User Reviews

This episode of Law And Order has a gay man being killed and a baby being snatched from its cradle. The baby that the victim and his partner had adopted. Complicating things the baby came from a crack mother and is prone to seizure.

After the police find the killer and the infant, the trial starts and what it was turned out to be the kid's biological father urged by his biological mother to snatch the kid. She's cleaned up from rehab and wants the kid back. So Catherine Kellner prays on David Vadim's homophobia to get him to snatch the kid. It's not right for two gays to adopt his kid. When the victim resists Vadim beats him to death leaving a grieving partner played by David Pittu.

In this tragic story there is one amusing part and its provided by Santo Fazio who plays a delivery driver who happens to be on the scene of the crime. He decides to cash in on the crime by sending a ransom note because he's got lots of debt. Let's just say that some people are just not cut out for a life of crime. This one suffers from terminal stupidity. His interrogation by Jesse Martin and Jerry Orbach is priceless.

An old couple were talking about their daughter who was willing to go back with them after losing her job. Suddenly, they bumped into a dead body in the courtyard; he was kicked and beaten to death with severe rage. A stroller was found upside-down on the crime scene, so a kidnapping had taken place. The victim was the lover of a gay man who has just adopted an eighteen months old toddler. Detectives, after a goose chase involving a dumb delivery guy (Santo Fazio) who made a ransom call, try to figure out who the biological parents are. The mother, a former heroin addicted, is caught just in time before getting out of New York City with a bus. Anyway, she has not enough strength to stage a fist fight: the biological father has to be the perp. At the trial, the point is how much anger bear the father against gay people.

The real criminal in this episode is the biological mother: she was a junkie, she's estranged from her supportive mother and she hides her pregnancy from her former fiancèe. I hope the foster parent left won't allow her to see her child by any means in the future.

Decided a while back (three years ago) to review all the episodes of the original 'Law and Order', 'Special Victims Unit' and 'Criminal Intent', being someone who really likes all three shows in their prime/early years. Really loved a lot of the early seasons episodes of all three shows, while also finding all three less consistent later on (with the original not feeling the same post-Briscoe and even began to lose consistency in Season 11, 'Special Victims Unit' was the one that declined the most though).

This is a very harrowing subject. Season 11 did a lot of not easy subjects (which was always one of 'Law and Order's' main selling points), but the execution varied. Some episodes handled them very uncompromisingly and powerfully. Others did them rather too on the heavy-handed side and a few times with hard to swallow legal scenes. One of the toughest subject matters of the season is with "Phobia". Which is one of the finer examples of the former category, so uncompromising and powerful.

It does seem quite ordinary at first, but it does quickly become an episode that is often anything but.

"Phobia's" production values continue to remain high, while the direction lets the dramatic intensity of the second half to blister. The music doesn't sound melodramatic. The script is lean and thoughtful, especially in the legal scenes and indeed the priceless interrogation scene with the hilariously dumb Santo Fazio.

Story hooks one in early on and never lets go, and is also shocking, tense and heart-breakingly tragic in the second half. Which is absolutely riveting, pulls no punches and never comes over as too simple or over-complicated. The supporting characters are more real here than most supporting characters this season, though not many characters come off well afterwards. One does hate the perpetrator, certainly so these days where reactions towards homophobia are a good deal stronger, but one hates even more the character that made them act that way.

Cannot find anything to fault the performances for, Jerry Orbach (Briscoe being one of the best loved characters in the franchise is very much deserved) and Jesse L. Martin always were my favourite police pairing of the show, while Sam Waterston is in full command of his role. Catherine Kellner makes the skin crawl. Fazio is hilarious in his screen time.

All in all, excellent. 9/10.