‘Law & Order’ Probably Doesn’t Like You

by Stanley Fish

New York Times
August 2, 2010

Nothing personal. But now that Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order” has called it a day — or rather a 20-year run — it is time to notice what may be its most remarkable feature; not the brilliant formula that offers both the comfort of predictability and the promise of constant surprise (an episode almost never ends up where it seems to be going at the beginning), not the ability of the show to survive major cast changes without missing a beat, not the considerable accomplishment of making the arcane vocabulary of the law ( “fruit of the poisonous tree,” “asked and answered,” “prejudicial,” “allocute,” “goes to relevance”) as familiar to TV viewers as the jargon of sports, but the extraordinarily long list of professions, classes and category of persons it doesn’t like.

Begin with rich people. “Law & Order” hates rich people; they are arrogant, they are condescending, they consume conspicuously, and, worst of all, they believe they are above the law. In one episode, a Britney-Spears-type starlet is informed of a $400,000 blackmail demand made by paparazzi. She retorts, “$400, 000 is less than I spend on sweatpants.” In another episode (“Venom”), a 64-year old woman who is bent on protecting her 27-year old husband says to one of the district attorneys: “You have no idea of what a woman in my position can do.” Actually they have a very good idea. Time and again wealthy people manipulate the system by getting well connected friends to intervene in cases or by hiring high-priced lawyers who know how to put up procedural roadblocks forever.

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