EPISODE OF THE WEEK: SEMI-PROFESSIONAL

[Patcat]

Will air September 24 at 4 am on the USA NETWORK
The Fifteenth episode of the First Season. First aired March 10, 2002

Written by Stephanie Sengupta and Rene Balcer
Directed by Gloria Muzzo

Guest Actors
Michael Murphy as Judge Peter Blakemore
Bruce MacVittie as Arnie Cox
George DiCenzo as Judge Rauol Sabatelli

Synopsis: Goren and Eames investigate the murder of a law clerk who did more than just clerk for the judge she worked for.

Quotes:
Arnie: "Anybody that likes Chinese Checkers can't be all bad. Where'd you learn, anyways?"
Goren: "China."

Eames (to Goren): "I only look like I'm not paying attention to you."

Carver: "You want to arrest Blakemore?"
Goren: "Well, arrest would be an understatement."

Eames (as Goren examines Sabatelli's novels): "You underlining the dirty parts?"

Carver (watching Goren at a crime scene): "Is his investigative style always so sociable?"

Queries for discussion:

Is this episode about class?

Why did the law clerk put up with Blakemore?

Is this an episode where the victim gets lost?

How many other people really, really wanted Blakemore to be guilty?

What is Sabatelli guilty of?

Would Sabatelli become involved in a crime if he hadn't met Arnie? Would Arnie have become a murderer if he hadn't met Sabatelli?

What's Carver's reactions to the two different judges? Does he admire Sabatelli?

What will happen to Blackemore?

Is this the first time Carver sees Goren in action at a crime scene? Does it change his attitude toward the detective?

Are Goren and Eames politically naive?

How does Deakins treat his detectives at this point in their relationships? How does this change? How is his relationship with Eames different from his with Goren?

Comments:
There are a lot of things I like about this episode. The guest performers are splendid. Michael Murphy, an actor born to play weak, weaselly WASPS, is splendid as Blakemore. I was desperately disappointed to discover he wasn't the killer, but Sabatelli was right in pegging him as a man who didn't have enough blood in him to be a killer. Bruce MacVittie, who's been on all the L&O shows in a variety of roles, strikes the perfect notes as Arnie, a man too stupid to know he's stupid. And George DiCenzo is very good in showing Judge Sabatelli's wounded pride and great intelligence. Sabatelli is an exceptionally complicated character even for LOCI, and one criminal that I found enormously sympathetic. It's Sabatelli's intelligence that leads to my greatest qualm about this episode. I find it difficult to believe that Sabatelli would fall for the trick that causes him to reveal how he knew about Judge Blackemore's dirty little secrets. But I'm willing to forgive this story a lot. After all, it even gives us some information about Captain Deakins and lets us see the Captain in his political animal mode.

Submitted for you comments and discussion.

Patcat

[DonnaJo]

I'll post more a bit later, but I just wanted to declare how much I LOVE this episode. It's one I never get tired of seeing. VDO's Goren is so charismatic, so annoyingly perceptive, so intelligent...and so very handsome.

[Moonbeam]

Me too DonnaJo. I've always considered this one of my favs. I love the final scene when Sabatelli steps into Carver and Goren more or less tells him to back off without saying a word.

This is an episode in which the criminal (Sabatelli) thinks he's so much smarter than any one else in the room, uh...think again.

[dragonsback]

Absolutely an 8 out 10 on the Replay-O-Meter.

This episode is intelligent, tragic, touching, horrific, warm, witty, scathing, ironic. At its heart is the foot soldier Arnie, not the commissioning killer Sabatelli, nor the victim, not even the blueblood weakling Blakemore. The motive for the actual deed isn't even the Three Givens - passion, money , and sex. It's loyalty. And fatal pride.

Lines are marvellous, and each role (even that of the minor victim, and Arnie's wife, and by implication, their affianced daughter) is drawn from deep wells of imagination. Every character brings a complex addition to the story as well as the plot, and there is so little writers' fast-fix recourse to lazy he-said-she-said revelations that you wonder how they packed it all into 43 little minutes.

Great storytelling that doesn't wrap things up so much so much as it lays the full tragedy of many characters at your feet.

[Patcat]

I frequently miss things, so I could be wrong about this, but did Sabatelli commission Arnie to find something on Blakemore? Or did Arnie do that on his own and then tell Sabatelli about it? I also thought that Arnie's killing of the young woman wasn't planned.

Patcat

[DonnaJo]

Excellent little review, DB.

Patcat, I remember that it was Arnie's idea to actually murder the Judge's Aide, and that Sabatelli didn't know until afterwards. There's a scene at the boxing gym that confirms this. The initial idea was to get Blakemore out of the way, as he was the first choice for the Appellate Court. I believe that Sabatelli wanted Arnie to get something on Blakemore, like stealing the laptop. But once the murder was a done deal, then Sabatelli and Arnie both were involved in framing the Judge for the murder.

Does this sound right?

[Patcat]

That sounds right.

I've always thought that what happened was a bit like MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL when King Henry speaks out loud about wanting to get rid of Thomas a Becket--"Will no one rid me of this priest?"--and his knights ride out and kill Beckett. Sabatelli seems to me to be like the King--he certainly wants to be rid of Blakemore, but I don't think he wanted any kind of murder, or even that he gave Arnie any kind of specific instructions.

Patcat

[nosee]

This is one of my favorites for many reasons. I'll ponder your queiries for discussion as I re-watch this. I must say for now this episode has one of my favorite quotes from Eames:

Eames (to Goren): "I only look like I'm not paying attention to you."

