All of the episodes from the first years of this series projected an air of reality. The bums looked like bums, not like Hollywood extras wearing clean rags and a few smudges on their faces. The cops sounded cynical, as cops sometimes do. And although there were "bad guys" and "good guys," the bad guys often had complex motives which couldn't be dismissed out of hand. (The good guys were on the side of law enforcement. I imagine they had to be, otherwise you could kiss the cooperation of the NYPD good-bye.) Theodore Bikel, a friend of District Attorney Adam Schiff, is an extremely wealthy entrepreneur who is found face down in his limousine with four million bucks in the back seat. The cops first suspect a drug deal but it soon emerges that Bikel was trying to pay off a ransom to get his grown son back.
There are two problems. One is that Bikel will do literally anything for his son, including trying to talk Schiff out of pursuing the case. The second problem is that the son is complicit in the crime. The kidnapping was staged with his help in an attempt to bilk the money out of his own father. The arrangement went wrong and the son winds up with a bullet wound, sealed in the basement of an old building, and discovered just in time to save his life.
It puts the viewer in an ambivalent position. The kid is rotten, yes, but would the viewer -- as the boy's parent -- want him prosecuted and sent to the slams? When does a child's misbehavior cross the line that takes responsibility out of the hands of the primary institution (the family) and put it into the hands of the impersonal secondary institution (the justice system).
It's a series made for grown ups, rather than children. I recall one episode of a contemporary crime series, "Pepper Martin," in which poor Angie Dickenson is given a line like, "The crooks must have gone out that way." Straight out of a comic book. There are occasional "perps" in this series but outright "crooks" are hard to find.
There are two problems. One is that Bikel will do literally anything for his son, including trying to talk Schiff out of pursuing the case. The second problem is that the son is complicit in the crime. The kidnapping was staged with his help in an attempt to bilk the money out of his own father. The arrangement went wrong and the son winds up with a bullet wound, sealed in the basement of an old building, and discovered just in time to save his life.
It puts the viewer in an ambivalent position. The kid is rotten, yes, but would the viewer -- as the boy's parent -- want him prosecuted and sent to the slams? When does a child's misbehavior cross the line that takes responsibility out of the hands of the primary institution (the family) and put it into the hands of the impersonal secondary institution (the justice system).
It's a series made for grown ups, rather than children. I recall one episode of a contemporary crime series, "Pepper Martin," in which poor Angie Dickenson is given a line like, "The crooks must have gone out that way." Straight out of a comic book. There are occasional "perps" in this series but outright "crooks" are hard to find.