Such Is The Law #LawAndOrder #MenendezMurders #TrueCrime #3weekroundup #review #recap

Such Is The Law #LawAndOrder #MenendezMurders #TrueCrime #3weekroundup #review #recap

All pictures courtesy of NBC 

Another new series, another three-week roundup. This time we’re gonna take a gander at NBC’s latest Law and Order incarnation, Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders. So, is Dick Wolf’s jump onto the latest true crime’s craze absolutely killing it or is this show already spoiled rotten? Let’s find out together.

Law and Order True Crimes: Menendez Murders focuses on the real-life crimes of Erik and Lyle Menendez who, in the late 80s early 90s made national news for the brutal murder of their parents Kitty and Jose Menendez. Set in the high-priced neighborhoods of greater Los Angeles, the crimes occurred on a spring night when the two brothers executed a premeditated shotgun shooting of their parents inside of their shared family home. The two were killed in the living room in front of the TV. The boys then went on to try to first cover up the crime, then confess to it and go to prison for it. This is the story of their arrest and conviction as told through the eyes of the people involved.

Lyle on the left, Erik on the right

OK, so we start the series with the brutal reenactment of the murder from that night with Lyle and Erik gunning down their parents. We then switch to the detectives coming to the scene to start pursuing justice that night. Being a Law and Order series, by now you all have to know how this show operates. Regardless of the focus or city: we will follow the cops first, then the lawyers. And yes, while the perspective of the victims/criminals is shown, it is not at the forefront of the series per se. Our two detectives in this case: Detectives Les Zoeller and Tom Linehan, two white guys that look like they belong in a slightly serious Starsky and Hutch remake. From go, they both suspect foul play in the crime. Something is off about the boys’ story about coming into the house and finding their parents like this. While the boys don’t necessarily throw out a definitive answer to what happened or what they think happened, it is strongly implied that they think maybe this was some kind of robbery. The detectives almost always have their eyes on the boys due to the strangeness of the crime scene. Nothing is missing which rules out a robbery, at least nothing important. The bullet shells are also gone because whoever shot them picked up the casings. That is strange because neither detective has ever seen a professional assassin do that, yet, somehow a second theory arises that this could’ve been a professional hit on the couple because of some ties that the father Jose had with the mob. That doesn’t jibe with anyone, but the cops will continue to investigate.

We officially meet our victims/criminals in Erik Menendez (played by Gus Halper) and Lyle Menendez (played by Miles Gaston Villanueva) during their initial police interview later that night. While both look shaken, only Erik looks truly grief-stricken and unable to control himself. Lyle is a lot calmer and a lot more collected than his brother. From that very moment, he portrays a sense that he possibly had something to do with his parents’ deaths. Still, the police have little to no evidence to go on to convict or even pursue Lyle or his brother, so they move forward in their investigation.

Jose actor on the right

As the investigation starts to unfold, we learn about Jose (not so much about Kitty) and the domineering personality he had. Jose was of Cuban descent, arrived to the country with virtually nothing and was a self-made millionaire who had done tons of things to make his money. He, at one point, was even a film producer. But he had many dark secrets. A man obsessed with appearance, he always wanted to appear perfect, which includes appearing perfect as a father. For this reason, he was abnormally cruel under the guise of tough love. He made the boys do a lot of stuff that they didn’t want to do and, as is revealed in the first episode, even paid for a professional tennis sponsorship for Lyle’s girlfriend to go to Europe for the summer just to get her away from Lyle. She wasn’t good enough for him. Naturally, the boys acted out under their father’s control. One had been accused of plagiarism while in college which caused him to not only have to leave the prestigious Ivy League school (Princeton) but had his dad donate a large sum of money in order to cover up his son’s failing. Erik was believed to quite possibly be gay, something which Jose found disgusting. Jose hated that his son wasted his time trying to write films and saw it as a vain hobby. This was the man they called father.

