User Reviews

I'm not a viewer of this show but I saw this particular episode advertised on TV and it concerned horse racing, a favorite sport of mine. So I finally gave this longtime show a look. (I do watch "L&O: Criminal Intent"). I find it's a bit unusual (all of you knew this) in that the cops disappear once the trial starts and we get a whole new set of "good guys." It's like two stories in one, but yet it is one story overall.

Anyway, a jockey is murdered outside a Hispanic bar and the suspects go from the bottom up in the racing game: from grooms, to another jockey, to a trainer and then to an owner. It all winds up being about greed, a common sin among killers in police stories on TV (and real life, too, I assume).

Along the way, we learn a few crooked techniques of the racing business, such as "milkshakes" and "fake payments for a horse." The racing business has always had a corrupt element. How much varies according to the class of horses and owners. I gather from this episode, the class of the racetrack is average to a little above-average.

Outside of the murdered jockey, another sad element here is the possible loss of retirement funds for an entire company: 300 workers. It's always horrible when you hear of this kind of thing happening, meaning innocent people losing big funds - sometimes their life savings - to white-collar thieves.

This is not a trial that ever gets to the jury for a verdict of guilt or innocence. That's the big surprise - which you can see coming with five minutes to go in the show - but I won't get into specifics to ruin anyone's viewing pleasure here.

Scott Wilson, a familiar face for CSI fans (casino owner and father of "Catherine Willows"), is an unbilled guest star here. My guess was that he played a key role here at the end, but it was never stated if it was he, or someone else.

It seems the writers knew they needed bigger and better comebacks and one-liners than Lennie Briscoe was known for and Joe Fontana delivers every single time. After the veteran Vartek employee blows up in court and causes a mistrial, I had a feeling the defendant's life was in danger but I didn't think that would cause him to flee. He's not going to flee the country and give up on the thing he cares most about - the valued thoroughbred race horse. I love how this episode ended - so many suspects in the murder of the defendant - who knows where to begin? It's hard to care. End credits. Awesome.

I found it really sad that Jerry Orbach died so soon after Briscoe's character was written off the show at the end of season 14. I wonder if Orbach knew of the plans to have his partner (Green) critically wounded in a shooting in season 15 and didn't want Briscoe to endure a devastating emotional reaction.

I almost never watch any of the regular Law & Order episodes, because I'm a huge Criminal Intent fan, but I happened to catch this one. The only reason I even thought about watching this episode, was because I saw the plot's story-line revolved around a Jockey's murder, and when I was a young kid, I used to go to the racetrack a lot. My dad and a fellow friend of our family, who was European (and a big gambler), loved going to the horse races. I got to tag along, as a little 8 year old kid, having fun running around & watching the thrill of a horse race...and holding on to the racing tickets, tightly in my hand, waiting for the end of the race... hoping we could go back to the window to cash them in as a winner. I have never seen a more boring combination than Michael Imperioli and Dennis Farina as detectives, who sound about as interested in finding out about the clues to their case as a dog on a walk. They have no chemistry together, the whole episode was ruined because the writers (6 listed on the credits, which I've never seen so many before), didn't know how to really come up with an ending. All to justify a man, who stole his company's pension fund money, to buy a racehorse... only to be found dead in the trunk of his car at the airport, when they thought he had fled the country to avoid showing up for his court case. Adding to the misery, is the most boring character in a police, detective-style show that I've ever seen, which is Fred Thompson, playing the District Attorney. This man is so boring, that you can understand why he left acting to try and become a professional politician... which he did as a U.S. Senator for awhile... And I'm guessing he was equally boring in politics, as he was as an actor. Terrible! The only other thing I found odd about the episode, which was hinted at in another review, is that the main detectives, Who start the episode and find the clues to develop the case, suddenly disappear from the show... and it's basically taken over by the attorneys involved. The district attorney's team, defense attorney and anybody else who shows up in court, especially the people charged with the crime being investigated... you might see the detectives show back up, only because they're required to give testimony in court, otherwise they're usually gone from the show, which is an aspect I personally don't care for... it ruins the continuity of the whole episode as far as I'm concerned. To say anymore is a waste of my time...so I won't!