Fools for Love

"Fools for Love" is a "ripped from the headlines" type of story. The 'Law and Order' franchise often did very well to brilliantly with these types of stories when they had cases based on real life cases and crimes. Especially in the earlier seasons of the original 'Law and Order'. This kind of story can either be very intriguing and a harrowing watch or be too derivative, lacking tautness and feel exploitative. Most in the franchise (or at least at this point) are thankfully in the former category.

Was a bit worried that "Fools for Love" would be a bit too ordinary, as it did sound formulaic structurally and other Season 10 episodes tackled far bolder and heavier themes. As said a few times in reviews for previous episodes, 'Law and Order' has actually shown more than once that it can do something interesting and at times special with ordinary-sounding premises. The "doing something special" category is not quite achieved in "Fools for Love", but the episode succeeds in "doing something interesting" with the subject.

The ending did feel a bit rushed and over-crowded, a lot is revealed in dialogue and information and more time to reveal it would have made it easier to get the head round.

Peter Ball agreed has a fairly limited range here and is quite bland.

Bland is not a word that could be used summing up Ellen Pompeo's performance, she has the most well fleshed out character and plays her with cunning and venom. Jerry Orbach and Jesse L Martin are indeed excellent, and their chemistry has gelled beautifully in humour and grit, but Pompeo for me gave the best performance.

Moreover, 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 is thought provoking and smart, thankfully not rambling or too complicated that it makes things confused. A lot of the legal scenes' dialogue really probes thought and pulls no punches, which prime-'Law and Order' often excelled at brilliantly. It's not just non stop seriousness though, there are also humorous moments here and there such as Briscoe's one-liners. The story is an interesting and well paced one that is a lot less ordinary than it sounds, parts are suitably creepy too.

Overall, very good. 8/10.

I had to start a Golden Girls episode right after this spectacular episode ended just to get the creepy crawlies out of my head.

It was not only amazing acting by Ellen Pompeo, but a story ripped from the headlines. This episode had a mirroring to the Scarborough Rapist Bernardo/Homolka True Crime events of the early 90s in Ontario Canada.

A must watch for any True Crime fans.

A Briscoe Pun rating of only 4/10 though for this episode.

SVU detectives Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni help out, but this one belongs to Jerry Orbach and Jesse Martin who catch a case where the bodies of two young girls, one of them an exchange student.

When the parents of one of them arrive they inquire about their other daughter and she's found along with the perpetrator Samuel Ball who has some sex crime history.

But the question comes up and more and more Ellen Pompeo playing the other daughter reveals herself to have some sociopathic tendencies. As these two are the only ones who know what really happened just who are Sam Waterston and Angie Harmon going to deal with?

Pompeo will really chill you more and more as you watch this story.