At this point in the series, we get our first break from the traditional Law and Order format. In steps Edie Falco (of Soprano’s and Nurse Jackie’s fame) as Leslie Abramson. Make no mistake, while this series is based around the Menendez brothers, it is really about Leslie Abramson. Falco anchors the show with a weighty performance of a headstrong always-sure attorney who is in the middle of adopting a child with her husband while defending headline-grabbing clients. We get our introduction to her at the end of a case in which she defended a young man who killed his father after years of abuse. She pretty much won.

Anyway, Leslie sees the boys on TV and hears about the case and immediately knows that the boys did it without ever seeing a lick of real evidence. She’s that good. And just like Johnny Cochran’s character on FX’s American Crime Story: People vs OJ Simpson, Leslie is already salivating at the possibility of defending the boys if and when the investigation comes around to them needing a good defense attorney.

It should also be pointed out here that, in another break from the traditional Law and Order format, the focus is looser than loose on the Order side of the prosecution. While we are treated to snippets of the lovely Elizabeth Reaser as Pam Bozanich, for the first three episodes she is shelved from the audience to tend to the retrial of another high-profile case. The details of that case don’t matter. What does matter is that after that case is lost in episode three (I’m jumping around a little here), all of the lawyers on both sides know that the next big case will not only get massive media attention but it is going to be even harder for the defense to get a not guilty and/or a plea bargain because the DA’s office won’t want to look like a fool losing two big cases in a row. All that to say that we see very little of the prosecuting attorneys for the first three episodes.

Left to Right: Lyle's Lawyer, Erik's Lawyer, Prosecutor Pam Bozanich

Back to episode one, as everything is winding up, the boys are waiting on an insurance payout and on the legal un-miring of the will so that they can get their inheritance. The problem? The will becomes part of the investigation once one of Jose’s family members says that Jose had threatened to write his boys out of the will and that he did change it very recently. The problem is that the detectives can’t find the new will, only the old one. What they do finally find on a computer that had recently been wiped (again, this is early 90s, late 80s so we’re talking the big boxy computers that you pretty much had to be a nerd to know how to use) is a document which has barely a full sentence of words that says something about the will. Is it a new will? Sorta, but hardly anything they can use.

Then there is the boys’ strange actions after their parents die. Lyle takes his brother out to go buy stuff for the funeral. The problem? They buy the most expensive stuff they can find. We’re talking tailored name-brand suits, expensive gold watches, cars, and Lyle even wants to invest a couple hundred-thousand dollars in a new business venture all within a span of a few months after the murders. They are supposed to be in grief but don’t act it. They even seemed pissed that they can’t go into their house to get their tennis stuff only a day or two after the murders because one of them has a very important tennis lesson that was on the calendar before the murders.

When they are finally allowed to go back to the house after the cops have cleared it for evidence, Erik is the one who goes in with his uncle and looks into the room in which they committed the murder and starts bawling uncontrollably. Here we see the first big crack in Erik’s facade. Whether he was justified in the murder or not, he feels nothing but guilt and remorse over what he’s done.

Episode two explores Erik’s guilt even more. While the cops are still investigating and Leslie is still prowling on the outskirts, waiting to see if anything pops with the Menendez arrests, Erik visits his old therapist. Both Erik and his mother frequented head doctors on many occasions, much to the dismay and disgust of Jose (again, he wants perfection). And here is where their problems truly start.

The doctor is the shadiest one of them all and his actions lead to the direct downfall of the boys. Dr. Jerome Oziel (played by Josh Charles) is also another domineering figure. But while Jose is physical and sinister, Oziel’s manipulations are more mental. He is just someone trying to get ahead and will use people however he sees fit. He has a crazy mistress, played by Heather Graham, who always comes to his office to sit in his waiting room and torment him with her presence. She likes to get the D in-between his many sessions with patients. She, oddly enough, becomes the most important character within this Menendez drama.

After a few more weeks/months of bumping along in his grief, Erik can take it no more. He finally confesses to his doctor that he and his brother killed their parents. Thinking he is covered under doctor-patient confidentiality, he even confesses his confession to his brother, and Lyle tries to threaten the doctor. Well, the doctor turns it back onto Lyle and Erik and threatens that he’ll be forced to go to the police with this information because it is part of an active investigation and it could lead to more murders. They have to pay him 5,000 dollars per session in order to buy his silence, and that’s regardless of whether they actual come in for the scheduled session or not.

