Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-04-18 (Friday)

On Apr 19, 2025 at 4:33:14 PM PDT, "Arthur Lipscomb"
<arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

Law & Order - "Play with Fire Part 1" - In the annual cross over
episode, Benson show up at the regular police department and starts
trying to throw her weight around.  But the commander of the regular
unit isn't having it.
 
 
Law & Order: SVU - "Play with Fire Part 2" - Picking up where the last
episode ended, Team SVU is investigating sex trafficking involving a
priest.  I think.  I kind lost track of what was going on.  But Stabler
showed up at the end to threaten someone.

These shows just keep on getting more and more ridiculous on the "Order" side
of things. These trials are approaching a 10-year-old's view of how things
work.

In this episode we find Benson and Brady teamed as investigators, even though
they both have entire divisions full of investigators that they supervise, and
they find a witness who not only knows who did the murder but was a victim of
rape from the guy as well from back when she was a drug addict. Except she's
an illegal who has somehow managed to not only detox herself but find a job
and get married and she won't testify because doing so would blow up her new
life.

(I forgot to mention that ICE is portrayed and they always are on Dick Wolf
shows as malevolent evil stormtroopers.)

So the entire team, from D.A. Baxter on down to both prosecutors (one from
each show) decide to leave her out and go with the evidence they have. But in
typical L&O fashion, the trial does not go well for the state and so Baxter
decides the hidden witness has to testify after all.

Except she couldn't. In reality, you can't leave someone off your witness list
and then reverse course mid-trial and call them to testify. Maybe you could
get away with it if you genuinely only became aware of the witness mid-trial
but this is someone the prosecution knew about all along. There's no way they
could then suddenly spring the witness on the defense mid-trial and get away
with it.

The defense raises a half-hearted objection and the judge doesn't even allow
the lawyer to make an argument before overruling the objection with no
justification for the record. She just says, "I'll allow it."

No, no, no, no, no.

No.