An attorney may have been killed for trying to further bilk people who have lost their life savings in an S&L scandal.An attorney may have been killed for trying to further bilk people who have lost their life savings in an S&L scandal.An attorney may have been killed for trying to further bilk people who have lost their life savings in an S&L scandal.
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- TriviaFinal performance of veteran character actor Dub Taylor. He has over 260 acting credits listed in IMDb for both TV and movie roles. A very familiar face from Western TV and movie roles. He was a member of the 1937 Alabama football team that played in the Rose Bowl.
- Quotes
Willard Tappan: You know, they're talking about privatizing the park. A subway token to enter or $30 a year. Trump thinks he can run it at a profit.
Jack McCoy: That's fascinating. We're here to...
Willard Tappan: You're here because you have a problem. I'm talking to you because I have a problem.
Jack McCoy: We'll prove that you hid that money, Mr. Tappan. That'll prolong your study of institutional dining.
Willard Tappan: Yes, that's my problem. Meanwhile, Mr. Curren, your murderer, will go free.
Jack McCoy: If you hadn't stolen his money, that murder would never have taken place.
Willard Tappan: I concede your point. If things were different, they wouldn't be the same. Look, I know that you've been asking about a conversation I may have had with Mr. Curren, a conversation I may not be able to recall.
Jack McCoy: I saw your testimony to the House Banking Committee. You couldn't seem to recall the answers to more than 200 questions.
Willard Tappan: My memory is dreadful. Especially when I'm anxious about the future.
Jack McCoy: What do you want?
Willard Tappan: No prosecution on fraud.
Jack McCoy: We'll take your money.
Willard Tappan: You'll take it anyway.
Great performances here, from Dan Grimaldi as an angry inventor of (hilariously) pig-shaped magnets; Jonathan Hogan as a bespectacled everyman whose finances were ruined by Tappan; Lisa Emery as the head of a company who allegedly stole Grimaldi's ideas, and knows far more than she lets on; and Michael Zaslow as the charming, villainous Tappan, who steals every scene he's in.
While EADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) would occasionally use unorthodox methods to see justice done in seasons 1-4 of Law & Order, the almost gleeful, improvisational style of prosecutorial jurisprudence employed by Sam Waterston - one that messed with the rules and sometimes even straddled ethical boundaries - would become much more of a hallmark of the Jack McCoy character. In a twist that's a bit similar to the previous episode, "Virtue," (in that the person being prosecuted isn't necessarily the person who directly killed the victim) McCoy relies on, as he would say many episodes later in season 14's "Evil Breeds," the jury being able to know a guilty man when they see one.
Everyone knows - and the judge, played by Ben Hammer in his sixth L&O appearance, even outright says this before deliberations - that a jury is duty-bound to stick to the facts of the case, disregarding any other previous shenanigans a defendant was tried on in the past. But in TV land, where we know exactly who the good guys and bad guys are, we just just want to see some poetic justice: good guys rewarded, bad guys punished, doesn't matter how. L&O often banks on the audience being charmed by that, so that you root for McCoy even if he's doing something that could get him disbarred.
Hey, it worked on me!
- Better_TV
- May 10, 2018