Law & Order (TV Series) Scoundrels (1994) User Reviews

Improbable? Definitely.

[jbirks106 · 8/10 · 14 March 2018]

Ludicrous? Perhaps. Sometimes you have to remember that the writers of this show aren't lawyers, neither are the vast majority of viewers. All they want is an interesting story to entertain them for an hour, and by that standard "Scoundrels" succeeds.

All crime dramas, and L&O is no exception, demand compelling criminals. This episode offers three. First there's the homicide victim, Kopinsky, a sleazy lawyer who was retained by the second criminal, John Curran, to investigate where a third criminal, Willard Tappan, hid the money he swindled from him. Along the way we meet a variety of colorful characters: Carl Piselli, an erstwhile inventor who hired Kopinsky to sue Alice Huntley over pig dishwasher magnets; a nursing-home resident who has a talent for eavesdropping; a female defense attorney who just happens to have worked with McCoy (and Kincaid already knows that that means).

As Tappan, Michael Zaslow makes an excellent bad guy in an episode full of them. Sure, McCoy's case against him was full of holes, and surely would've failed on appeal. But as dramas the episode holds up very well.

Great episode with one flaw

[L_O_Addict · 8/10 · 6 December 2020]

"Scoundrels" is one of the most memorable Law & Order episodes. It has many of the ingredients that made the series great: complex plot twists, interesting characters, sparkling dialogue, excellent acting, and, most of all, a memorable villain in convicted fraudster Willard Tappan (who, incidentally, happens to bear a chilling physical resemblance to the late Jeffrey Epstein).

There is a plot hole, which I won't give away in detail. Suffice it to say that the legal mechanism by which Jack McCoy resolves the case is hugely implausible. The extent to which this bothers you will probably determine your reaction to the episode as a whole. For myself, I'm happy to enjoy this as a work of human drama rather than legal realism.

Great Performances and a Wily Jack McCoy

[Better_TV · 8/10 · 10 May 2018]

The plot in this one involves a slimy "savings and loan" king who caused a whole bunch of folks to lose their life savings. The plot could have plodded along with him as the sole Big Bad, but it's a bit more complicated than that: the victim is a lawyer named Kopinsky, who had a supposed lead on a secret stash of money the fraudster, Tappan, hid before serving his time. He may have been bilking Tappan's poor victims a second time with a fanciful tale about getting them a piece of that hidden cash... or maybe there's more to the story than there appears.

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!

Improbable scoundrels

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 2 December 2020]

With the episodes from 'Law and Order's' middle period and from its later seasons airing so often, it is very easy perhaps to overlook the early seasons. Meaning in my view pre-Season 7. That is a shame, because 'Law and Order' in its early years was more often than not good to fantastic with some truly fine episodes in each of the seasons in question. Wasn't blown away by every episode but when the show was at its best it was brilliant, and there were obvious good things in lesser episodes too.

Not every episode from the early seasons was great, and "Scoundrels" is one of those not so great episodes unfortunately. It's definitely not a bad episode and half of the episode was actually very good. It's the legal scenes where it went off the boil drastically, meaning that "Scoundrels" went from a high middle tier episode to one of the lesser Season 5 episodes, which is a shame because the concept had a good deal of promise and the supporting performances are so terrific.

"Scoundrels" does have enough good things. The photography and such as usual are fully professional, the slickness still remaining. The music is used sparingly and is haunting and non-overwrought when it is used, and it's mainly used when a crucial revelation or plot development is revealed. The direction has some nice tension while keeping things steady, without going too far the other way. The writing in the first half entertains, intrigues and engages, with some snappy lines from Briscoe and Logan.

The story is very engaging in the first half, with enough twists to stop it from being too simple or too conventional without going overboard and confusing the drama. The character writing is on the most part very well done, if more the supporting characters this time than the leads. The sleaziness that Tappan is full of makes him an unforgettably chilling character. The acting is great from all, with Michael Zaslow making the skin crawl hugely effectively.

Which is why it is so sad that "Scoundrels" falls downhill drastically in the second half, this time the legal scenes and how the prosecution is conducted is so intelligence insultingly improbable and strains credibility beyond breaking point. While actually liking McCoy as a character overall, he did take time to get used to to start with and his professionalism could be called into question in some of his earlier episodes, but the unprofessionalism he has here takes the biscuit and if it was reality what happens here would have gotten him disbarred most likely.

