L&O's most jaw-dropping moments

[Spartan Girl]

I thought I'd start a thread for moments on the show that left you stunned or angry or even a little bit of both.

 

The number-one moment for me was in "Smoke" when Serena pretty much sided with the parents that sold their child to be molested by a celebrity to save their younger son.  Even when there was actual proof that it wasn't just a matter of taking hush money after the fact, that they PLANNED THE WHOLE THING, she actually felt sorry for those monsters and thought it was a tragedy that their youngest son would have to grow up without them.  There are no words left in the English language to thoroughly express my contempt for Serena in that scene.  They should have let her go right and there.

 

And her "I'm not a parent why am I the only one that understands them" crap just made me angrier.  Claire and Connie weren't mothers, but I'll bet they'd have no pity.  Jamie, who WAS a mother, would have been sick.  And Abbie "Spare Me Your Sob Story I Have Zero Fucks to Give" Carmichael would have happily sent them to death row.

 

And no Serena, it isn't because you're a lesbian either, because lesbians usually make excellent mothers!

 

Anyway, that's my most shocking moment.   What other moments in the show stunned you?

[dustylil]

I was angered and taken aback by the last few moments of Season 7's Deadbeat.  In this episode the abusive ex-husband of a mother with a child very ill with leukemia (and high medical bills) was killed by the woman's father. The man who had been living in Florida and avoiding his  child support responsibilities. Given the nature of his work as a car broker, he  customarily carried a large amount of cash on his person. He had been lured back to New York by the former wife to see if he would a bone marrow match for his son. When he got to New York, the grandfather killed him with the man's own gun - apparently in self-defence after an argument between the two.  (Robbed him as well, if I recall correctly).

 

Of course, it was difficult to believe that the grandfather would murder the man since a  transplant from  the deadbeat was  seemingly the main hope for the child's recovery.

 

As it turned out, the child's mother knew all along that her ex was not the child's biological father. This was a conclusion Jack and Jamie themselves realized in the later moments of the episode and Jamie then confronted the woman about it. At the end, the two lawyers discussed the possibility of  charging the mother as well concerning the former husband's death.  

 

 What startled me was that neither Jack nor Jamie raised the issue of the identity of the child's actual father and more importantly, the need for having him tested as a potential transplant candidate - either when talking  with the mother or between themselves. Surely time was of critical importance for a dying child.

 

It seemed that for the mother and her own father revenge on the ex-husband (taking his money and killing him) was more important than saving the life of the child. That factor seemed to be something that should be taken into account when considering any charges to be brought against the woman.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I think, the argument in "Deadbeat" that led to the victim's murder, was that he'd found out that he wasn't the biological father, and despite being the only father the kid knew, or that he was still responsible for child support, should have given the money or something. I think he did come back to New York to donate the marrow, and during that, found out he wasn't the father.

[Maherjunkie]

I think the nutty couple in Indifference will never leave me.  Ms.Perez waking up Dee Dee to see her in blood.

[Spartan Girl]

Poor little Dee Dee.  I hate it when kids on this show die.

 

Speaking of which, the father getting away with murdering his son in "Flight" by hanging himself at the end pissed me off.  The fact that his lawyer tipped him off that the cops were getting the evidence to convict him was infuriating enough, but the fact that the poor mother couldn't even sue the drug company for stalling the prosecution and therefore preventing justice being served just to cover their own asses was downright despicable.  I would have been much more satisfied if the mother had killed that bastard herself!

[GHScorpiosRule]

This isn't so much jaw-dropping over heinous murderers, per se, but just how Van Buren handled it when it was discovered the husband was African American, in "Blood."

 

Van Buren: "Hello, my brother...DAMN!!!!"

 

Speaking of jaw dropping, I will add my jaw dropped at the sheer STOOOPIDITY of the trial judge in "Killerz", who thought that the sociopathic ten year old serial killer could be "saved." This is one that I wish the show had revisited, like they did with "Indifference", to pile on the guilt of the judge for letting her go...

 

Another jaw dropping moment is in "Denial" when the father of the ENTITLED, bratty teenager, who killed her newborn son, covered up and LIED about killing his grandson himself, but that it was an accident or he was already dead, DESPITE the evidence that proved the poor wee one had been strangled...which leads to "Mother's Milk" another case of unbelievable ignorance of the mother who starved her baby to death because she was unable to breast feed, and claimed she had no support, yet her parents, her mother was hiding her from the cops and sitting there during the trial. Like that twat couldn't pick up the phone and call her mother to ask her for her help? The fat, brain-addled husband should also have been tried and found guilty.

[dustylil]

GHScorpiosRule, getting back to Deadbeat for a moment, that may indeed have been the cause of the argument. But he would have learned in the next day or so that he was not the little boy's father when he went to be assessed as a possible donor. Of course that in and of itself would not necessarily get him of the hook for child support.

In any event, by luring the "father" to New York and then killing him, the mother and grandfather seemed far more intent on wreaking revenge on the miserable ex-husband than in finding a match for the seriously ill child. That is what truly bothered me about the episode.

[FozzyBear]

The end of Ellen Pompeo's (sp?) first episode when Jack slowly puts it together that the boyfriend didn't just lose control and murder the mother, but that she hired him to kill her mother. Just the way Jack puts together everything that's been bugging him about this case and follows it to his conclusion. That one always stuck with me because she didn't have any real motive, just normal teenage My mom is so mean stuff so nobody really saw it coming.

