Season 19: “May we live to fight another day.”

[Xeliou66]

49 minutes ago, balmz said:

With jack and the judge in zero, maybe it was jack was scared of his own morality and the judges state was an unpleasant what if that jack may face one day 

Maybe Jack was more sympathetic due to age, plus he knew the judge for a while and maybe he wanted to grant him the benefit of the doubt that he would know if he wasn’t fit anymore. It was a sad situation, and I felt for the judge.     
Fortunately Jack stayed mentally sharp during his entire run as DA, I’m really glad he got such a strong exit this season. 

[andromeda331]

On 3/13/2024 at 8:30 PM, Xeliou66 said:

Maybe Jack was more sympathetic due to age, plus he knew the judge for a while and maybe he wanted to grant him the benefit of the doubt that he would know if he wasn’t fit anymore. It was a sad situation, and I felt for the judge.     
Fortunately Jack stayed mentally sharp during his entire run as DA, I’m really glad he got such a strong exit this season. 

So did I. The poor judge. It would be hard to accept you can't do your job anymore because your no longer fit. I like the twist that it wasn't the clerk controlling things but trying to help the judge. 

[Xeliou66]

6 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

So did I. The poor judge. It would be hard to accept you can't do your job anymore because your no longer fit. I like the twist that it wasn't the clerk controlling things but trying to help the judge. 

The clerk was manipulative though, she seemed to have a crush on Cutter so she was ruling in Cutter’s favor, then she switched gears when Cutter got suspicious. The judge was very sympathetic, his whole life was devoted to practicing law/being a judge and he just couldn’t accept he was no longer fit to do what he loved. It was a sad situation. I liked at the end when the judge came to Jack’s office and remembered Adam being in the office, and how he loved to eat sandwiches there, that was a nice touch as we all know Adam ate sandwiches frequently in his office. It was also realistic that sometimes people with dementia/Alzheimer’s can remember people and things from a while back but can’t recall basic things from the present, as shown when the judge forgot who Jack was moments later. It was a very tough situation, and dementia is a terrible disease, I’ve had a couple of relatives with it and it’s very difficult to watch them decline, so I really felt for the judge.

[andromeda331]

On 3/18/2024 at 7:41 AM, Xeliou66 said:

 It was a very tough situation, and dementia is a terrible disease, I’ve had a couple of relatives with it and it’s very difficult to watch them decline, so I really felt for the judge.

It really is. My grandfather had it and it was really hard. And I'm pretty sure my dad has dementia. It's at the beginning but it's not easy. It's weird how sometimes my brother and I will be talking about him while he's in the room and he doesn't even notice. We all make sure someone is always with him at doctor's appointments because doesn't hear what the doctor's saying or thinks the doctor asked a question and my dad will give a different answer. At first we thought he just had a hearing problem but no. 

[Xeliou66]

Season 19 on today - By Perjury is a fascinating episode, with the psychopath lawyer killing people who were getting in the way of his cases and then he tried to shoot Cutter in the bathroom, that was a wild ending, where did he get that gun from I wonder and how did he smuggle it into the courthouse? It was an interesting case and I liked how Cutter smoked a cigarette in the office of the lawyer to prove the guy perjured himself. It was a creative way for Cutter to proceed and I liked how Jack said if they couldn’t find ways to prosecute murderers what the hell were they doing in the job - I also liked how Jack told the defense attorney he decided who does what with the DAs office. It’s a wild case and a compelling episode.

Pledge is next, this is another rather bizarre case, the killer was nuts, killing 2 innocent people just to get back at a woman who threw him out of a college party. The way the killer talked about his daughter and resented her for not being “beautiful enough” or whatever was disgusting, I felt horrible for the daughter, what a shitty dad and her mom was blind to who he was. It’s a compelling case but it’s another one where Cutter had to use trickery to win, that got kind of tiresome in season 19, and Cutter was fortunate he found a woman with the same name who attended the same school and who married someone from a blue collar background - if he hadn’t found her I’m not sure how Cutter would’ve gotten the defendant to explode and confess. So it felt kind of like a cop out how it ended, even though the killer’s breakdown was memorable.

Lucky Stiff I mostly think of as being the episode without Jack, as he was out of town, made the episode less interesting, and it’s another one where Cutter had to use a trick at the end, I liked Rodgers calling him out for it. Cutter is just not my favorite - he seemed underhanded at times and had a large ego and was a “do anything to win” type. Obviously no one could match Jack as lead prosecutor but Mike wasn’t that likable much of the time, being paired with the awesome Connie helped him. I do like Lupo/Bernard a lot, they made for a good pairing. 

