Re: [BigBrother_Survivor] Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders series premiere recap: 'Episode 1'

 

I watched last night and will be watching all the episodes. With Edie Falco playing the attorney I think Dick Wolf has a hit on his hands. Of course it opens with the murders and it will be at least a few episodes before the brothers are arrested. But I can see where the show will build up to the courtroom scenes and I could see Edie winning awards for this role!
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On Wed, 9/27/17, C G ceegee2006@yahoo.com [BigBrother_Survivor] <BigBrother_Survivor@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Subject: [BigBrother_Survivor] Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders series premiere recap: 'Episode 1'
To:
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 8:57 AM























 
This is an 8 week series. Did you watch part 1 Tuesday
night?   Is anyone planning to watch the 8 weeks?
cgLaw
& Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders series
premiere recap: 'Episode 1'What
could possibly go wrong?Maureen Lee Lenker•@themaureenleePosted on September 26, 2017 at 11:00pm
EDT
Before
there was O.J., the Menendez murders were the high-profile
case that took the world by storm — made all the more
tantalizing for its connections to Hollywood and the sunny,
idyllic streets of Beverly Hills. There's something
particularly tantalizing about true-crime stories from Los
Angeles: the dichotomy between sunshine and noir, outward
perfection masking dark secrets. When Mary "Kitty"
Menendez and Jose Menendez were murdered in their
high-security Beverly Hills mansion and the top suspects
ended up being their sons, it captured the attention of the
nation.Now,
the ins and outs of this 28-year-old case have become the
fodder for the latest entry in Dick Wolf's television
empire — and the first Law
& Order to employ the miniseries format.
The procedural franchise has often looked to
ripped-from-the-headlines stories, but with Law
& Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, they're
moving from thinly veiled stand-ins to the real figures,
digging into the psychology of the players — the
murderers, the detectives, the lawyers, and the
psychiatrists.Let's
take a look at what went down in the first hour of this
eight-hour miniseries.The
Murders and the Investigation "Guns,
pills, and money – what could possibly go wrong
here?"—Detective ZoellerRather
than open with Law
& Order's signature "dun-dun," we begin with
eerie, low music and a silent film-style murder — the
horrified faces of Kitty and Jose Menendez (Lolita
Davidovich, Carlos Gómez) and the smoking muzzle of a
shotgun. The murders themselves are suitably gruesome but
still appropriate for a broadcast network (and for that I
thank this show).Detective
Les Zoeller (Sam Jaeger) winds his way through Beverly Hills
in the dark (early in the morning of Aug. 21, 1989,
according to the signature Law
& Order timecard) as we hear Lyle Menendez's now
infamous 911 call play over the scene. "Someone killed my
parents" he sobs, barely intelligible.As
the police question Lyle (Miles Gaston Villanueva) and
brother Erik (Gus Halper), we learn their father was the CEO
of a movie company that may have had seedy ties to the mob
and Kitty struggled with suicidal thoughts and
depression.Zoeller
continues his investigation of the crime scene — and
possibly compromises it by allowing the brothers to reenter
their home and get their gear for tennis practice. Yes,
their parents were just murdered, but they cannot miss their
serve time. In the house, Zoeller finds a litany of ominous
items: 22-caliber shotguns, pills for anxiety and sleep
disorders, AND FERRETS (dun-dun).Detective
Zoeller questions Mr. Menendez's former coworkers, who
reveal that the family relocated to Beverly Hills from
Calabasas after Erik broke into a neighbor's house. (Here,
after 13 full minutes, we finally hear that "dun-dun"
— the suspense of wondering when or if it might show up
was killing me.) Deputy District Attorney Pam Bozanich
(Elizabeth Reaser) suggests ties to a "gang-banger" from
the family's days in the valley, and Zoeller retorts with
a line that perfectly captures why the Menendez murders
fascinated the nation: "It's gotta be the bangers or the
mob or Charlie Manson, always an outsider, because nobody
bad lives in Beverly Hills."But
it's looking increasingly likely that the Menendez
brothers might be suspects. The investigators talk to friend
and former tennis coach Perry, whom Lyle and Erik claimed
they were supposed to meet the night of the murders. Perry
reveals it was the boys who never showed up for their
arranged meeting and tells the detectives that Lyle was
suspended from Princeton for plagiarism. Even worse, in a
plot twist that you would not believe if this weren't
based on a true story, Erik wrote a screenplay with former
high school classmate Craig in which the main character
kills his rich parents — and it was all Erik's
idea.The
last piece in the puzzle before the detectives officially
name Lyle and Erik as suspects is the missing Menendez will.
The family has been unable to find a recent, official copy
of a will outlining the inheritance of their sizable estate.
Jose's sister Marta (Constance Marie) and his
brother-in-law Carlos (Alejandro Furth) both reveal that
Jose had threatened to cut Lyle and Erik out of the will