Meanwhile, the doctor loses control of his side chick as Heather Graham’s character goes so crazy that she sticks her head into an oven to try to kill herself. Somehow and for some reason (granted, I know this is real life but if this were fiction I would’ve let the chick die) she convinces him that if they can’t be together 24/7 she will definitely kill herself. The problem: Dr. Oziel is married with children. Yet, he thinks it necessary to move his mistress into his family house. Now let’s be real, people. If this were not based on a true story and you read this crazy situation in a novel somewhere you would be losing your shit on how utterly ridiculous it was. Again, she’s not in a guest house and isn’t a nanny/surrogate or some other live-in help you might see in one of those Hand That Rocks the Cradle ripoffs, she is just some “patient” of his that needs deep psychiatric treatment.

But get this, this crazy heifer gets mad at him for no reason and tells his daughter that she is sleeping with him and that she is going to replace their mother because she and Oziel are in love. And she goes ape on the wife. So Oziel kicks her out. She threatens him that if she gets kicked out then she will run to the police and tell all about the Menendez brothers’ secret (I know it seems I skipped something, but we’ll get to it in episode 3). He returns threat by saying that if she does try that, she will be dead in a day. Well, she matches his threat with her own bit of crazy and does tell the police leading to episode three.

In episode three the questions and stretch of disbelief abound. First off, if you were questioning how Heather Graham’s character knew about the Menendez brothers’ secret, then you are not alone. Not only did she know about their confession but as it turns out in episode three, she knew intimate details like where they bought the guns and where they supposedly dumped them. I was sitting there watching this thinking, “Why in the hell would this Dr. Oziel tell this crazy woman all this stuff? Like, she knew more about it than his wife. What kinda strange f-ed up pillow talk is this?” But I digress.

Dr. Oziel Got A Side-chick Problem

After the arrest of the boys at the end of the second episode, the third finally sees Leslie unite with the boys and take stage as their lead counsel (technically she is only representing Erik, but is lead for both). A team of women working on the boys’ side, they are trying to figure out why the boys did it after Erik confesses to his lawyer that he did it and the tapes of every following therapy session with Dr. Oziel are confiscated and submitted into evidence. They have a prelim hearing about allowing the tapes to be used in a trial in which the doctor’s mistress testifies and swings her buxom breastsss around like a British flag girl waving the Union Jack the day the troops came home. This nut—the same one that the case would hinge on if the tapes were disallowed—says that her doctor-boyfriend is using mind control on her from the hallway to intimidate her. Hilarious!

Anyway, to the luck of the prosecution, the tapes are allowed into evidence for the trial. Unfortunately, the detectives can’t find the guns as they aren’t where the mistress said they’d be. But they do find the store in which the guns were purchased and discover that one of the boys, to purchase the guns, used the ID of their college roommate who had “lost” his ID months before the shooting. Just another great bit of evidence for them that this was premeditated far in advance, which speaks to the brutality of the crime and why they deserve the death penalty.

Then enters the media in a big way. Diane Sawyer (the actress that plays her looks nothing like her) does a special on the boys, framing them as spoiled rich kids who killed their own parents for an inheritance, tainting the jury pool like a mickey fickey. Even Kitty’s family now believes that the boys killed their parents in cold blood because they are just ruthless killers who wanted the money. But Leslie doesn’t think the story is that simple.

Leslie gets her own therapist into the jail with the boys to figure out the true motive behind their murder. At first the therapist gets the same stuff: their father was overbearing, he made a prematurely balding Lyle start wearing a wig in high school to keep up appearances, he quizzed them at dinner and hated any perceived imperfection. Finally, they get a breakthrough and the team of ladies are conflicted about it. The breakthrough: Erik admits that his father used to sexually abuse him and his brother and continued to do it from his young age of 5 all the way through to before they killed their parents. And the light suddenly changes.

