Some folks may remember that I am a one-time-fan-turned-long-time critic of Law and Order. The show began (20 years ago!) when crime was still a big deal in New York and the ripped-from-the-headlines stories were about real crimes. Some of those crimes even had a gritty anti-P.C. angle to them (Tawana Brawley, Larry Hogue, Bernie Goetz etc). But about ten years ago, the show became increasingly detached from reality. The producers turned to political controversies and made them into stories about murder in which corporations and conservatives are very often the culprits.

I’ve always thought this was a deeply pernicious thing to do. Whatever your objections to conservatives and corporations, they don’t routinely murder people. To suggest that our ideological-yet-democratic disputes are plausibly analogized to stories of wanton homicide is a serious disservice. Indeed, because the show is astoundingly smug in its didacticism, the hypocrisy of it all is galling. The show often preens as if it is lecturing us about political morality even as it slanders American society in the process. I stopped watching years ago. But every now and then I do watch to see if it’s still as bad. It usually is. But it sounds like it’s getting even worse.

Michael Rulle at Big Hollywood writes:

NBC’s “Law and Order” is in its 20th season. The economy is weak, so they have devolved to converting White House talking points into weekly shows. Last week, “Doped” was a farcical equivalent of “Damien Thorn meets Karen Silkwood.” Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors are worse than drug cartels. The killers in the previous week’s episode on such cartels were more sympathetic than the health professionals.
In the opening scene, a woman with 4 children is driving the wrong way down the West Side Highway (like the Diane Schuler Taconic Parkway horror this summer). Speaking on her cell phone erratically (no “hands free!”), the kids get concerned. She decides it is time to use nasal spray for her allergies, which had been spiked without her knowledge. Flash forward and viewers see two mangled vehicles resulting in seven deaths.

Go to B.H. for the rest, but the upshot is we need health-care reform.