[ICantDoThatDave]

3 hours ago, Xeliou66 said:

...and it’s another one where Cutter had to use a trick at the end, I liked Rodgers calling him out for it.

The Lucky Stiff dirty trick was particularly annoying because the girl only changed her testimony once it would financially benefit her, so her credibility at trial would be virtually 0%. But they acted like it was, by itself, enough to convict.

Plus, I'm pretty sure the falsified ME report would have been brought up by the Defense at trial, which means Cutter would have been in big trouble.

[Xeliou66]

18 minutes ago, ICantDoThatDave said:

The Lucky Stiff dirty trick was particularly annoying because the girl only changed her testimony once it would financially benefit her, so her credibility at trial would be virtually 0%. But they acted like it was, by itself, enough to convict.

Plus, I'm pretty sure the falsified ME report would have been brought up by the Defense at trial, which means Cutter would have been in big trouble.

I got very tired of the trope of Cutter having to use underhanded trickery to win cases - you make good points about the Lucky Stiff trick and like I said he was very fortunate in Pledge. Cutter just rubbed me the wrong way sometimes, he was arrogant and would do anything to win. And Cutter never got in trouble for his tricks. 

[Irlandesa]

This season is airing on POP right now and I've put it on in the background.   It's making me question how much I know of myself.

For the longest time my claim to fame has been that I've seen every episode of this series, most multiple times. 

But there have been numerous episodes this morning (later half of Season 19) that seem wholly unfamiliar to me.  There was only one that I knew I had absolutely seen before (S19.E17-Anchors Away).  Maybe another one or two that became familiar the more it went on (S19.E18-Promote This! maybe and S19.E20-Exchange) and the rest I have no memory of. 

So strange.

[ICantDoThatDave]

I watched By Perjury, the one where the lawyer testified against his own client saying he didn't allow smoking in his office which led to his client getting the death penalty. Cutter's "trick" of smoking in the lawyer's office to show he committed perjury doesn't make any sense.

Think about the amount of time that had to have passed since that incident:

The lawyer testified that he didn't allow smoking because he had recently quit. So this incident would have happened before the client was even arrested. Then a whole murder trial takes place. Numerous appeals happen, then the execution, then several months.

So we're talking years, at a bare minimum let's say 5 years have passed.

"Your Honor, for a couple of years after I quit smoking, I didn't allow it in my office. I do now because it's been so long since I quit that it no longer bothers me."

That simple. Done. He goes home.

[Xeliou66]

On 11/22/2024 at 3:10 PM, ICantDoThatDave said:

I watched By Perjury, the one where the lawyer testified against his own client saying he didn't allow smoking in his office which led to his client getting the death penalty. Cutter's "trick" of smoking in the lawyer's office to show he committed perjury doesn't make any sense.

Think about the amount of time that had to have passed since that incident:

The lawyer testified that he didn't allow smoking because he had recently quit. So this incident would have happened before the client was even arrested. Then a whole murder trial takes place. Numerous appeals happen, then the execution, then several months.

So we're talking years, at a bare minimum let's say 5 years have passed.

"Your Honor, for a couple of years after I quit smoking, I didn't allow it in my office. I do now because it's been so long since I quit that it no longer bothers me."

That simple. Done. He goes home.

 

On 11/22/2024 at 3:10 PM, ICantDoThatDave said:

I watched By Perjury, the one where the lawyer testified against his own client saying he didn't allow smoking in his office which led to his client getting the death penalty. Cutter's "trick" of smoking in the lawyer's office to show he committed perjury doesn't make any sense.

Think about the amount of time that had to have passed since that incident:

The lawyer testified that he didn't allow smoking because he had recently quit. So this incident would have happened before the client was even arrested. Then a whole murder trial takes place. Numerous appeals happen, then the execution, then several months.

So we're talking years, at a bare minimum let's say 5 years have passed.

"Your Honor, for a couple of years after I quit smoking, I didn't allow it in my office. I do now because it's been so long since I quit that it no longer bothers me."

That simple. Done. He goes home.