What’s my grade? I give it a B. I can’t say that it reinvigorates the Law and Order franchise, however it does make a worthy edition. But American Crime Story: People vs OJ Simpson this is not. Where that felt similar to a long film, this feels like a network TV show. Edie Falco and most of the women give great performances, and I also find the actors playing the brothers to be quite good too, but everyone else is a bit of a wash. Heather Graham has played the same kind of smiley, ditzy, big-breasted look-at-me bimbo in every role, which makes me feel more like she’s really just playing herself at this point. Yeah, I know she was raised in a very strict religious upbringing and this is her 20+ year way of rebelling against that, but maybe she should try a role that is devoutly and sincerely religious if only to show that she has range as an actress and is more than just a pretty face, because right now in her career... she isn’t. The detectives are white wall paper and, as I said before, they have yet to show much of the prosecuting attorneys’ lives.

Speaking of, the writing is less personal than American Crime Story. It focuses heavily on the crime and the mystery of why they did it, which is fine. But it doesn’t much explore the inner-workings and lives of the people around the case. For instance, if you saw People vs. OJ Simpson, chances are you remember the Marcia, Marcia, Marcia episode. It was brilliant in how it showed the personal struggle of defense attorney Marcia Clark to get the case right when it seemed she could do no good: she didn’t look nice enough, she didn’t look professional, what was with that hair, she didn’t look smart enough, she seemed like a rookie, and for god’s sake what the hell was with her hair? Here, we get little of that. While we have a full defense team of women, they almost seem interchangeable and their lives are inconsequential. What sort of biases do they bring to this? How do they think this will effect their families? (Side note: this was remedied in later episodes). Granted this was pre-OJ so the media circus wasn’t quite as bad, but this trial was still the hottest ticket in town until OJ came along I would argue. There seem to be too many moving parts for the directors and writers to focus on one thing.

And finally, some may have a disdainful bias against how the show is framed. Make no mistake, the show is definitely shining a sympathetic light on the boys. Whereas some other dramatized true crime stories in recent history have tried straddling the line between whether you should feel pity for the accused or even if they actually committed the crime, here the brothers are painted as victims of the circumstances. So whether you believe this narrative that the brothers were sexually abused by their parents (I thought I read somewhere that the mother participated at some point too, then just became dissonant at the fact that her husband continued) or not, the show doesn’t give any benefit of the doubt that their story could be a lie or that Jose could’ve been anything other than a villain. We see this just in how they film the flashbacks. Filmed in black and white, Jose is almost always in a dark buttoned-up suit like the devil with a snarl on his face, save for the abuse scene in which he wore a white robe but was still menacing enough. The show asks that you feel sorry for them, emotional coaching at its finest.

Should you be watching? Sure. It’s not a storm-the-barn yes, but if you are a true crime fanatic and are craving a short 10-episode fictionalization of past crimes to tide you over until American Crime Story returns in 2018 with Versace’s murder, then you should check this out. Is this going to be the best interpretation of the Menendez murders? I doubt it. With these stories trending now, I won’t be surprised if another program decides to take a shot at the Menendezes, too. I’m bad, I know. And if you are a fan of NBC stalwart Law and Order: SVU then you should love this. Really, the series has a mixture of all of the previous Law and Order iterations in it. Come for the crime, stay for Falco and the rest of the ladies.

What do you think? Have you heard of Law and Order True Crime: Menendez Murders? If you haven’t, do you think you’ll check it out? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? Where could they improve in the series? And do you like that they took the boys’ side in this or would you have liked to see more of a well-rounded story? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “Sometimes he burns me so bad that I could just... just... I could just kill him!”

P.S. What movie and or novel first made that line famous? On another note, man, I wonder if Lyle is completely bald now? And what about Erik? Is he also bald? This thing about being forced to wear a wig in high school is so fascinating to me for some reason. I’ll think of a better sign-off next time.

P.P.S. Seriously though, what is it with these true crime fictionalizations and hair? I mean, what the hell was up with Marcia’s hair. Seriously!

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