L&O: episode 10

[sabotabby]

Extruded L&O product. I hope you weren't expecting a grand finale!



This one begins with two teenage girls and Willa, a harried defence attorney single mom, who gets shot to death in the opening in one of the fakest looking deaths I've ever seen. After ruling out various motives—a pissed-off client, a work drama, an affair with a neighbour—they zoom in on another neighbour—Susan, the mom of the other teenage girl—as the suspect. Susan is an absolute monster. She manipulated her boyfriend into killing his mom when they were teenagers; he took the entire fall, but she did the killing and was only sentenced to five years. She got plastic surgery and started a new life with her daughter. Willa found out so presumably Susan, who's really Ruth, killed her to cover it up.

That's not why Susan's a monster, btw. It's because she arranges her bookshelf by colour.

But! Twist! It's not Susan who does the killing, or the dad who immediately takes the fall for it—it's the daughter, who didn't want to uproot again.

I dunno, it's kind of giving Karla Homolka vibes, but none of the murders in question have the cruelty of those murders. It feels like it was based on a bunch of different cases, to the point where it's generic. It doesn't even make internal sense—a defence lawyer is a strange choice to pursue vengeance against a killer who's done her time.

The geography is a little fucky too. I had to Google Map it. Quite a lot of the timing in this episode doesn't really account for traffic, and granted I am extremely tired but. We're told the victim and her neighbours live in Lawrence Park, and their street address is in fact there, but the kids are clearly walking around downtown when they get their fake IDs and when they go to the bar. They're cutting school and Penny, the killer, says that they have to be back for class in 40 minutes. This is, in good traffic, a 27 minute drive from their high school (let's say they took an Uber instead of transit, which would take an hour), but doesn't account for how they got there in the first place, given that lunch is only an hour.

There's also some janky camerawork, which goes well with the janky acting, I suppose. No consistency of character either—you'd think, with a 9-year-old, Bateman would have some emotional reaction to the involvement of the two teenagers. But nah, she's a robot in this; Graff, with his mysterious past, gets all the emotional beats.

Oh, by the way, I have a seething hatred for stories where the last phone call between a mom and daughter is the daughter sniping at the mom and then the mom dies and the kid gets to feel guilty about it forever. This happens all the time, I'm sure, but I find it really manipulative.

Plot: * (Nonsensical)
Characters: * (We find out that Graff's father was accused of a terrible crime, though not what that crime was. He is afraid that he caught the criminal gene or some such, and given that this is an episode about a daughter becoming a killer because her mom was, I predict we're about half a season away from busting out the skull calipers.)
Toronto: 0 (The geography makes no sense.)

Murder count for the season: 17, representing 23% of all murders in Toronto.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my Law & Order Toronto recaps. Just a little reminder that by and large Canadian-made TV is still awful despite the size of Toronto's film and TV production industry. There is no reason why it needs to suck as hard as it does—it must be a conscious aesthetic choice.

Comments

[dagibbs]

" It's because she arranges her bookshelf by colour."

Wow! Yeah - monster!!!

[sabotabby]

Absolutely vile.

[frandroid]

We make the biggest Hollywood and TV shows here. All that we're lacking is ambition. The CPPIB could easily fund a Hollywood-size film studio.

[sabotabby]

I have ambition! Someone could pay me.

[springheel_jack]

All the talent is working for the Hollywood productions, I guess.

[sabotabby]

I guess, but they're out of work a lot of the time, too.

[dissectionist]

I believe that in general, people who organize large bookshelves by color are people who see books as objects with only two purposes: 1) set-dressing for the illusion that the owner is an educated intellectual who reads extensively, and 2) literal decoration. It never occurs to them to organize by author, subject, or title, because there’s no need for an organization system when books stay on the shelf and are never referenced/used.

(Note that this idea doesn’t apply to a small bookshelf; if there are very few books, you’ll be able to find any of them easily even if you organized by color.)

[sabotabby]

It was a decorative bookshelf, with the majority of books out of reach.

[blogcutter]

That's one way of looking at it. On the other hand, I find it refreshing to meet people who see books as objets d'art in and of themselves - something that's all too rare in an enforcedly digital world where we're all supposed to make do with e-books! The attitude that the book as physical object has no value in itself IMO leads to a culture of book-burning and other egregious crimes against books...

The lack of an organization by author, subject, title or arcane call number COULD simply mean that the collection is intended solely for the use of one individual or a family who are throughly conversant with the collection and find it easier to quickly locate the book they want without first hunting for their reading glasses!

[dissectionist]

Book burnings aren’t about a culture of disposability; they’re targeted. Burnings (or other destruction) require people feeling threatened and/or angered enough by the books’ content to burn them, and if that’s the case, being seen as works of art won’t save them. (And now I will have an moment of mourning yet again all the early research on trans and queer people that went up in flames in 1933. We will never have anything like that again.)

[Note: in the context of discussing destroying books I’m going to reference specific childraising books. If you aren’t already familiar with these authors, I’d advise not Googling; the physical punishments that they advocate for tiny babies are heartbreaking and horrific, and have led to the deaths of children.]

