“3 Dawg Night” (Season 12)
By Hank74
Lennie-10/10
Ed-10/10
Van Buren-10/10
Jack-10/10
Serena-10/10
Nora-10/10
Supporting Cast-10/10
Plot-9/10
Performance-9/10
Value-7/10
Total Grade: 95/100
Notes:
This is the second of three L&O eps where they re-do a high profile case,
the Robert Blake story, this one with Puff Daddy and Jennifer Lopez, and later
this year the Condit/Chandra story. Whenever L&O does a high profile case
like this, the scrutiny will be high. I am no exception. I believe this ep has
meet my expectations by being interesting and unique while not straying too far
away from the real life story. This like "Formerly Famous" has passed
my test.
I didn't know every detail of what happened in the real life P. Daddy/Lopez
situation except at the end when Daddy was acquitted of the weapons charge. But
it was obvious Mr. Wolf didn't want to xerox everything from the real life
story when he made the girlfriend a black woman and included the bodyguard.
Daniel Hugh Kelley was great again as a repeat offender, this time as the
defense attorney. He and Bruce Altman should be on more often since they look
very similar. I think that we will not see the great defense attorneys anymore
as frequently as we did. This includes the likes of Gold, Weaver, Greer,
Patton, Brolin, Mellnick, and of course Shambala Green. Could you imagine her
representing G Train?
If you were wondering if the arraignment judge was Judge Feldman from UTI, you're
wrong. Although he looked just like Feldman, the judge was Douglas Vertermi.
He's been on the bench before in "Bait" and "Fools for
Love." But I guess TPTB is playing some mind games with us seasoned
viewers trying to see what happened to the people we hate. I do want to see
Judge Wright though just to see what happened after his clash with Nora last
year.
The "Order" side is picking up with the "Law" side in terms
of cohesion. The final ten minutes was a little slow, but I can accept it. I
liked when Jack made that little trip out to LA to see the girlfriend. Did he
meet Neil Gordon on the way or anyone else from his last trip back in season 7?
Now we know that Serena has a former husband. Hmmm, will there be more in
store? The best thing about the "Order" side was the little debate
between Nora and Jack about whether to have a black man as second chair in
place of Serena. I liked Jack's answers because he wanted the case to stick to
the facts and not race and because he was standing up for Serena in a sense.
The thing I took from this exchange was that Nora is most likely considering of
running for DA and is feeling the politcal winds. Which means she has to
kow-tow to certain groups in high profile cases like this.