You are right, that was a flimsy trick Cutter used and it was unlikely it would hold up. Still it was less ridiculous than what happened in the next episode Pledge, when Cutter somehow found a woman with the same first name as the woman the defendant was obsessed with who went to the same school at around the same time and was in the same sorority as the woman the defendant loved and who happened to marry a blue collar guy like the defendant. That felt totally absurd and unbelievable. 
Cutter is just not appealing at all to me between how he often he used tricks and borderline underhanded methods and his very large ego and smugness. When Jack occasionally used a trick or bent the rules, he did so in pursuit of justice, and he sometimes came to realize later he was wrong or had conflicted feelings about it - Cutter was the type who would do anything to win and didn’t care how underhanded and it felt like he was in it to boost his ego, not seek justice, and he used trickery and underhanded methods far more often than anyone else and was just so cocky about it. Cutter benefitted from being paired with the awesome Connie and having a strong cast around him and being a part of plenty of interesting cases, but he’s not a likable guy

[ICantDoThatDave]

Agree with all that (except see below*). Cutter used underhanded trick after underhanded trick to "win", no matter the legality or if the person was even guilty - I mean, they often were, but he clearly didn't care.

*I will disagree with you on Jack though.  He was just as bad, but in a totally different way.  He used literal blackmail, extortion, just total scorched earth tactics.

"We'll take your kids away if you don't testify!"

"We'll bankrupt your business if you don't testify!"

"We'll deport you if you don't testify!"

"Your wife will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" **

"Your child will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" **

** these were the worst examples

Jack was the personification of Prosecutorial Misconduct.  Cutter was just as bad, just in a different way, by cheating rather than blackmailing. They were both just awful in those respects. Fun to watch on a TV show? Sure. Want someone like that in real life? Absolutely not.

Jack (& Cutter) are like the caricature of the "ends always justify the means" types that the whole 4th-8th Amendments to the Constitution are meant to protect us from.

Still love watching the show, don't get me wrong, but the prosecutors give... well, prosecutors a bad name, IMO.

EDIT: It's like how Batman is fun in a movie, but do I want an actual Batman running around? No, of course not.

Edited November 25 by ICantDoThatDave

[Xeliou66]

I have to strongly disagree about Jack - of course it’s a tv show so liberties are taken to make things dramatic and intense and all but Jack wasn’t a rogue prosecutor - he crossed the line a few times - the two most notable that I can recall being when he detained the mobsters without charge and when he hid the witness in season 8 - in both cases he came to realize he was wrong and had gone too far, there were a few other instances of him bending the rules but he was a great prosecutor IMO and he cared deeply about justice, and when he bent the rules he did so because he thought it was how to get justice, not to boost his ego or win at all costs. And when he pressured people to testify those people had usually done something illegal or underhanded in the first place and Jack had the right to compel them to testify. Do you have specific examples of when you feel Jack crossed the line? Jack wasn’t perfect and he made some mistakes but he cared about justice and the law deeply IMO, I couldn’t disagree more about him giving prosecutors a bad name.  

Cutter though was an egomaniac who didn’t seem to have strong ethics and was in it to win at all costs and boost his ego. He really rubbed me the wrong way. And he used trickery and underhanded tactics way more than any other character - at times it seemed like it was his only way to win. Among his worst moments were pretending to be in the cult to get a defendant to plead guilty, provoking the psychotic killer into attacking him so he would be medicated, using the juror’s attraction to Connie to their advantage without Connie knowing, forging the ME’s report in Lucky Stiff (and ME Rodgers wasn’t happy with him!) and of course when he questioned Anita about her cancer to score points with the jury (and god it was satisfying seeing Anita give him a verbal smackdown). Cutter is one of my least favorite characters and he never showed any regret or conflict about his actions, he oozed smugness.

I just don’t see the show the same way as you do - if anything I think L&O gives a bit of an overly positive view of cops/DAs at times - I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I want good guys/heroes in my fictional entertainment that I can root for and care about (it’s why I don’t like most “critically acclaimed” shows where all the characters are scum and it’s just evil vs evil). Jack McCoy is my favorite L&O character and one of my all time favorite fictional characters and several other L&O characters make my list of all time favorite characters as well.

But Mike Cutter drives me nuts and I was really annoyed by his constant use of trickery. 

 

 

[ICantDoThatDave]

On 11/24/2024 at 8:42 PM, Xeliou66 said:

And when he pressured people to testify those people had usually done something illegal or underhanded in the first place and Jack had the right to compel them to testify. Do you have specific examples of when you feel Jack crossed the line?

This is where I think we disagree for the most part, & it's not that the people he was trying to get to testify were necessarily innocent, it's that the people he was threatening to indict (often for "conspiracy") were innocent & Jack knew they were innocent.

