“The Fire This Time” (Season 12 Review)
By Hank74
Lennie-10/10
Ed-10/10
Van Buren-9/10
Jack-10/10
Serena-9/10
Nora-10/10
Supporting Cast-9/10
Plot-8/10
Performance-9/10
Value-10/10
Total Grade- 94/100 or a solid A
Notes:
I always like it when L&O talks about a new topic that hasn't received a
lot of attention because it is so new. This ep confirms that L&O is in the
21st century with all the technical information presented and the tools which
the DA's used to find the arsonists. Could you imagine Stone, Robinette, or
especially Adam doing something like this 10 years ago?
The one thing which I took from this is the complexity of a cause and how law
enforcement handles with this issue. We even got Jack to utter the
"t" word, terrorism. I guess this wouldn't have been aired near Sept.
11. The picture which Jack showed of the dead woman was graphic and a little
too much for me.
I have to go back to my comparisons of previous episodes and characters when
comparing the characters in this ep. Rochet to me is like Rose Schwimmer in
"Life Choice," Drew Seely in "Progeny," or Daniel Hendricks
in "Apocrypha" in terms of being the organizer. Quigley was like
Celeste McClure in "Life Choice" in terms of suppling the ingredients
to cause the fire. The only difference between Rochet and the three leaders
whom I've mentioned is that Jack really doesn't go after Rochet hard enough in
terms of building a conspiracy case against him. But that's the difficulty of
"The Fire this Time" because those who actually set the fire are
willing to go to jail for 25 years and become martyrs. I would like to get a
discussion going in terms of how would you compare the principal defendants and
Rochet to "Life Choice" in particular, because that to me is the best
comparison. But if you find something with "Apocrypha,"
"Progeny," or another previous ep, I'm all ears. BTW, this ep was far
better than the bad "Whose Monkey is it" ep from last year.
The "Law" part was great once again. Lennie and Ed are on cruise
control and have a great rapport. I also liked the cohesion that we saw with
Nora, Jack, and Serena in the "Order" side. Kind of reminded me of
the old days with Adam debating with Stone/Jack and the ADA at the time. They
seem to want to have more of Nora with Jack and that can only help out. Their
debates was complex and I'll have to figure out more into their meanings.
Finally, I wasn't too impressed with the title from the start. But as some of
you mentioned, this was probably from a song title or book title that applies
to the context of this ep. Personally, I would have gone with either
"Martyr," "Seeds of Love" (a song title from the 80's), or
maybe my "Zealot" title from a season 11 plot idea that I wrote
concering abortion.