altogether out of anger that they were cruising through life
waiting for their inheritance. This version of the will was
never found, but Uncle Carlos found a computer file named
"Will" he could not open, which was later wiped from the
hard drive.The
Menendez brothers are now officially suspects. Lyle
and Erik We
also get more of a glimpse into the minds and lives of Erik
and Lyle Menendez — and the radically different ways they
react to the murder of their parents. Of course, hindsight
is 20/20, so it's hard not to see the boys through the
lens of the knowledge that they will be found guilty, and
the show leans into that.Erik
is the curly-haired younger brother who sobs his way through
his police interrogation, his parents' funeral, and more
— his relatives worry about him as he spends his days
curled in the fetal position in the corner of his room. Lyle
is the cool, collected brother with the quiet grin and
(suspicious) bowl cut. In interrogation, they explain how
they went to the movies and came home to find the house full
of gun smoke and their parents' dead bodies.Lyle
quickly takes charge, renting rooms at the Hotel Bel-Air for
the family, buying Armani suits and diamond-encrusted
watches to wear to the funeral, and investing in fancy cars
and restaurants he intends to convert into a chain of
hot-wing joints near college campuses. He tells family
members their allowance was $180 a month (equal to about
$360 today), so they turn over his father's company card,
which sends him on a spending spree that in no way makes him
look like he might have killed his parents for his
inheritance. Not suspicious at all, Lyle.In
contrast, Erik is quiet and withdrawn, rejecting his
brother's urging that he buy an expensive watch and suit.
The episode concludes with him returning to the family home
and having a breakdown in the living room, where he flashes
back to the room as it looked as a blood-spattered crime
scene.This
episode makes heavy use of black-and-white flashbacks to
give us a window into what might have motivated the murders.
In Lyle's case, we see him arguing with his dad over
paying for a trip to Europe to visit his girlfriend Jamie,
who will be on a tennis tour overseas. Jose believes Jamie
is a gold digger, and he paid for her sponsorship to get her
away from Lyle. We also see Jamie in the present day,
comforting the brothers and questioning Lyle about his
inability to manage his money.Erik's
flashbacks show us a glimpse of his mother before the
murders. She is catatonic and crying in bed as he tries to
cajole her into coming to watch his tennis practice,
assuring her the whole family loves her.Uncle
Carlos remembers the night Jose told him he was going to cut
his sons out of the will – Jose calls the girls his sons
are dating "sluts" and insists they will "have to get
by on their own initiative."Finally,
we see Lyle asking the computer tech to erase the files for
the new will from the computer, telling the guy that he
plans to sell the computer, so he needs it to look as if the
files were never there.Leslie
AbramsonAbramson
(Edie Falco), the notoriously intense and sometimes
ethically questionable defense lawyer for the Menendez
brothers, has been billed as the show's top hook, with
Falco's image dominating marketing for the series — in a
wig that seems to operate on the theory that a terrible perm
won Sarah Paulson an Emmy, so this should do the
trick.Though
it will be some time before Abramson is directly involved in
the case, we get glimpses of her here. We're introduced to
Abramson while she is defending a boy against murder for
killing his abusive father. She argues that he should only
be charged with manslaughter lest the conviction be "his
father's last act of terror, with you as his
accomplice." We're meant to see Abramson as a forceful
defense lawyer — from her stirring closing remarks to her
threats to knee a reporter in the crotch. It's
less-than-subtle foreshadowing of the same defense case she
will build for the Menendez brothers.Other
than that, we see her talking to the Menendez family lawyer
in court and postulating that the boys are the true killers.
At a dinner party, people remark on how this is even more
shocking than the murder of Sharon Tate, and Abramson
ominously rebuts, "There's only one thing that can
generate that level of anger — family."Dr.
Jerome OzielDr.
Jerome Oziel (Josh Charles, moving from The
Good Wife to The Bad Wig) is Erik's
court-mandated psychiatrist following the incidents in
Calabasas. We briefly meet Dr. Oziel at the family
gathering, and we see him again in his office taking a phone
call from Erik's uncle, who is concerned about his
nephew's wellbeing and worries Erik may be a suicide
risk.We
also meet Judalon Smyth (Heather Graham), an underwritten
cast-off from a soap opera plot. Smyth, Oziel's mistress,
refers to him by the cringe-worthy name "Dr. Daddy."
(The writers wouldn't include such a ludicrous name if it
weren't a real-life detail…would they?) She pressures
Oziel about leaving his wife — a point of conflict that
will have major repercussions in the case.And there we have it. The boys are officially
suspects. Will we see an arrest next week? We can only
assume — the case took seven years and three juries before
a final conviction, and we only get eight hours of
television to tell this story.

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Posted by: "Donna M." <crow_donna2002@yahoo.com>

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