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mhearn
Reviews
Law & Order: Killerz (1999)
Hallee Hirch's Most Memorable Performance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Warning: Spoilers)
Years from now, people will still be asking Hallee Hirch about the character of Jenny Brandt, which she so brilliantly defined. I agree an award should have been given her for this episode. So help me, I found her more frightening than Patty Mcormanck in "The Bad Seed."
If you have NOT seen it, do not read further. If so, go ahead:
I had to agree with Slocum and McCoy. Jenny is, in one's words, "a textbook serial killer." Lock the rotten little bitch up, and throw away the key. The last shot shows McCoy is right.
One criticism with the script was its stacking too much Jenny's lower class, trash background. Sderial killers can come from here, but they can also hail from the upper classes. Another thing--the case was gender biased. The perp was a cute little girl. The judge, defense attorney, and Dr. Olivett were women. I can't help but wonder--IF Jenny had been a boy, who murdered a small girl, what would have been the cause. Damn sure he would have gotten a stronger sentence.
Women get away with everything, and this episode illustrates that. It also shows people can't see beyond cuteness to true evil. I say bring Hallee, 11 years later, back as Jenny, and see how she has turned out. I guarantee Hallee will do another excellent job, but Jenny will not have improved any. She will only have gotten worse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Darkness Falls (2003)
This Could Have Been Brilliant!!!!!
My only reason for viewing "Darkness Falls"--which I had not heard of till recently--is that many out there feel the forthcoming "Dead Silence" is simply a reworking of it. I cannot comment on DS, having seen only the trailer. But I decided to watch "Darkness Falls."
It has any number of gripping images and scenes. The performances are solid. But something was lacking in the script. To see what you must, after viewing the feature, click on to "featurettes" and watch "The Legend Of Matilda Dixon" a 'Blair Witch' style mockumentary. If the filmmaker could have found some way of incorporating this into the feature film, not only would he not had to resort to 11 minutes of film credits, he would have had an altogether brilliant film.
Worth watching , but a near miss.
Family Affair: Christmas Came a Little Early (1968)
This Episode Traumatized A Generation--Warning--contains spoilers
I first saw this one week before my 14th birthday, when I was in eighth grade. I think for the first time in our young lives it brought home the painful actuality that just because one is young one is not immune from death. When I have as an adult described this episode to people I still choke up as I talk about the end.
The next day in school it was what everyone was talking about, and we had discussions in class about it. Even the most hard boiled of kids were shaken up over it.
An impacting episode for members of the baby boomer generation. I guarantee if you ask anyone around my age (51) they will remember it.
And of course, the little girl in the story, whom we did not know at the time, was Eve Plumb, who went on to TV immortality as Jan Brady.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Mean (2004)
Television At Its Dramatic Best!!!!!
"Mean" is not only the finest episode ever in any of the "Law and Order" series, but is extremely daring television in its stinging indictment of America's suburban lifestyle--indictments unfashionable to make in this overly politcally correct age. It is mericiless in cataloging the more insidious ways school children can now persecute one another--not just through verbal contact at school, but through cell phone and email messages, and cyber photos that violate a person's privacy. The Agnes Linskys of this age have it worse than those in my day. I contend that the writers of "Mean" based their story on the 1992 Shanda Sharer case. Sharer was a twelve year old girl from Madison, Indianna who went out riding one January night with her teen-aged friends--Melinda Loveless, Hope Rippey, Laurie Tackett, and Toni Lawrence, all under eighteen--only to be bound, locked in the car trunk, driven to a remote area known as the Witches Castle, where she was removed, tortured, set on fire and left to die. The motive, like "Mean," centered around jealousy on the part of ringleader Melinda, except that here it was lesbian jealousy rather than heterosexual. A question this episode asks but does not answer is this--In a siutation like this, where Britany, Paige and Andrea deservedly get their judicial comeuppance, why are their parents not prosecuted, tried, convicted and jailed for raising such monsters? They should be, because it was the American suburban Entitlement they heaped upon their daughters from birth that transformed them into the monstrous bitches seen in "Mean." And the cycle of parents still doing this, and girls evolving into monsters, continues today; so that America, rather than improving, only worsens in its mirroring of Agnes Linsky's contention that it is "never going to stop."