Law & Order

This episode is why I watch the show. Kim Brodie is a con artist (played by the lovely January Jones of "Mad Men" fame). She keeps the detectives on a goose chase of a con.



After being caught she cons the legal aid lawyer. Then she cons the feds, then the Grand Jury. Wow! A great tale. Then the ADA is tempted to fight fire with fire, but even he has limits. He and Rubirosa are a good pair. And Detective Lupo is shown as a deeper charachter, studying for law school.



For me, "Law and Order" has had a renaissance this season. This episode proves why.

(Spoilers here)



This episode presents a wily and charming villain, almost (but not quite) on the order of Goren's nemesis, Nicole Wallace (Olivia D'Abo) in Criminal Intent. The Nicole character benefits from her personal and repeated mental confrontation with Goren.



January Jones plays the role of a con-woman who manipulates criminals, police, the DA, her own lawyer and the Feds to evade prosecution for eight murders. And like Nicole Wallace, she always seems one step ahead of the prosecutors. If the writers expand her character, and make her struggle with the DA more personal, she could approach a legendary stature in LO.



The complex, insightful writing in this episode achieves a level once-seen in LO:Criminal Intent (although that show's writing has been badly neglected over the past few years.)



As the police and DA's office attempt to keep up with her, they follow a trail just a bit too clever to follow, and she disappears into the unsure custody of the Feds - Hopefully to be seen in LO again!



Great show!

A Brilliant Episode! After watching some of the other episodes of this season, I thought that we were going to be stuck with another Season 17. Then I watched this episode and now I think that we might just beat out Gunsmoke for longest running series.



The biggest thing the episode went for was plotting, plotting, plotting. And it worked amazingly.



Found in an abandoned hit-and-run car is a stack of sequential bills. Following the money (an "All the President's Men" reference?) into a real-estate scam, Green and Lupo trace it back to mobsters. Suspecting that someone robbed the mobsters and had the misfortune to run down two people with their getaway car, Green and Lupo go undercover to get at a likely robber, the man who masterminded the scheme. Helping them is Kim Brody, played brilliantly by January Jones, who was the unwitting inside woman on the real estate scheme. Pretending to help, she gets police running to the other side of town while the mastermind and all his mobster friends (yes, they were his friends) are obliterated by gunfire. The episode's final body is found just outside the mob place-turned-morgue, an escaped prisoner from Florida. He is also carrying a submachine gun.



It seems to be that he commited the mass murder, then was executed by his partner. The only suspect is Kim, the one who sent them off in the wrong direction.



Arresting her, the DA attempts to strengthen the case against her by proving that she is a wanted fugitive who helped the Florida prisoner escape. They uncover a partial fingerprint with matches Kim's inconclusively and attempt to find the real Kim Brody whose identity the woman is using.



When "Kim's" attempt to get at the scam-money falls apart, she goes into endgame by bringing in the feds. The feds have apparently been fooled by her into believing that terrorists have also been putting into the real estate scam. Now they are attempting to protect their witness from prosecution by playing the Patriot Act as a trump card. McCoy finangles Kim back into NYC but it takes too long. She is able to make use of a time limit which only gives the DA 48 hours to indict. While they scramble to get the story into the grand jury, Kim calmly testifies to and cons them, which no-bills her.



She then walks out of the court a free woman. Just as the episode ends, the fugitive's fingerprint is matched to a Jane Doe corpse and Kim Brody is found living in Virginia. Thus, we are left with the question of who she is (A "Day of the Jackal" reference?).



Not only were the writers able to fit all that into one hour, they were still able to slide in a little character development. Lupo is seen studing law, and Rubirosa reveals that she was fat as a teen.



Most importantly, we get to see how far Cutter's ethics can be stretched. Early in the episode, McCoy sees that the case is a fools errand and backs off the prosecution. Later in the episode, Rubirosa jumps off when Cutter decides to subborn perjury. At the last second, when Cutter could continue and maybe win his case by allowing the perjury, he takes the high road and backs off. Winning isn't everything, after all.



All in all, a excellent episode.

An interesting case if not the best certainly kept me captivated. A nice bit of diversion with the mob angle and ending it to show us an embezzler with a homicidal streak. I liked what little of the bad guy we saw of her. She played the innocent girl next door. All the while Lupo and Green were linking her to multiple murders. The jurisdictional snafu with the US District Attorney was done very well. I have to admit as much fun as it was it was a tad silly having two feds arrested to get a witness back. I also enjoyed the internal battle between Mccoy and his DA's and their slips into going too far sometimes. Nice night with L&O not great but certainly a well done episode.

Could you feel it coming when you looked at the clock and knew there was not enough time for the proper resolution of this case (you know - the one you were looking for)... Can't say too much more, but you'd better find a way to see this one (before the next 'well-timed' installment) if you want to stay in the loop. Praise/Damn Dick Wolf and his insidious/ingenious writers for this one. I am already more invested in this eventual 3 or 4 episode serial than I ever was in the 'CI' epoch with the 'Australian Sinistress'. If this lying, cheating, two-timing conniving 'biatch' doesn't get her come-uppance, television as we know it (you know, pre/post Law & Order) may not survive. "Hold on to your lug nuts," and stay tuned?

Manages to be topical without being "ripped from the headlines" unoriginal copying.



They could slip in commentary on all the people losing homes without making it too much of show that would only be interesting in the present day.



There was some character development. We learn Lupo is going to law school.



However, what I most enjoy seeing the legal system work and be worked by a criminal. And the interplay between local law enforcement and the federal gov't trying to muscle with complete secresy and disregard for local law enforcement. Seeing the gov't taking her away for probably false information was amusing.



More of this please!

Really fun episode. Good to see an antagonist (played by January Jones) who might return for a second round.



The Kim Brody character was coy and knew how to work the system with her seeming knowledge of the law and its loopholes. And it was a good choice to leave her background mysterious. Law and Order has so few returning offenders- the Nicole Wallace character from Criminal Intent wears thin on me, and the mother/daughter crime-duo from SVU seemed out of place in the original L&O universe. Kim Brody was the kind of nemesis that could get under Cutter's skin... I for one wouldn't mind seeing a rematch.