It was legal blackmail - threatening to bring (what he knew were) false charges against a third party in order to compel someone to testify or take a plea deal. I can't recall most of the specific episodes off the top of my head, but I recall Jack threatening to indict husbands*/wives/sons/daughters, bankrupt businesses**, & take away/put into foster care children, using charges he knew were trumped up & bogus.

* The first example I could think of was the one where an ex-cop/PI is found dead & it leads to a couple upstate housewives who are call girls.  Jack threatens one of husbands with "obstruction of justice" & losing his kids when he knows that's BS. Jamie even calls him out on it after the meeting.

** I remember a specific example here with the father of the girl who was running an escort service with her college friends - he literally dropped the "enterprise corruption" charges as soon as he got his daughter to come back to the US - the charge was clearly just used as blackmail (Jack went back on his word later in the episode though).

[Xeliou66]

15 minutes ago, ICantDoThatDave said:

This is where I think we disagree for the most part, & it's not that the people he was trying to get to testify were necessarily innocent, it's that the people he was threatening to indict (often for "conspiracy") were innocent & Jack knew they were innocent.

It was legal blackmail - threatening to bring (what he knew were) false charges against a third party in order to compel someone to testify or take a plea deal. I can't recall most of the specific episodes off the top of my head, but I recall Jack threatening to indict husbands*/wives/sons/daughters, bankrupt businesses**, & take away/put into foster care children, using charges he knew were trumped up & bogus.

* The first example I could think of was the one where an ex-cop/PI is found dead & it leads to a couple upstate housewives who are call girls.  Jack threatens one of husbands with "obstruction of justice" & losing his kids when he knows that's BS. Jamie even calls him out on it after the meeting.

** I remember a specific example here with the father of the girl who was running an escort service with her college friends - he literally dropped the "enterprise corruption" charges as soon as he got his daughter to come back to the US - the charge was clearly just used as blackmail (Jack went back on his word later in the episode though).

Jack never planned to indict the husband of the call girl killer in Working Mom, he just wanted to see if he was telling the truth - the guy stood firm with his story and Jack didn’t charge him, he was just seeing how he would respond - if he had indicted him it might’ve been an abuse of power but he didn’t - and for the record the guy did lie and perjured himself at trial for his wife most likely - I don’t believe the wife told him about killing the guy - it’s pretty clear he lied for her, and Jack brought up his inconsistent stories when crossing him at trial.

The other episode is Girlfriends from season 6, and while it’s been a good while since I’ve seen that one, the dad did help his daughter flee the country and then he falsely confessed to the murder at trial. I don’t recall the details of the enterprise corruption but I think the guy was guilty of it.

We’ll just have to disagree about Jack - I strongly disagree that he gives prosecutors a bad name, he was a great prosecutor. Yes he crossed the line a couple of times and occasionally did some questionable stuff but I don’t think he really did anything wrong in the examples you gave. 

[ICantDoThatDave]

You're right about the plot points, but I'm interpreting them differently...

41 minutes ago, Xeliou66 said:

Jack never planned to indict the husband of the call girl killer in Working Mom, he just wanted to see if he was telling the truth...

Jack threatened him with indicting him.  As I mentioned, even Jamie, who was a bit of a hard-ass herself, called him out on that.  He threatened prosecution he never intended to pursue &  knew couldn't be sustained.  That's extortion & the type of behavior I never liked ("nice kids you got there, sure would be a shame if something happened to them").

41 minutes ago, Xeliou66 said:

The other episode is Girlfriends from season 6, and while it’s been a good while since I’ve seen that one, the dad did help his daughter flee the country and then he falsely confessed to the murder at trial. I don’t recall the details of the enterprise corruption but I think the guy was guilty of it.

Right, but that clearly shows Jack was just blackmailing the guy.  He was guilty of it (he used the escort service to butter up clients), but Jack used the threat to get him to bring his daughter back to the US then dropped the charges!  He was clearly using the charge simply as extortion.

41 minutes ago, Xeliou66 said:

We’ll just have to disagree about Jack - I strongly disagree that he gives prosecutors a bad name, he was a great prosecutor. Yes he crossed the line a couple of times and occasionally did some questionable stuff but I don’t think he really did anything wrong in the examples you gave. 

Agree to disagree is fine.  I enjoy watching the show, but just thought Jack abused his office just as much as Cutter (which was where this discussion started).  Cutter used under-handed tricks.  Jack used blackmail/extortion by threatening to charge ancillary people with fake crimes & then dropping the charges when he got what he wanted.

