Law & Order: Sri Lankan Episode?

Mutiny! I haven’t been around so much lately. My chronically bad hands hit a bad spot right before I started traveling for book promotion in April. When I returned, the SAJA Convention was waiting. These things were fun, but I’ll admit that I missed the Mutiny somethin’ turrible. I have quite a backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to write. So I am glad glad glad to be back. (Thanks to all those Mutineers who said hey at various readings! It was nice to meet you.)

I had a first-post-back all ready, and then I started getting e-mails from Sri Lankan pals and journos. They said: Did you know that there is a Sri Lankan-themed episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent? Indeed, I did not. It first aired on Sunday, on USA Network, and I missed it. Fortunately, it will be aired again tonight, at 11 p.m. So a heads-up to all those of you who might be interested. I’ll update this post with my thoughts after I watch it. (It’s Season 7, Episode 14, entitled “Assassin.”) There will be a few repeats this week.

UPDATE: 10:26 p.m. For entertainment value, I’m actually going to try to live-blog this. Incidentally, have just seen “Get Smart,” which has The Great Khali in a key role.

Live blog below.

11 p.m. Opening scene in Sri Lanka with “Mrs. Khan.” Chanting in the background. Cut to the airport. JFK. Mrs. Khan’s arrival there. Addresses people greeting her, including reporters. “I will never feel free until there is a free democratic Tamil homeland.” She is making a personal visit and not supposed to engage in political activity. Talks to relatives. She promised she wouldn’t engage in political activity, but promises made to one’s captors are not meant to be kept.

11:02 Scene with dying mother and ravishing young niece.

Speech at political rally. “We will win our struggle not with bombs and bullets but through diplomacy. The only route to freedom is through nonviolence. Thank you.” Applause at clearly underground rally. Shots fired as she tries to exit through back kitchen. Aide (?) falls. Credits. Hello, Chris Noth.

11:08 Credits show Indira Varma. Noth and partner on the scene. Aide gave her life to save Khan.

11:10 Creepy guy in Heathrow with beard. Oh, those beards. So sketchy. / sarcasm. His picture is taken. There is a briefcase handoff.

11:10 Khan’s list of enemies includes “Sri Lanka hardliners, Tamil terrorists… militia.” It was bodyguard’s idea to go through the kitchen.

11:11 Interrogation of bodyguard. Where’d you learn to shoot like that? “Indian Army, Special Forces.”

Noth: “He’s either embarrassed about how he screwed up or he’s hiding something.” Reference to Jackson Heights (?). Questioning of another witness (?). Someone whose husband’s family was cheated out of his ancestral home by the Khans. Cabdriver from the same village who could not ascend in the army because of that. Ohhhh, this is the slain assassin’s wife.

11:14 Back with the Khans in fancy apartment. Khans say the bodyguard could not have been complicit. Noth: cancel all public appearances. Khan: Do you believe in destiny? Noth: I believe you make your own destiny. Khan: My destiny is already written.

11:15 Cut to creepy bearded guy shaving, and pictures of Khan. Canada.

11:19 Noth’s investigation goes back to brother of bodyguard, who was under a death sentence… until three weeks ago, when a judge in Sri Lanka ordered his release, apparently in exchange for this attempted hit.

Bodyguard cracks. “I was told no harm would come to her.” He keeps referring to her as “Madam.”

Who was your contact? Various details exchanged. Reference to someone named Hari Jindal.

“They won’t stop,” the bodyguard says of the assassins. “They will try again.”

11:21 Young bearded guy sans beard! With briefcase! Alarm! Briefcase responds to remote, opens to reveal gun.

11:21 Noth and others talking about Nick “The Mechanic,” who is an assassin, and apparently the Formerly Bearded Guy.

11:23 Khan: I was born in privilege… this carries great responsibility. Yup, I’m going to have to agree with my friend M who thinks that the stock footage shown is not from Sri Lanka. M’s guess was Kabul. Maybe we’re wrong. Later I’ll have to check IMDB and Google around to see if there’s any indication.

11:24 At consulate, Noth asks questions of Khan’s husband, Ajay. (AJ?)

FBG checks gun.

Rosemary’s funeral. Khan speaking. Intercut with shots of bodyguard in prison vehicle, being transferred.

Khan: “Rosemary, daughter of Tamils, you join those martyrs will be remembered when this struggle is over….” Further speechifying about how what slain Rosemary would want would be people to unite behind her homeland. No more bloodshed! Tamil homeland!

