love for another by brutally murdering a rival. “Drama City” features a female probation officer who’s straight-laced by day and driven to risky one-night stands by night. George’s novels are full of violence and retribution, the grimmest side of humanity, and plenty of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.

But his advice on how to create these worlds is akin to what a thoughtful father might advise his daughter on the larger question of how to live her life. The melding of these dark worlds with more wholesome introspection may be what makes his novels so finely textured and morally complex.

Here’s George Pelecanos’ advice for becoming a great writer:

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Filed Under: The truth, the whole truth ... and other stuff Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tonight’s SVU looks familiar…

1 February, 2012 By Leave a Comment

SVU is running two more encore episodes tonight.  Click here for my takes on Double Strands and Blood Brothers.  Looking forward to a new episode next week!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Reruns and Cover Art

26 January, 2012 By 19 Comments

Tonight was an SVU “Special Double Episode Encore,” which turns out to be … two reruns.  Click these links for my take on “Personal Fouls” and “Spiraling Down.”  One interesting thing to note is that “Personal Fouls” — an episode about a basketball coach who sexually abuses the underprivileged boys who sign up for his charity — aired before the Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky scandal broke.  Don’t know how the SVU writers managed that one.

In personal news, my publisher has proposed two possible covers for my next book, “Discretion.”  The plot revolves around a political sex scandal that ensues after a high-priced escort is thrown from a balcony of the U.S. Capitol.   The book is coming out in July, but meanwhile, there’s been lots of debate about which cover to use.  What do you think?  If you have a moment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Choice #1

Choice #2

Filed Under: "Discretion", SVU Episodes

SVU Episode #13-12: Official Story

19 January, 2012 By 15 Comments

Recap: The billionaire CEO of a private military security company (I didn’t catch its name – let’s call it SmackWater) is drugged, kidnapped, sodomized, and left alive but half-naked and bound in a park. The initial suspects are some scruffy Occupy Wall Street protestors, but our detectives soon track the crime to a clean-cut man whose military daughter was gang-raped by four SmackWater employees while she was working in Iraq. The daughter went to a party and was drugged and gang-raped so brutally she can no longer have children. After the rape, the company locked her in an interrogation room for 72 hours, before one kindly guard finally allowed her to call Dad. The U.S. government won’t do anything about the crime because “this company’s got a lot of juice in Washington.” Dad admits he sodomized the CEO with a baton in order to exact his own vigilante justice.

Cpt. Cragen tells the detectives not to go investigating a gang rape that took place outside their jurisdiction, but come on, Olivia’s not going to let that go! With the help of Harry Connick, Jr. (looking dapper as a DA), our detectives hone in on SmackWater. They talk to the army doctor who performed the sex kit on the woman in Iraq. At first, the doc says she witnessed the after-effects of a brutal rape. But when she’s called to the Grand Jury, she does a 180 and claims she doesn’t remember that particular case at all.

The SmackWater CEO is clearly behind this change of heart. He shows up at the police station in a tux and threatens Harry in front of three police officer. “Is this the battle you want?” the CEO snarls. “Because war is my business. And business is good.” (Hm. With all the legal advice this CEO was getting from his voluptuous lawyer, I’m surprised she didn’t tell him, “If you’re going to threaten a DA, do it outside the presence of the NYPD.”)

Immediately thereafter, Dad is shanked in prison, the kindly guard is killed with vodka, Olivia’s apartment is ransacked, and the daughter is brutally attacked in her workplace.

The war is on.

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Filed Under: SVU Episodes

SVU Episode #13-11: Theatre Tricks

12 January, 2012 By 16 Comments

Recap: Tonight’s episode was like an acid-trip combination of the movie “Eyes Wide Shut” and that episode of 30 Rock where Liz gets mad because her boyfriend is so good-looking that he gets better treatment than everyone else. Our SVU writers must’ve made a New Year’s resolution that in 2012 they’d tread as close as possible to the line of network-TV sexual-content tolerance without actually crossing into an “R” rating.   Even Ice-T’s wife, Coco, was surprised by what they had her wear in her sexy cameo.  (According to The Huffington Post, Coco said ‘Wait, hold up! NBC is OK with this?’”)  There were some seriously eye-popping scenes, and some nicely artistic renderings; no one can complain that the show wasn’t intriguing. But the plot was so far-fetched, the lacy lingerie so pervasive, the goat masks so perfectly burnished (goats again!), that this was more like a fraternity fantasy of what a sexual assault case looks like than an actual case.

We open in a kinky interactive theater that’s performing a show about Dante’s nine circles of hell. In dimly lit rooms, black-clad theater-goers are handed golden masks of animal faces and told “No one here knows you. No one will judge you.” The eerie masked audience stands solemnly before a raised dias. The way the stage is set up, you’re just waiting for the animal sacrifice or ritual sex to begin. And so it does. During a scene about infidelity, two masked members of the audience step forward, hold down the beautiful and barely-clad young actress, and violently rape her. The audience thinks it’s part of the show. But it’s real, and the young woman is devastated.

Here’s where the real craziness begins. Because it turns out that this young actress, Megan, has been targeted, stalked, assaulted, or set up by – count ‘em – four separate perverts in the last few weeks. There’s the horny director using professional leverage to pressure her to have sex with him. There’s the creepy cyber-geek stalker guy who’s wired her house with motion-detector cameras to videotape her while she’s in the shower. And there’s the judge who met her on SugarBabies.com, a sleazy matchmaking site where young women emulating Victoria’s Secret models find rich older men who want to trade cash for sex. The judge is the one who raped Megan on stage.

But this is SVU; we’re not done yet. The judge produces emails showing that Megan instructed him to rape her on stage — she wrote that it was her fantasy. The judge didn’t mean to rape anyone, he was just role playing. Is it possible there was actually no crime? Was this just a setup by Megan to get publicity? Through good detective work and the magic of Gilbert Gottfried’s hilarious police tech character, our detectives find that Megan didn’t send those emails. That was done by Megan’s dumpy, small-town, best-friend roommate who moved to the Big Apple with Megan a few months ago to seek fame and fortune on the stage along with her. (Was it just me, or did you know Plain Jane was the perp from the moment she thoughtfully handed Megan that frappucino?)

Plain Jane was pissed because Megan was getting all the good roles. Jane was the better actress. Hell, Jane even slept with the director and Megan didn’t, but Megan still scored the lead in “Nine Circles.” Jane was tired of watching how easy everything was for Megan, how generously everyone treated her because of her pretty face. So Jane joined SugarBabies.com, met the judge and learned his dirty little secrets, and somehow orchestrated the whole thing so that her best friend would be publicly raped while on stage. Oh, and this brilliant criminal mastermind also confessed the entire setup to the two detectives who casually mentioned that she must have been bummed that she didn’t get the role.

Verdict: C+

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Filed Under: SVU Episodes
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