Law & Order (TV Series) Out of the Half-Light (1990) User Reviews

"You made a decision based on something from within. You live with it, you examine it, that's all you got"

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 20 September 2019]

Better quality was yet to come in later episodes of 'Law and Order', but its very early years were still solid and do deserve to be known and shown more. Even if at this point it had not yet settled completely, though a lot of what 'Law and Order' did so well in is evident. While for me of the previous Season 1 episodes only "Prescription for Death" and especially "Indifference" were above very good, "Indifference" was one of the season's best episodes.

"Out of the Half-Light" is also among the season's better episodes and perhaps the second best of the eleven episodes at this point of the season, and show. Almost as great as "Indifference". It is really quite powerful and really makes one think, raising some very interesting questions worth pondering upon. Something that 'Law and Order' more often than not great at. Anybody familiar with or remembers the Tawana Brawley case may very well find that "Out of the Half-Light" resonates with them, 'Law and Order' excelled at the ripped from the headlines kind of stories and those dealing with moral dilemmas, both can be seen here.

Everything to do with the sociological implications and the girl's motives could have gone into more depth and handled more directly, as has been said already. That would have made it even more thought-provoking and even more emotionally impactful or so in my opinion it would have been, it also would have set the episode apart a little more from the previous episodes.

The episode gets a lot of credit for raising the issue and its implications, raising some interesting points and doing it in a thoughtful and tactful manner. It is a difficult and sensitive subject but something well worth addressing and is hardly un-topical today, it could have been executed in a way that was ham-fisted but "Out of the Half-Light" doesn't do that luckily without making its points.

It was great though that "Out of the Half-Light" had an equal mix of the law and order sides of the case, showing both procedures in the show and its spin offs was a great idea and always makes me when done right think hard about the truth and making a judgment myself. The case, one of the most complex ones of the season up to this point, does grip as does the inestigative/procedural work and the prosecution element also intrigues, seeing how they work to get the result they do. Complete with the complications of a case and moral dilemmas of the case and of their own character.

Can't fault the gritty production values here or the sparingly used and unobtrusive music (also that memorable main theme). The script is thought-provoking and intelligently written, with no fat and no focus on soapy personal lives which could be a problem in the later seasons of 'Special Victims Unit'. Michael Moriarty, Chris Noth and Richard Brooks are very strong, as are an affecting Sandra Reeves-Phillip and even more so a chillingly egotistical J.A. Preston.

Summing up, one problem aside it is a great episode. 9/10

The Hoax

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 24 October 2022]

When the sixteen-year-old Astrea Crawford is found in an alley with ripped clothes and painted with offenses, Detective Greevey and Logan go to the hospital to interview Astrea but she refuses to talk. Logan convinces her to write the name of the molesters and she writes White Cops. Soon, the opportunist Congressman Ronald Eaton inflames the situation with speeches to the media and to the black population. Cragen, Greevey and Logan have no means to investigate, the FBI assumes the case that become political. Bu Stone and Robinette proceed the investigation and learns the truth about what has happened to Astrea.

"Out of the Half-Light" is a great episode of "Law & Order", with a strange racist situation caused by a black teenager. In the end, the D. A.'s succeed to find the truth after the damages caused to the police and to the justice system. It is funny how the racism that always existed in the United States is exported to other societies that have never been racist, but now have similar black movements. Sad example of globalization. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Fora das Sombras" ("Out of the Shadows")

Gritty and controversial

[safenoe · 7/10 · 27 March 2023]

Out of the Half-Light is pretty much based on a famous (or infamous) criminal case back in the 80s involving the NYPD, and it made huge headlines and even ramifications to this very day. Anyway, Out of the Half-Light is one of the early episodes of Law and Order, and for me these are the episodes I like. They're gritty, they portray New York City which reminds me of The French Connection and Popeye Doyle. There's much wordplay in this episode, with various points of view about race, crime and power structures having air time. It's up to the viewer to decide. We also get to see the grand jury in action.

Racism Works.

[rmax304823 · 16 November 2011]

This episode really is "ripped from the headlines." In 1987, a 15-year-old African-American girl, Tawana Brawley, was found wrapped in a garbage bag in a town in Dutchess County, New York state, after having been missing for three days. Some of her clothes had been burned, her shoe cut, and her body had slurs written on the chest in charcoal. At first uncommunicative, she finally claimed to have been abducted and raped by white men, some of them police officers. There was intense media interest. The Rev. Al Sharpton and two attorneys accused the media of covering up the incident, naming an Assistant District Attorney as one of those involved.

However, there was no evidence of her having been abused or raped. The slurs on her body, written in charcoal, were upside down, suggesting she had written them herself. It developed during the Grand Jury testimony that Tawana Brawley was terrified of her father's anger. He didn't want her staying out with boys and tried to beat her at the police station. He'd also stabbed his wife 14 times and later shot her.

Support for Brawley in the black community dwindled without ever completely dying away. Her defense fund dried up, and Sharpton was successfully sued for defamation.

The case is almost a prelude to that of Susan Smith, a young mother in South Carolina who claimed a black man had hijacked her car with her three children in it, in 1995. It became clear later that she had rolled her car into a lake and drowned her children in order to be with a man who didn't want a ready made family. Susan Smith is serving a life term. The Brawley incident also anticipated Charles Stuart's murder of his pregnant wife in Revere, Massachusetts, in 1989, and concocting a black assailant. The event was evidently set up by the husband, who committed suicide later.

The point of these cases, the part that makes them interesting, is not that the three people who staged the crimes were racists, but that they chose to invent perpetrators who would be acceptable to the people in their own communities. In other words, Brawley, Smith, and Stuart need not have been racists at all, though they're often called that. They had simply chosen the most plausible figures as the villains in the story. People commit racist acts because racial animosity is characteristic of their neighborhoods. The problem isn't just one of personality, but of social systems.

This episode, as is usual, doesn't deal with the sociological implications of its story directly. It raises them and then discards them for more dramatic, easily grasped, and commercially profitable confrontations between individuals in a legal setting. The issue becomes, not why the girl did what she did, but how is Assistant DA Stone and his crew going to make their case? It's a shame, really, to sidestep such an interesting question but the episode is important for raising it in the first place. Things haven't changed that much since the French political scientist, Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, and the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal in the 1940s, both identified race as the greatest fault line dividing Americans. One of the more effective ways to cover up your misbehavior is to blame it on someone of the other race. The story makes one think about statements like these, and that puts it ahead of most television junk.

A big old fib

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 18 August 2017]

Young Kisha Miller is out late one night and she concocts a big old fib about not only being raped but gang raped by police officers. Shades of Tawana Brawley. Not only is this a lie, but a lot of people of people get caught up in a big racial conflict perpetrated at every opportunity by Representative J.A. Preston who has become the family "spokesperson".

How well I remember Tawana Brawley's gang of three who were her advisers. Attorneys C. Vernon Mason, Alton Maddox, and the Reverend Al Sharpton. When all the dust was settled Mason and Maddox were disbarred and Sharpton after a bit of quiet time became a civil rights leader. The canons of the law have some higher standards. I'll bet Mason and Maddox wish they had gone to seminary.

We never did learn exactly what went on with Tawana Brawley here we the viewer learn, but it's a negotiated settlement that everyone just back off including law enforcement.

Preston is a real piece of work. I wonder how much constituency service this man provides, real stuff like monies for his districts, bills passed, substantive things to benefit more than his own ego and ambition.

Richard Brooks is the key to all this calming of the waters. Watch the episode and see how.