Bodyguard is assassinated on the way into prison by sniping FBG while Rosemary’s relative is incorrectly accosted at funeral. Noth! I expect better! Was it because he had a beard? Poor Uncle.

11:30 Noth and partner at scene of sniper shooting. Suspicion turns to lawyer, who is paid for by sympathetic Khan. Upon further investigation, we learn that everyone in the office knew about the bodyguard’s courtdate. But the brother Khan protests that no one in the family would be interested in revenge—they are pacifists.

Noth and partner go to check on blonde ex-wife of brother Khan. The ex-Mrs. Ronnie Khan is a former schoolmate of Bela Khan’s. Oldest brother was killed in the crash of a plane owned by Ronnie. Ronnie only cares about money, ex-wife says. His sister, on the other hand, is a remarkable woman.

“It’s expensive liberating a country,” says Noth Partner. Apparently brother accused Ajay (AJ?) of embezzlement before. Maybe this is all the brother’s doing? He wants his sister and her husband out of the way so he can get the money?

Now the going theory is that brother wants her to die before her mother so that he gets whole inheritance.

Noth and Partner go to talk to Khan. She reacts badly to the idea that her brother is involved. Oh, my faaaaaamily. Our booooooond. It’s so saaaaaacred. Her brother has picked all the venues, arranged the security. She is going to speak tomorrow, despite Noth reminding her that he asked her to cancel.

11:36 Club with dancers, drinks, FBG. Yup, there are exotic things in Amrika too.

11:37 Hudson U. location of speech. Guy in wheelchair comes in and is frisked. FBG comes in in wicked disguise—looks like an older guy, balding, with kid on back.

Apparently Ms. Khan is an alum here.

President of Hudson U. introduces her as future president of an independent “Tameeel” homeland. Ugh. This is probably one of the most realistic moments of the whole episode. 🙂

Noth and partner have spotted FBG. Noth’s nostrils flare alarmingly when he is on the scent of danger.

Noth takes FBG away as Khan is thanking her brother, who has done so much to support her. But who cares about FBG? The guy in the wheelchair takes a shot and someone is down. In the ensuing chase, the shooter is shot. The brother is revealed as the first casualty. Indira Varma (Ms. Khan) looks distraught.

11:44 Khan talking to reporters about her brother’s death. Noth and partner getting reamed by boss. How did this happen? What slackers they are. Now, if wheelchair guy had had a beard…

Move to investigation. FBG there. FBG is glib. They say they are going to send him places and say they have never heard of him. Rendition. He throws a fit, possibly yelling in some unintelligible, exotic language, and sits back down.

He cracks and says that Ronnie was the target. Bela Khan was never the target.

Noth et al go to Ms. Khan’s apartment. They tell Ms. Khan that they think she was not the target, and remind her that her husband had a falling out with her brother. They resolved that, she says! No, they say, the records reveal that her husband had to pay her family trust back $25M.

“This is impossible! Ajay is the love of my life!”

“Forgive me for saying this, but wasn’t that an arranged marriage?” Noth asks.

“The moment our eyes met, I knew he was the one.”

This might be the money scene of the whole episode. 😉

Back at office, Noth and partner rewind tape to see what Khan and her husband did during the scene of the shooting. Husband ducks out of the line of fire before the shooting. Khan pushes her brother away from her.

They go to confront her. First they arrest her husband. Then her! Apparently she planned to wear a pink suit to get her brother’s blood to show up well for the newspapers.

The niece is present for all this. Her grandmother suspected, she says: when she heard the news of her remaining son’s death, she screamed and said that now Bela had taken both of her sons.

Noth says, You didn’t see this coming, Bela? This was your destiny. It was already written. Oh, you are so Eastern in your wisdom, Mr. Big.

As Bela is arrested, she says,

“I will continue to fight for an independent Tamil homeland for the Tamil people… They will never stop me.”

Okay. Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! END CREDITS?!

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So, teewee is teewee and not journalism. From a plotting point of view, the sewing together of clues, etc. was pretty tight, as it usually is with L&O.

But why go so far afield from fact and then say it’s about a Sri Lankan leader? Why NOT just make up a country, as ptr_vivek suggests below? Does calling it Sri Lanka lend the show a note of believability it needs? From a purely artistic point of view, a storytelling point of view, is this a better choice? I wonder how the writers’ thinking went. Perhaps Sri Lanka is just familiar enough to most people for it to make things more believable? To make a little country name-dropping worthwhile? Most viewers would have heard of it, but not to the extent that they would second-guess the writers’ knowledge. (Unlike Pakistan, arguably.) References to the “struggle” and to “Tamil terrorists” might resonate in a way that references to Sri Pakanka would not. By saying it’s Sri Lanka, you get all the benefits of the viewer knowing there’s a real country with that name—and very little of the baggage a better-known country would carry.

