A murdered shoe-shine man turns out to be a veteran who was trying to return the Bronze Star he received during the Vietnam War.A murdered shoe-shine man turns out to be a veteran who was trying to return the Bronze Star he received during the Vietnam War.A murdered shoe-shine man turns out to be a veteran who was trying to return the Bronze Star he received during the Vietnam War.
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- Interim DA Nora Lewin
- (credit only)
- Trial Judge
- (as Daniel Desmond)
- Translator
- (as Leon Quangle)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis episode appears to be based on two separate incidents:
- The Thanh Phong raid controversy surrounding Senator Bob Kerrey.
- The My Lai massacre, which occurred during the Vietnam War on March 16, 1968.
- GoofsThe funeral for the victim, Joe Eastman, was peculiar. As a veteran, he is eligible for a full funeral service paid for and conducted by members of the US Army. The playing of "Taps" on a tape recorder by a uniformed officer is not the proper portrayal of a funeral for a war veteran.
- Quotes
A.D.A. Serena Southerlyn: Gardner's accepted our offer of man two. She intends to ask the judge for the minimum.
Jack McCoy: A mayor and an oil executive. I'm sure she'll make a strong case. I think there were mitigating factors.
A.D.A. Serena Southerlyn: Based on what they did or who they are?
Jack McCoy: They were kids. Kids armed to the teeth, put in a place where most of the time they couldn't tell who was for them and who was against them. We need to be careful how we judge.
This episode is more or less an adaption of the My Lai massacre, where a group of mostly White American soldiers slaughtered men, women, and children in a village. It wasn't the only such war crime in Vietnam, but it was the one that got headlines. Eventually, nothing really happened to any of the soldiers who were tried, and the obvious racial angles of a group of Whites slaughtering Asians was, as usual, dismissed as just the tragedy of war.
This episode follows a similar perspective -- at the end, we even have a self-righteous homily by McCoy about how these were just kids. Yeah. This is the same McCoy who prosecuted kids as adults. Unlike the superior Michael Moriarty character, Ben Stone, McCoy was constantly waffling on his principles. This week, he might -- Alan Alda style -- pontificate about a particular social cause he favors. Next week, he might take exactly the opposite stance. Binge watch Law and Order, and the inconsistency becomes far more obvious.
There are other moments, too. They end up dragging some poor elderly Vietnamese woman over the NYC, only to throw out her testimony because she apparently didn't directly witness anything. What? No one interviewed her beforehand? And everyone talks about her like she's an object rather than a person, their tone either condescending (the blond defense attorney) or matter of fact (McCoy, who seems indifferent to his own witness). Just unsavory.
In the end, there's a cavalry-over-the-hill arrival that saves the case, but even then, the two accused men -- privileged White men -- are more disgusted that they were accused than that they murdered people. Yes, this may be accurate to reality, but the episode offers little in the way of condemnation for it, with McCoy's idiotic epiphany at the end especially insulting. Not Law and Order's finest hour.
- bkkaz
- Aug 9, 2023