I love the reaction on Goren's face as she says this. I have always gotten the impression that he is used to people not paying attention to what he says.

Love it!!!!

[ragincajun]

Is this episode about class?

I think so the higher class getting lower class to do the dirty work, Arti does the killing for Sabtelli, The clerk doing the hard work for blakemore.

Why did the law clerk put up with Blakemore?

Maybe she loved him.

Is this an episode where the victim gets lost?

Yes I think she does, It becomes about getting the Judge.

How many other people really, really wanted Blakemore to be guilty?

Guess you wanted the man who was cheating on his wife to go down.

What is Sabatelli guilty of?

Well he wanted Arti to get the laptop, but a murder happened in the process, so I am sure he will get some kind of manslater conspiracy charge.

Would Sabatelli become involved in a crime if he hadn't met Arnie? Would Arnie have become a murderer if he hadn't met Sabatelli?

First question yes, Sabatelli, would have had some other flunky he is that type of personality.

Arnie is a follower looking for a roll model, hopefully he would have found a better one. So maybe not?

What's Carver's reactions to the two different judges? Does he admire Sabatelli?

What will happen to Blackemore?

Plagerism? Tainted reputation, maybe divorce? lose his bench.

Is this the first time Carver sees Goren in action at a crime scene? Does it change his attitude toward the detective?

Nah he thinks Goren is "off" lol.

Are Goren and Eames politically naive?

They want things to be black and white, and they aren't

How does Deakins treat his detectives at this point in their relationships? How does this change? How is his relationship with Eames different from his with Goren?

I find he is kinder and gentler with Eames. More direct and more talkative with Goren. I always liked Deakins relationship with his detectives he trust them 100percent, not like Ross.



I actually feel sorry for Arnie, I want him to get off. He seems so sweet, and innocent. I love when he tells Goren he learned Chiness Chess in China. He seems to be trying so hard to be attentive to his wife and daughter. He is so let down when Goren reads him the book about him pissing on himself. I wish we could have seen how the murder went down.

[dragonsback]

Apologies. Quite right, Patcat and Donna: Sabatelli did not commisssion the killing, Arnie just went too far. I don't recall if Arnie even started out with intent to kill - it;s been a while since last I saw this ep - but it definitely was Arnie's decision to kill her in the moment, not Sabatelli's direct order.

But Sabatelli has set the tragedy in motion, and he wants the victim's hard drive, wherein the dirty little secret of Blakemore's plagiarism lies, badly enough to ride out Arnie's crossing the line.

The irony here of course is that Blakemore's affair (his more obvious dirty little secret)with the assistant would have been enough to keep him from the bench promotion. Sabatelli wants more: he wants to expose Blakemore's intellectual fraud, his real inferiority to Sabatelli, and the thing that goads and maddens the self-made judge.

From memory, Blakemore's indiscretion and his plagiarism kill his reputation stone dead, as dead as his lover . Exonerated of murder, his career and his marriage are destroyed nevertheless. (And I love the spinning out of Blakemore's twisting in the wind by the detectives behind the glass, even after they know he isn't the perp - a little satisfying twist for all of us 'behind the glass')

And so Sabatelli takes Blakemore, the object of his contempt and envy down with himself,

In fact, no one escapes in this ep. As so often has been the moral of the LOCI tale (or at least its outcome), the principal players are the instruments of destruction not of one life, but the lives of their wives (and by extension, their families), their careers, their futures.

It's positively Shakespearean , this one, in its domino-effect devastation.

[outerbankschick]

I'm watching this one now. Two quick comments.

I totally love the way Alex puts her finger in the air and tries to stop the pissing match between Bobby and Carver over Sabatelli. As usual, the cooler head of Detective Eames prevails!

And there is a nice homage to Season 1 of TOS with the title of Sabatelli's first book, The Serpent's Tooth. It was the title of an episode where two young men were suspected of killing their parents and in it, Logan says something to Greevey like, "Yeah, yeah, I know. Anybody is capable of anything."

In the scene where Bobby is commenting to Sabatelli about his book and asking him if he really thinks Arnie capable of murder, Sabatelli echoes Logan's words and says, "My years on the bench have taught me that anybody is capable of anything."

I'd really love to see the new writers throw us these little gems now and then. Keeps us on our toes.

[tjara]

I liked that episode because I thought it was very unconventional - the story was unpredictable. Yet I think it had two weak points: We didn't learn enough of why Arnie is so indebted and/or loyal to Sabatelli, and we also didn't learn why the clerk would remain a mistress for an extended period of time.
I liked the interaction between Carver and Goren and Eames always keeping "cool". I especially enjoy the scene when they confront Blakemore with his plagiarism. It was nice to catch a more private glimpse of Deakins.
This ep also shows how everyone ends up being a victim, Arnie because he is charged with murder, Blakemore because he presumeably not only loses the prospect for the appellate court, but also his bench, the clerk, the wife, Arnie's family. Even Carver, in a sense, he looses a friend/role model.

[DonnaJo]

Tjara, what you say about everyone losing something in this episode is very true. An excellent observation.

I agree that they don't go into great detail about motivation. The law clerk's mother says to Goren that the reason her daughter stayed so long as the judge's law clerk was simply that she loved him. And Arnie was beholden to Sabatelli because he gave him a break by granting him early parole/probation.

[tjara]

I agree that they don't go into great detail about motivation.

I just would've liked it "fleshed" out a little more. Than maybe it's because at the beginning they constantly had to "downsize" their scripts (they were to long), or so at least I heard.