Rebels

Season 6 got off to a very promising and strong start with "Bitter Fruit". It is not a flawless episode and the major cast change understandably had not settled yet (took a while to do so), but it did contain a lot of great things and elevated majorly by the legal scenes. A case of a slightly routine start and a great second half. Was mostly very impressed by the general standard of the previous five seasons, so Season 6 had a good deal to live up to.

While it is a step down from "Bitter Fruit", has one aspect that sticks out like a sore thumb and doesn't correct the flaws of the previous episode, "Rebels" on the whole is another solid episode to Season 6. It is another case of one half being better than the other, in this case the second being superior to and more settled than the first, but the good things are many in "Rebels" and the best executed of those many good things are great.

Am going to start off talking about the good things. The production values are still fully professional, the slickness and subtly gritty style still remaining. The music is sparingly used and is haunting and thankfully non-overwrought. The direction shows some nice tension in the legal scenes. The script provokes a lot of thought, is tautly structured and has an equal amount of nice tension, such as the moral dilemmas of having to cope with limited evidence and Briscoe's ever great one-liners. Nothing really rambles.

The story does intrigue enough and is easy to follow without being overly simple. There are some nice twists and the legal scenes really fascinates and makes one think. The regulars are all fine, particularly Sam Waterston who has really settled very well and has a lot of authority, and the supporting cast are up to their level. Including Robert Knepper in an early role, in the first of two appearances for the 'Law and Order' franchise (the other being his creepy turn in 'Criminal Intent's' "The Good Doctor").

Having said all of this, the portrayal of the internet and technology dates the episode somewhat and hard to ignore when its role is hardly small. It is interesting to see and it is interesting to see how much technology and internet has advanced so much, but the portrayal of them here has not aged well and comes over as primitive. The hacking skills especially do come over as quite unintentionally silly. It has aged more so than the women's attitudes towards mastectomies in Season 5's "Second Opinion", attitudes are different generally now but the attitudes in that episode are not entirely reactionary now whereas compared to now the portrayal of technology and the internet and the attitudes towards them are unrecognisable.

Briscoe and Curtis' chemistry hasn't quite clicked yet, a real sense of vast inexperience. The fire and grit isn't there. Curtis did grow a lot as a character overtime but is somewhat bland here in writing and actually gets somewhat lost amidst everything else.

Overall, decent episode but didn't bowl me over. Sorry if my criticisms come over as too trivial and over the top. 7/10

In "Rebels" we continue the conflict between seasoned, flawed Lenny and inexperienced Mr. Perfect Curtis as Van Buren helps them adjust to their new partnership. So far there's no signs of them actually coming to trust each other, I can't remember if there will be any but I hope so, with them set up as not particularly friendly early on, I'd hope their transition to more or less respectful partners isn't omitted.

At any rate, this episode is about a biker gang with an unlikely name, the Yankee Rebels, another in a long ling of evil white dudes on L&O. It seems one of them stabbed a rich kid who wanted to be a biker. But which one? And will one of their fledgling members avoid testifying due to a half-baked claim of protecting his sources, since he talked about the crime on a BBS? Okay this episode has a lot of problems, especially to do with the "welcome to the 1990s" attempt at injecting cyber-crime into L&O. While Curtis's BBS hacking skills are a bit laughable, it didn't ruin the episode for me.

The DAs swoop in and solve everything in a decent detective story, and although I prefer it when the cops do the heavy lifting, it was still a good episode with more or less believable twists and turns. Season 6 is off to a solid start.

A really naive and stupid college kid gets stabbed in an East Village biker bar and there's a room full of suspects, most of whom cleared out before Jerry Orbach and Benjamin Bratt arrived on the scene. Still learning the ropes, Bratt gets into it with the bikers and Orbach has to defuse the tension.

It turns out the key witness they do find is claiming he's a journalist because he writes occasional articles for a biker blog on that new thing called the Internet which disturbs poor Lennie Briscoe no end. But Bratt really proves useful with his knowledge of computers as he would in the future.

Amazingly the judge says he's a journalist and limits the amount of questions Sam Waterston can ask before a Grand Jury. It takes both the DA's office and the police to finally ferret out the truth.

You won't believe the reason and I won't say but it's Jill Hennessy who uncovers it. Nice performances from Elizabeth Rodriguez as the victim's girlfriend, Sam Schacht as the victim's father and Rob Knepper as the biker that Bratt confronts.