A man named Trine, a corrections officer from an upstate prison, turns up dead, shot twice after being made to get on his knees. Briscoe and Curtis has a little trouble tracking down the killer, a Puerto Rican who has a sister in the corrections facility where Trine worked.
The facility housed nothing but women and, men being what they are, many or most of the COs had girls, sometimes several, who did their bidding or were written up for fictional violations and punished. One of the girls, it turns out, had been repeatedly used as a sexual receptacle for the dishonorable Trine. When the girl tried to end the relationship, Trine had a colleague threaten the girl's family in Brooklyn. So the girl -- are you following this? As in most episodes, the plot is complicated and comes at you headlong. So, through her cell mate, the girl hired the Puerto Rican hoodlum to put a stop to Trine's peccadilloes, which he did, permanently, in an alley, with two 9 mm. bullets.
Two features make this episode a little unusual. One is that Angie Harmon, as the ADA, originally prosecuted the girl, who wound up with a particularly harsh sentence for a relatively minor offense. Harmon seems to hate the girl, believing her to be a psychopathic manipulator and liar, and there is considerable conflict between Sam Waterston, as her boss, and Harmon over the girl's culpability in this and previous affairs.
The second is the performance of Cara Buono as the young woman, Alice Simonelli, in prison who is exploited by Trine. She gives an exceptional performance, a mixture of anger, defiance, and terror, and she delivers it all not just in a working-class New York accent but with appropriate, emphatic Italian body language. She's attractive, with startled black eyes, but make up has turned her into a denizen of the prison system. In an earlier season, she played an elegant college girl who had cleverly organized a stable of whores among her classmates, which only demonstrates her range as an actress.
For what it's worth, the corrections officers are called just that. Only once or twice does the term of reference "guard" slip through. I've worked with COs on a movie, "Weeds," and they're very careful about the use of these terms because they help to establish a social border. You're either one of us -- in which case you say "corrections officer" or "CO" -- or you're not, and you say "guard."
The facility housed nothing but women and, men being what they are, many or most of the COs had girls, sometimes several, who did their bidding or were written up for fictional violations and punished. One of the girls, it turns out, had been repeatedly used as a sexual receptacle for the dishonorable Trine. When the girl tried to end the relationship, Trine had a colleague threaten the girl's family in Brooklyn. So the girl -- are you following this? As in most episodes, the plot is complicated and comes at you headlong. So, through her cell mate, the girl hired the Puerto Rican hoodlum to put a stop to Trine's peccadilloes, which he did, permanently, in an alley, with two 9 mm. bullets.
Two features make this episode a little unusual. One is that Angie Harmon, as the ADA, originally prosecuted the girl, who wound up with a particularly harsh sentence for a relatively minor offense. Harmon seems to hate the girl, believing her to be a psychopathic manipulator and liar, and there is considerable conflict between Sam Waterston, as her boss, and Harmon over the girl's culpability in this and previous affairs.
The second is the performance of Cara Buono as the young woman, Alice Simonelli, in prison who is exploited by Trine. She gives an exceptional performance, a mixture of anger, defiance, and terror, and she delivers it all not just in a working-class New York accent but with appropriate, emphatic Italian body language. She's attractive, with startled black eyes, but make up has turned her into a denizen of the prison system. In an earlier season, she played an elegant college girl who had cleverly organized a stable of whores among her classmates, which only demonstrates her range as an actress.
For what it's worth, the corrections officers are called just that. Only once or twice does the term of reference "guard" slip through. I've worked with COs on a movie, "Weeds," and they're very careful about the use of these terms because they help to establish a social border. You're either one of us -- in which case you say "corrections officer" or "CO" -- or you're not, and you say "guard."
