Last Night’s Law and Order

In response to a request from graefix, I’ll comment on last night’s Law and Order. Last night, of course, was the final episode of Elizabeth Rohm, who over the past three years has managed to establish herself as the Worst ADA Ever. Her tenure has corresponded with a general decline in the level of writing for the show, so many people have lost all interest. Yesterday’s episode is only the third I’ve watched all season.

Because I am a spiteful man, I was very much in favor of Rohm being carried out of Law and Order in a body bag. Max Greevey was executed at the beginning of season 2, and Claire Kinkaid was killed in a car wreck at the end of season 6, so there is precedent. As I watched, I hoped that each conversation that Rohm had with the defendants would end in a bloody gunfight, or at least a knife fight. The episode was mediocre, which is a significant improvement on most recent L&Os, and involved some kind of conflict between rival rap artists.

So, Rohm’s character, Southerlyn, disagreed with Jack McCoy and Arthur Branch about something for some reason. This led to some very minor interference in the case, not really a big deal. At the end of the episode, Branch calls Southerlyn in, and she begins discussing the case. He small talks for a little while, then proceeds to fire her for being an insufficiently zealous ADA.

For a short while, I was in ecstasy. It was better than her getting killed; I was really able to savour the firing. Then, the writers have to ruin my joy by having her say “Is this because I’m a lesbian?”

Grunt.

In Harmon’s case, they at least gave some hint that her character might have been lesbian. As far as I can tell (and my watching of L&O has fallen off pretty dramatically in the past couple of years), they never gave any indication that Rohm’s character was a lesbian before they dropped it right in our lap during the most satisfying moment the series has had in six years. Law and Order is about subtle, long-term character development, not no character development at all. My joy vanished; I can be delighted that her character was fired for being incompetent, but I can’t exactly take satisfaction in her termination for reasons of sexual orientation.

They ruined a perfectly good, enormously satisfying scene with a bit of tacked on nonsense. Maybe they’ll cut that moment out when they start showing the episode on TNT. . .