Law and Very Well-Ordered

9/20/2013

I love the craft of good writing, and I love it when a line is beautifully set up and the payoff is so seamless that it's as if nature planned it.

I was watching a re-run yesterday of Law & Order, and there was a line that not only leaped onto that list of Favorite Lines from the show, but is probably competing for the top spot.

The episode was titled "Mother's Milk," written by Lynn Mamet and Barry Schindel. In the scene, grizzled, lifer cop Lennie Briscoe, played by Jerry Orbach, is in a church questioning a priest about one of his parishioners, who's a suspect in a murder.

Priest: He's come here a lot recently. He sort of wanders around. I really don't think he's coming for confession. (The priest sighs, and smiles wistfully.) You can't make someone confess.

Lennie: You want to bet?

2 Comments

Douglass Abramson

9/20/2013 11:42:17 am

If you like older Law and Order episodes, give Law and Order UK on BBC America a try. They usually adapt Orbach era scripts, so the set ups might seem familiar. Bradley Walsh plays the "Briscoe" part and makes it his own. The differences that the UK setting bring to familiar plots is very interesting.

Robert Elisberg

9/20/2013 12:36:50 pm

I've seen a few, and I've found them well-done, but it hasn't grabbed me yet as "Must see." More a case of (to me) "'Anything else on? Oh, the British Law & Order, I wonder if this episode will be good' see."

Law and Very Well-Ordered

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