[Princess Sparkle]

I have to say, my mouth pretty much hung open in horror at the end of Prince of Darkness.  "She doesn't have an Uncle!"

 

Helpless pretty much left me in shock too, even now, that they depicted Olivet's rape on-screen.  I don't even know if SVU has ever shown an entire rape happening onscreen.

[radishcake]

I have to say, my mouth pretty much hung open in horror at the end of Prince of Darkness.  "She doesn't have an Uncle!"

Oh man that one still gives me shivers. The look on Schiff's face is so shocked.

[txhorns79]

I think a great jaw-dropper comes from Survivor, where it was revealed that the coin dealer and the other guy simply were running a scam.  The perp's face and utter breakdown when they revealed that they never actually had her father's rare coins he lost in the Holocaust, and that she had killed a man for nothing was pretty well done.  It was one of those moments where you felt for the perp. 

[Eolivet]

Allison Janney's sweet aspiring baby food manufacturer getting gunned down by the Russian mob at the end of Ben Stone's last episode. IMdB says it's "Old Friends."

 

The end of the first Dobson case ("Coma") -- the comedy club owner whose wife was shot. They try to prove he shot her, they get the court order to remove the bullet and...it doesn't match his gun. I was fuming that he was able to get away with it. To see him finally taken down a couple years later (by a woman, no less!) was sweet revenge.

[Spartan Girl]

The recorded final words of that poor teacher murdered for her car in "Causa Mortis" being played for the jury really got to me.

 

And I felt nothing but the purest contempt for the murderer's little bitch girlfriend for having the nerve to beg for her boyfriend's life saying she didn't want her baby growing up without a father when that poor teacher had FOUR KIDS that were going to grow up without her.  Somebody should have punched her in the face for that; that baby would probably grow up just fine without BOTH of his scumbag parents!

[wallflower75]

The end of "Mad Dog," when the serial rapist McCoy's spent the entire episode trying to get sent back to prison winds up getting killed by his own daughter when she discovers him raping her friend.

 

And maybe I should've seen it coming, but in "Life Choice," when the boyfriend confesses that Mary Donovan, who everyone thought was at the abortion clinic to bomb it, was actually there to have an abortion.

[spaceytraci1208]

Not a jaw-dropper in the sense that it's shocking and/or unexpected, but I love how Ben Stone completely blindsided the abortion clinic bomber in "Life Choice" after she was so adamant that she did no wrong:

"If abortion is murder, then no matter how you feel about Mary Donovan, aren't you guilty of the murder of her unborn child?"

[Maherjunkie]

I know!  I mean after all, aren't they the only ones that count?

[Xeliou66]

The best jaw dropping moment was the end of Prince of Darkness "She doesn't have an uncle". The look of horror on Schiff's face was quite memorable. The moments mentioned in Life Choice were jaw droppers as well. 

Several times I've been shocked at stupid comments made by main characters that I usually like : for example, McCoy apparently feeling sympathy for the nurse who performed sterilizations on unknowing black women ( what the fuck was up with him?), Bernard's idiotic, appalling comment about abortions in cases of rape in Dignity ( I wanted Lupo to punch him ) of course Serena apparently being sympathetic to the parents who pimped out their son to be molested, Serena was frequently overly sympathetic for a prosecutor but that was the worst example, also Nora's defense of the dad who killed the insurance company guy in Undercovered, she was such a soft DA. Nora and Serena on at the same time was hard to watch, 2 very soft bleeding heart pushovers that were sometimes too sympathetic to defendants to be good DA's on at the same time made the second half of season 12 episodes challenging to get through at times. 

[wanderingstar]

The end of Hubris always stuck with me. The perp had represented himself and flirted with the jury forewoman to get a mistrial. So the fact that he ended up dead at the hands of the same woman he manipulated to get his mistrial (after he tried to kill her) was pretty shocking.

Same with the end of Deceit, where the wife who had killed her husband's male lover also killed her husband after he testified against her.

Basically, any time an episode ended with a dead body that I didn't expect, it always stayed with me.

[Snookums]

Vivica Fox at the end of Sweetie, where she steps up to Cutter and purrs "anytime you wanna party with somebody nice and tight, sugar daddy, you just give me a call." You know what she did, that Mike can't prove it, that she knows it. You can see that horribly damaged twelve year old girl in a dirty bathroom pretending she loved giving BJs to fifty year old men, and how it killed her inside, and how she knows she can do anything now, anything. Because nothing was worse than what she's already had to do.

[Raja]

On 9/11/2014 at 2:55 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Speaking of jaw dropping, I will add my jaw dropped at the sheer STOOOPIDITY of the trial judge in "Killerz", who thought that the sociopathic ten year old serial killer could be "saved." This is one that I wish the show had revisited, like they did with "Indifference", to pile on the guilt of the judge for letting her go...

It wasn't that moment for me but the epilog when she turned a predator's eye towards the little boy in the courtroom's foyer.

[GHScorpiosRule]

22 minutes ago, Raja said:

It wasn't that moment for me but the epilog when she turned a predator's eye towards the little boy in the courtroom's foyer.

I didn’t find that jaw-dropping, but expected because she was a serial killing psychopath, looking at her next victim.

[ML89]

The end of "Apocrypha" in season 4, with the cult members all dead.

[andromeda331]

On 2/23/2023 at 1:07 PM, ML89 said:

The end of "Apocrypha" in season 4, with the cult members all dead.

Sadly, realistic.