I’m trying to play devil’s advocate here, but my major reaction is: Ugh. (Except to you, Mr. Noth. We’re still friends.) I would like to live in a world where most people second-guess stuff like this because they know a lot about Sri Lanka (and yes, Pakistan, since the episode was clearly about the Faux Bhuttos). But can teewee dramas be held responsible for this? Actually, what would be great would be more international coverage on the NEWS. Sigh. And while I’m at it, I would like a pony.

Lastly… I have new respect for the people who do Television Without Pity.

37 thoughts on “Law & Order: Sri Lankan Episode?

  1. There seems to be a Benazir Bhutto themed ep coming up too. I remember seeing some preview for it.

  2. Eventhough I am a huge fan of Law & Order for a long time, especially SVU now.

    I saw the one a few days ago the episode you are talking about……..with Sri Lanka theme.

    It is a complete bakwaas with a mishmash of Sri Lanka tamil issue, Benazir Bhutto, rich political families in Indian subcontinent, and what not rolled into one. It is very poorly written. I wish they stuck with one theme, and researched it well.

  3. It is very poorly written. I wish they stuck with one theme, and researched it well.

    Come on -it’s TV. Think back to The Sopranos, when a drugged-out TV writer is trying to pawn his Emmy so he can repay Moltisanti. The pawn shop owner said, “Maybe if it was an Oscar, but an Emmy?”

  4. Come on -it’s TV

    Why don’t you check it out tonight and see how bad it is?

    Sure, TV is mostly badly written, I agree.

    But Law & Order more than often is quite crisp, and has interesting story lines for large part.

    SPOILER ALERT: It is really inspired from Bhutto family (there are lots of similarities, down to brothers, husband, etc.), and has nothing to do about Sri Lanka.

  5. I watched most of it two two nights ago. It was cringe-inducing – until I imagined a naughty macaca writer willfully weaving a yarn that involves India, Sri Lanka AND Pakistan. Clearly, he/she had taken the trouble to include superficial elements of all three countries when just one would have done.

    I usually enjoy L&O, but this one was hard to watch, Indian Special Forces notwithstanding.

  6. Why don’t you check it out tonight and see how bad it is?

    And miss all the other junk? Fine.

  7. Possible spoiler alert From Yahoo TV

    When Bela Khan, an influential woman bent on creating a Free Tamil Homeland returns to the United States, she is greeted with an assassination attempt on her life. In the chaos, her assistant Rosemary sacrificed her own young life, diving in front of Bela to take her bullet.

  8. There’s also an Indian-themed Law & Order (can’t remember what it was called, but it featured both convenience stores and arranged marriages) where all the characters go around pronouncing desi Dessie, as if it were the Loch Ness Monster’s cousin or something. 😛

  9. Then there was one where a young Indian guy, played by 30 Rock’s Maulik Pancholy, kept calling his dad “Papa” Would “Baba” have been that hard for the writers?

  10. these names aren’t even sri lankan. nor do they “look” sri lankan. just SILLY. hah.

    fun story thus far, though.

  11. It was very jarring to watch, mostly because of the head scarf Benazir look, the non-tamilian cast of characters, (KHAN for godsake…could they pick a more non-tamilian name?!), her clothing. My brain couldn’t suspend disbelief, I’m sorry to say! Also, love how they threw the name Jindal in there…hoping to get terrorist associations with Bobby Jindal from New Orleans??? Chris Noth though..still mcdreamy.

  12. I also loved the way, just before Indira Varma appears from her flight, the arrival announcement at the airport says “Flight 1234 from Sri Lanka“, not “Flight 1234 from Colombo” as is the norm. Maybe the writers thought viewers would think it was that city in Ohio?

    I wonder if Madhur Jaffrey was given the whole script to read when she accepted the part, or just that of her scene. She’s been on L&O at least once before, but given that it was such a brief role in this episode, I wonder if she would have felt too comfortable saying to someone “Er, there’s a a couple of inaccuracies here you might want to be aware of…”

  13. Hmmm… a Khan from Sri Lanka. I guess the next thing is the prominent McGinty family of Venice. Or, the Tokugawa Dynasty of China?

    If I want good crime drama on TV, I’ll have to wait until August when the final season of The Wire comes out on DVD.

  14. Pretty straightforward “ripped from the headlines” (of 1996) story of the murder of Murtaza Bhutto, supposedly on the orders to Benazir’s husband Zardari. Looks like it was well-done.