It was just not realistic that a case so flimsy, so full of holes and so easily dismissable went further ahead than it should have done (not beyond thrown out of court). The dialogue also becomes less focused and is instead more over-heated and the pace loses tautness.

Overall, starts off great but the legal scenes brought the episode down significantly. 6/10

The Kopinsky Method

[safenoe · 7/10 · 11 December 2023]

Edie Falco guest stars as Defense Attorney Sally Bell, and this was five years before her career hit the stratosphere in The Sopranos. Anyway, here you have an attorney, Kopinsky, who isn't exactly the most popular attorney on the block, so much so that the bail judge wanted to give lenient bail to the accused!

James Saito guest stars as Mr. Tanaka in a couple of pivotal scenes without which the episode could have been rather disjointed and not really worth the effort to watch.

Anyway, I'm also about to watch Law and Order: Los Angeles and I'm looking forward to seeing the contrasts with the gritty streets of New York.

A ridiculous reach....

[newsjunkie356-1 · 4/10 · 24 October 2007]

I realize this is a fictional TV show, but this episode really stretches the credibility to the breaking point. The suspension of disbelief (to borrow a line from McCoy in another episode) is not made of taffy.

The episode starts off with the formula beginning of Act I. The victim, Arthur Kopinsky, a lawyer, is discovered shot in the head by his secretary and office partner.

Briscoe and Logan quickly discover that the victim was running a scam on the victims of an S&L swindler named Willard Tappan (very transparently modeled on Charles Keating right down to the MO Keating allegedly used: selling customers uninsured bonds instead of opening Federally ensured savings/checking).

They quickly home in on one of the victims (named John Curran) whom Tappan had swindled out of nearly a million dollars.

McCoy and Kincaid, during the trial of Curran for the murder, discover that Tappan has hidden illegally $5M in an offshore account and that the murder victim had discovered the money. They also discover that Kopinsky was blackmailing Tappan.

Kincaid then discovers a connection between (a 12 minute phone call) Tappan and the killer Curran.

This (Act III) is where the story loses all credibility.

McCoy concocts a theory that Tappan is responsible for the murder because he pointed Curran at Kopinsky! "Curran was dynamite..." It just doesn't make any sense. The only thing McCoy has proved is that the two men talked! On the witness stand, Curran, the actual killer, claims, without any proof offered, that Tappan told him he would pay Curran to kill Kopinsky out of the hidden $5,000,000.

I can't believe this would pass the smell test. McCoy could almost certainly have gotten Tappan indicted by a grand jury. But I can't believe that the indictment that would have survived a preliminary hearing.

When Tappan takes the stand in his own defense, McCoy introduces the fact that Tappan had been convicted of defrauding 14,000 of his customers. It's clear that jury convict Tappan because of his prior bad acts and not the murder.

Under the law, accomplice testimony is worthless without corroboration. McCoy presents none. As far as I know the judge would have had to dismiss the case.

McCoy even admits to Adam and Claire that he was counting on the hatred of Tappan by the jury to convict him. And that's exactly what happened.

I admit I'm not a lawyer but I just don't see that McCoy made a prima facia case.

In fact, in the epilogue McCoy admits to Kincaid that he suborned Curran's perjury in order to convict Tappan. "Heaven's to Betsy, Claire, what a dreadful idea!" The case would never survive on appeal even though the meat head judge allowed the trial to go forward.

I love this show but sometimes the writers really go overboard.

Notoriety and Sleaziness

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 17 February 2013]

Some two bit lawyer gets shot in his midtown office and admittedly both Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth shed no tears. From what they learn of this guy, he's quite the sleazy shyster. But he actually may have been on to something.

That something was the hidden assets of a Donald Trump like millionaire who bilked hundreds of investors of their life savings. He got a trip to Club Fed and now he's in a half way house.

The guy who shot the lawyer is played by Jonathan Hogan and he's bitter and angry about the loss of his mother's savings. With that temper and how he feels he's easily manipulated.

And manipulated he is by Michael Zaslow as the recent Club Fed guest. But what happens here does not rise to the level of a crime. All that happened was that he was pointed in a right/wrong direction depending on your point of view.

Zaslow is wonderful in a part that calls for him to be notorious and sleazy and without a conscience at all. But Law And Order was really reaching here. I truly suspect the Appellate Division and if not the Court Of Appeals would reverse all of Sam Waterston's work against Zaslow in a nano-second.