This is a classic case of an episode that starts out middling but gets more exciting during its latter two thirds.
Here we've got a dead kid murdered by gunshot, and ostensibly the hook is that the perpetrators appear to be unwitting prep school kids - cleaned-up rich kids committing crimes, oh the irony! But then there's the twist that makes this one worth watching: Detective Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) knows the father of one of the suspects, a scowling ex-cop played by Robert Hogan. While the kids aren't exactly cold-blooded killers, Hogan'll be damned if he's going to let even a single charge stick on his precious boy, which puts him in conflict with the upstanding Briscoe. Hogan and Orbach's scenes together are major highlights.
And savor Michael Moriarty's classic closing argument in this one, because he'd already resigned from L&O by the time this episode aired - there's only a handful of episodes featuring the morally righteous EADA Ben Stone left!
"And though justice must be tempered with mercy," he tells the jury, "it can never lose a sense of retribution - or it is no longer justice."
Watch and find out if the jury agrees!
Here we've got a dead kid murdered by gunshot, and ostensibly the hook is that the perpetrators appear to be unwitting prep school kids - cleaned-up rich kids committing crimes, oh the irony! But then there's the twist that makes this one worth watching: Detective Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) knows the father of one of the suspects, a scowling ex-cop played by Robert Hogan. While the kids aren't exactly cold-blooded killers, Hogan'll be damned if he's going to let even a single charge stick on his precious boy, which puts him in conflict with the upstanding Briscoe. Hogan and Orbach's scenes together are major highlights.
And savor Michael Moriarty's classic closing argument in this one, because he'd already resigned from L&O by the time this episode aired - there's only a handful of episodes featuring the morally righteous EADA Ben Stone left!
"And though justice must be tempered with mercy," he tells the jury, "it can never lose a sense of retribution - or it is no longer justice."
Watch and find out if the jury agrees!