Edited November 30 by ICantDoThatDave

[ICantDoThatDave]

Didn't have them at the top of my head, so looked up a few episodes:

"Mad Dog" - Jack harasses a released prisoner so much that the guy re-offends.  It's pretty clearly implied, even by the show, that absent Jack's harassment, the guy would not have re-offended.  When even the show implies Jack can sometimes go "too far".

There was the episode [EDIT: Found it: "Bodies", s14E1] where Jack indicts the randomly assigned Public Defender of a serial killer who (stupidly) went to the location of his client's bodies for "accomplice to murder" (Jack knew that was BS).  That guy's life was RUINED b/c he (rightly) valued the Attorney-Client privilege more than his own liberty.  Jack thought he would "blink", but he didn't, ruined the guy's life for abiding by his principles.

In "Gov Lov", s7, Jack literally gets Gay Marriage overturned because he wants to convict someone & needs Spousal Privilege to not apply in his case.

"Ramparts", s9, Jack tried to use the death of one person to illegally crowbar open some Vietnam-related files, not because it was legal, he knew it wasn't, but because he wanted to see them.

"Rubber Room", s20, the one where teachers who have "attitude problems" get sent to a mandatory AA-style meeting building (which it turns out are often faked) - here's Jack to a completely innocent person, who he *knows* at the time is innocent: "You get no argument from me there. But if your obstruction allows a massacre to happen, I will crucify you, Mr. Kralik. I will charge you with negligent homicide, and after I convict you I will resign my job and represent the families of the victims in a wrongful death suit against you and the union. By the time I'm done, you'll be finished. So, my advice to you is GET OUT OF MY WAY!"

I get that's over the top. But the point is he knows at that time the guy is just doing his job, does not actually merit that charge. It's probably the most outlandish example of what I'm trying to illustrate:

Jack blackmails/extorts people all the time.

It's what Jack does.  He's essentially a Mob Boss with a Badge.  As I alluded to above: "nice life you got here; it'd be a shame if I made up a charge against you, right?"

Edited December 1 by ICantDoThatDave

[buttersister]

My favorite episode was when Cutter’s former mentor came after him, challenging his license’s legitimacy. Looked promising for a bit, until he escaped consequences with a slap on his wrist.

Sorry, don’t know which ep/season had this promising but disappointing story.

[Xeliou66]

18 minutes ago, buttersister said:

My favorite episode was when Cutter’s former mentor came after him, challenging his license’s legitimacy. Looked promising for a bit, until he escaped consequences with a slap on his wrist.

Sorry, don’t know which ep/season had this promising but disappointing story.

Innocence from season 20 is that episode. It was nice to see Cutter get taken down a peg in that one. I really am not a Cutter fan, so cocky and smug.
My favorite moment of Cutter getting knocked down a peg is when Anita chewed him out for questioning her about her health on the witness stand - Cutter was such a dick for doing that, it wasn’t necessary at all to win his case, he just wanted to try to score points with the jury by bringing it up, and he planned to all along I’m sure he just didn’t give Anita a heads up because he knew she would object. He completely deserved the verbal smackdown Anita gave him. 
I also enjoyed when Jack came into court and rebuked Cutter in open court for trying to tell the couple to not have the surgery done on their disabled daughter, Cutter went completely rogue there and Jack was right to pull the plug on it. I liked how they referenced when Jack wanted the woman who was killing her kids sterilized back in the season 5 episode, but there was a huge difference between what Jack did there and what Cutter did in that episode - Jack attempted to get the judge to order sterilization, the judge didn’t and Jack didn’t try to go behind the judge’s back and attach an illegal stipulation to a plea agreement like Cutter did here. Cutter was just so damn arrogant. 

[andromeda331]

18 hours ago, Xeliou66 said:

Innocence from season 20 is that episode. It was nice to see Cutter get taken down a peg in that one. I really am not a Cutter fan, so cocky and smug.
My favorite moment of Cutter getting knocked down a peg is when Anita chewed him out for questioning her about her health on the witness stand - Cutter was such a dick for doing that, it wasn’t necessary at all to win his case, he just wanted to try to score points with the jury by bringing it up, and he planned to all along I’m sure he just didn’t give Anita a heads up because he knew she would object. He completely deserved the verbal smackdown Anita gave him. 

I loved Anita doing that. No, Cutter didn't warn her before hand that he was going to do that. He was an asshole for doing it. I don't know if it would have worked for the jury either. It would be one thing if Anita had taken the stand to talk about her having cancer and treatments that were done to help her. But that's not why she was on the stand. Instead he clearly blindsided a woman with cancer. If I was on the jury I'd see him as an asshole for doing that.