Open Season

Watching or rewatching these teen-seasoned Law and Order episodes, I am realizing the muses of history were telling me things I didn't yet want to hear.

In the last day or so, avoiding watching the news for now and seeking a sort of justice, I've pored through these sharp, well-written and elegantly conceived episodes of L&O. This very episode was created almost 25 years ago.

Here is the map I ignored; the legend of a clan of patriots whose love of country is defined in contrasting sub-dermal definition to my own.

Here is the patois and belief, the pungent attractant that calls people to rally in large metropolitan meeting halls calling for exclusion, making promises to take back their country.

Here is the population of voters for whom a sea of variegated hue is not welcome and for whom legal trials with their Constitutional nuänce and protectorship of the most unlikely of opinions are a toxic nuisance.

Here is the dappled religion of a Messiah melded to a slim slice of civic comprehension. Here is a religion that forks "America" over to those who stand in line with their bone white paper plates, waiting for the piece of the pie they were promised, waiting to get their portion back, electing someone who will set it all right again, someone who, in this episode might have lacked yet the following to make this Messianic dream come true, electing someone whose figure was even then, at the crafting of this episode surging through these transmitted American characters towards deliverance.

If all the prosecutors in the world were like Jack McCoy and the defense attorneys like Danielle Melnick the world and the legal system would be a thing of wonder. Open Season pits the two of them again as respected adversaries as Tovah Feldshuh defends a white supremacist client played by Garrett Dillahunt with an intensity that will chill you.

When a noted defense attorney who just got off a cop shooter is shot down after the trial, suspicion falls on the cop's family and associates. But later on Jerry Ohrbach and Jesse Martin zero in on a white supremacist group that has made a point of killing liberal judges and defense attorneys.

This man is a terrorist make no mistake about it and the authorities don't treat him like any other prisoner. But that offends Feldshuh's ACLU trained soul. She breaks restrictions in her communications with him and in turn Dillahunt uses her to innocently communicate information that enables another hit on a judge in another state.

This is a very special prisoner says Sam Waterston and Feldshuh has innocently been drawn into his world just doing her job as a passionate advocate. What's great about this episode is that it takes absolutely no sides. Both Waterston and Feldshuh have well established characters from Law and Order and both perform within the parameters of those characters.

As Waterston says about Feldshuh, the Bar Association ought to name an award for her.

A defense attorney managed to get his client acquitted at trial much to audience disapproval. The defendant (Curtiss Cook) is a black guy who shot a police officer, leaving him unable to walk again. The lawyer went out celebrating with two friends at a local pub; he took a break to smoke a cigarette outside and a perp killed him with six gunshot in the chest. Detectives narrowed down suspects at the precinct where the cripple cop worked and inside the cop family, but thanks to the mail received by the black guy while he was in prison pending trial, investigation lead to a white supremacy organization placed upstate. The leader was confined in Rikers without any contact to the outside world apart from his lawyer, but when another attorney was killed an "open season" against lawyers has just started...watch out McCoy!

This episode is not so far from the truth. Criminal Defense Attorney and prosecutors fear for their lives because they have to deal with the worst kind of people who have nothing to lose and you can't trust them at all.

"Open Season" is one of those episodes where it is very easy to tell from the basic plot summary that it was not going to be an easy watch. Not just that, but also the subject matter which is as hard hitting as one could get. One though that is not always easy to explore tactfully and it is easy to come over as preachy and/or one sided. Didn't have much doubt though that it would be done at least acceptably, as this has been done before in the franchise and extremely well.

This is a brilliant episode and one of the best of Season 13, while the season was a solid one not many episodes were outstanding. "Open Season" is one of those, and it was remarkable that a difficult subject matter (one of the season's most difficult) was handled so uncompromisingly but also tastefully too (not easy at all to get this balance right). This could easily could have turned into too much of a political statement but luckily did not.

So many truly fine things here. Have nothing to fault the production values for, which are suitably slick and gritty without being static or gimmicky. Or with the music, used relatively sparingly and didn't sound over-scored or over-emphasised. It is a dependably directed episode that hits its stride in the second half and excels in the character interaction, especially between McCoy and Melnick.

Dialogue is taut and thought-provoking with a nice amount of edge, especially in the increasing tensions in the legal scenes. There is a lot of information to take in but it doesn't feel like too much and absolutely no sides are taken. The story maintains full attention throughout and has real tension and emotional impact, especially later on as things get more complex without being convoluted. There were to me a number of 'Law and Order' episodes where the second half was better than the first, but "Open Season" is one of those episodes where the two halves were equally strong (though the more complex second half gets the slight edge). It pulls no punches but also sensitive enough to avoid preachiness.

Melnick is fascinatingly written here and is more fleshed out than most defense attorneys. She could easily have been another defense attorney that makes ridiculous or offensive arguments or have been as bad in attitude as the perpetrator (think John Laroquette's character in a 'Special Victims Unit' episode). While it is on paper inconcievable at how anybody could defend somebody who should never be worth defending, her point of view is more understandable than most defense attorneys, she comes over as a flawed character doing her job and doesn't resort to either of those mentioned traps.

All the acting is excellent, Sam Waterston and Tovah Feldshuk with the meatiest material taking the acting honours. Jerry Orbach and Jesse L Martin are spot on too, as is their chemistry, while Garret Dillahunt guarantees chills.

In conclusion, brilliant. 10/10.

It is true that there are militant conservatives in this country but not all are militant. I take issue with the word "Patriot" becoming the left's target as the bad guy. A Patriot is simply the lover of a country, nothing more than that. There are patriots all over the world. There were French patriots in WWII and many of those were leftists. I love Fred Dalton Thompson and so I am a bit surprised he did not rebut the falsehood of what an American Patriot is. For this reason this episode really disappointed me. Call it anything but don't incorrectly stereotype a patriot.