So the wife and I stopped watching Law & Order at least a year ago. The new episodes became so idiotically political and, I would argue, deeply anti-American in the most fundamental sense. (How so? Well, among other things, they cast America as essentially a modern day Rome, where political and business leaders settle their differences by murdering one another. That’s not really how our system works and to pass such nonsense off as a realistic rendering of “real issues” is something of a slander. At least 24 doesn’t hide its comic-bookyness).
As for the political idiocy, it seemed like every episode had to have some evil tycoon from Enron or McDonald’s killing a whistleblower or otherwise actualizing their manifest greed in ways “ripped from the headlines” — of the Huffington Post.
But last night, we decided to give it another shot. I’m sure it was a rerun, but it was new to us. The story began well, like a good Law & Order of old, with a kidnapping, a murder and some warrant dodging. But, of course, that sort of drama is too pedestrian. So it turned out that the husband of the murdered wife and kidnapped daughter was in fact an Enronesque trader who deliberately orchestrated a city-wide blackout which had not only made the kidnapping possible, but prompted it in the first place (because the evildoers had a tip it was going to happen). Little did this greedy capitalist realize that when you wage economic war on the middle class you might pay a steep price.