I’ve destroyed some books in my life, because they contained content that already harmed people (childrearing books by Pearl or Ezzo), and the content would harm children again if someone naively bought them and trusted it. So I buy those books when I see them second-hand and then destroy them (tear into pieces and put into paper recycling) to ensure they never return to circulation. These are mass-produced books and the content still exists, but at least that specific copy won’t lead to a helpless child being neglected and/or abused again.

But it’s not that I see books as disposable or meaningless; the destruction is *because* I value books so highly. I know they can easily change minds and lives, so I’m scared when certain books exist to teach deeply dangerous misinformation.

The irony, of course, is that book-burning religious/ideological folks are coming from the same place of “this content is dangerous and needs to stop existing”. It’s just that their perceptions of “this is harmful” aren’t coming from “we have many proven cases of malnutrition, brain damage, and other harms resulting from this”; they’re coming from places like “fantasy leads to Satan” and “being gay is against God”. But I’m sure their worry about children being harmed by certain books is no less real to them than my worry for children being harmed by certain other books.

(I’m not equivocating that proven harms based on science and hypothetical harms based on delusional thinking have the same impact in reality. I’m just saying that made-up things feel like real threats to people who believe them, and while it lacks a rational basis, their fear is as sincere as mine.)

[sabotabby]

I'm a cover designer but I still organize my books by subject and then author within subject (not Dewey decimal system because I'm lazy and Dewey was a racist). I mean, I don't feel like I'm making do with ebooks so much as I both have a limited amount of physical space, and I have a limited physical carrying capacity. Plus...I read books more than I collect them, and mostly I take out books from the library. The books I own tend to either be non-fiction reference, my most beloved fiction, art books, and books I've written or designed.

[greylock]

That's not why Susan's a monster, btw. It's because she arranges her bookshelf by colour.

*Is triggered*

While the geographic issues wouldn't bother me (I do get as a local it can be HILARIOUS.. I remember once The Greatest Amazing Race or whatever was edited to make a four-hour drive look like 20 minutes), seeing Law and Order stories distilled this way is, frankly, the most fun I have had with L&O in years.

Nor will I be moving to Toronto. So. Much. Crime.

[sabotabby]

We have a ton of crime. And major crime! Brutal crimes that shock hardened cops!

I normally don't care about geographical weirdness but it plays heavily into the mystery here and makes absolutely no sense at all.

[moon_custafer]

This happens all the time, I'm sure, but I find it really manipulative.

It's a more bitter version of the axiom where a parental figure who gives a really good piece of advice needs needs to die in the next scene just to ensure the kid remembers it.

There is no reason why it needs to suck as hard as it does—it must be a conscious aesthetic choice.

I don't watch a lot of Canadian shows, but I remember trying to rewatch some early-'eighties CBC stuff I remembered having enjoyed as a kid, and-- it was a very odd, specific version of the Suck Fairy that had visited them-- the scripts and acting were often still quite good, but the lighting and the video quality grated so badly I couldn't get past it. It seemed to cheapen everything: costumes, performances. There were scenes I could tell had been genuine location shots, but the ugly lighting made them feel set-bound anyway.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I like well-written but cheaply produced stuff—that's fine, that's why I love old Doctor Who—but this is badly written, acted, filmed, and edited.

[ioplokon]

Nope, sorry, all the interesting films are being made in Manitoba. :p

Re: the phone thing, I think it's not surprising bc it is a good way to set up the scene transition & establish the relationship between the characters but, yeah, it's pretty lazy. I prefer if it's something like Six Feet Under did in the first episode, where it's kind of just the average bickering you see between family members. Obviously the last thing you said to someone is never all you wish you could have said to them; no need to twist the knife excessively.

[sabotabby]

It's actually emotionally powerful when they did it in Six Feet Under. That show was masterful at getting you care about randos in minutes.

[ioplokon]

Yeah, one of the benefits of procedurals is that you get to see a lot of newer/lesser known actors playing the randos, but it kind of doesn't matter if they don't have anything interesting to do... Also, kind of related to your other complaint about the show, part of why the randos are so memorable is because the death of the week ("A plot") actually ties into the other plotlines in some way, so it's not just hanging out in limbo, it's connected to the continuity of the show and the characters we already care about...

[sabotabby]

Yup.

I think my issue with this in particular is that nothing they are doing seems connected to anything else. It's just random people doing random things, and there are a lot of them, so I can't figure out who anyone is or anyone's motivations or even names.

[minoanmiss]

hands you a star for getting through all of this

[sabotabby]

THANK

[lynnenne]

Thank you for suffering through this nonsense. You took a boring show that I stopped watching after the first episode and turned it into delightful satire. Hurrah!

[sabotabby]

Crafting boring shit into entertaining content is basically my job description.

[lovelydovely]

Taranna sucks I know. I've been born and raised there... lived for about 30+ years there. Wouldn't leave Newmarket for the world. :)

[sabotabby]

You know I'm the polar opposite. :)

[lovelydovely]

Hehe... I traded city life for country charm. :P

[lovelydovely]

https://frandroid.dreamwidth.org/553136.html <-- something on BS.