    I agree with ptr_Vivek above — don’t know why they picked Sri Lanka. Should have stuck with a random “fake-istan”.

  15. 21 · Ikram said

    Pretty straightforward “ripped from the headlines” (of 1996) story of the murder of Murtaza Bhutto

    They even wrote in Fathima Bhutto – “Jasmina” – to deliver the final blow at the end of the episode…

  16. V.V., thanks for the vivid blogging. I’m curious…have you ever considered writing for teewee?

  17. Worst Law and Order episode ever. No one in the show was actually Sri Lankan or even very dark skinned. And since when were the freedom fighters engaging in a pacifist struggle? The first time I got bored watching Law and Order and turned off an episode mid way though it.

  18. I agree with ptr_Vivek above — don’t know why they picked Sri Lanka. Should have stuck with a random “fake-istan”.

    Most of the viewing public will think that Sri Lanka is a made up place. Just like Djibouti or the island of Lesbos….

  19. First of all it’s just a friggin TV show so relax people ! As for the names, there are some Khans in Sri Lanka they are just not Tamils !! There are also quite a few fair-skinned people in Sri Lanka too.

  20. Okay, after reading your post, Sugs, I was just interested enough to watch my first episode of Law & Order … so I went to the online Tivo thingy to set it up for recording, and this is the episode summary I get for the episode called “Assassin” :

    “A political martyr from Kashmir, who appears to be an assassination target, becomes a suspect in the shootings of her assistant, bodyguard and brother.”

    Seriously?? A political martyr from Kashmir, trying to set up a Tameeeel homeland? That arrived in the states on a flight from “Sri Lanka” (even Colombo would not have been as believable as if the flight she was actually arriving on came from London or Frankfurt, but I digress)?? At least the name Khan would make more sense … maybe the person writing the summary just watched the first 3 minutes. Now I am just confused … I will see if it is actually the same episode, but everything in the summary sounds like it except for the Kashmir part .

  21. Bela Khan, a Tamil freedom fighter? I did NOT know there are Tamil Pathans. lol

  22. Doesn’t Haavad dominate screenwriting? Must be possible to graduate from Haavad without even the basics of cultural geography. I am going to lay off Pomona for a while and start making fun of Haavad.

    I can expect hillbillies to say “Hindoo or Mooslim what’s the diff?” but shouldn’t Haavad alums be held to a higher standard?

  23. Just to satisfy curiosity, the script started out as being a Bhutto-inspired story about Kashmiris, and the script was changed at the last minute to be about Sri Lanka. Not really sure why (whether the writers thought they would get in some sort of political trouble, some producer just didn’t think people would know about Kashmir, controversy over Hindu/Muslim issues, the NYC desi community being unhelpful, or whatever), but that’s why your Tivo summary says Kashmir, and why the names are obviously neither Tamil nor Sinhalese, and probably also why everyone looks very North Indian.

    Can’t answer any more questions or tell anyone how I know what I know, but I feel OK revealing that teensy smidge of details…

    (funny nobody caught that the main brother, who goes down in a hail of bullets at the end, has the name Rani. a very popular male name, right?)

  24. Maybe things would have been better if they had done this episode for the regular “Law & Order” since it is executive-produced and often written by a desi — Stephanie Sengupta. She worked on “Criminal Intent” until last year.

  25. Worst episode of law and order ever – They used to be a bit more intelligent and thoughtful.. I guess they are a dying franchise.

  26. -I’ll acknowledge the possibility of a Sri Lankan with the last name of Khan -I’ll even overlook the fact that the brother’s name was Rani..because, you know, it’s such a common male name 😉 -But: Ajay = AJ!?! It didn’t bother me at first, since it was said by the (white) detectives, but even Indira Varma’s character pronounced it that way a few times.

    I mean, I know it’s “just a TV show”, but c’mon, seriously? And I thought that Numb3rs episode with a white man using brownface to infiltrate a Pakistani organization was ridiculous.

  27. If you dislike brownface, check out “Short Circuit” and see how far we’ve come. Fisher Stevens, dude… no wonder you ended up being George on “Lost.” (If you don’t know what I am talking about… rent Short Circuit I and II.)

  28. The episode didn’t make sense at all. I was excited when I heard Sri Lanka / Tamil mentioned on TV but someone should have done a lot more research!

  29. i saw this a couple nights ago and it took me forever to figure out what coutnry the freedom fighters were supposed to represent. a question for any actor/actress mutineers out there: when you come across a script about desi characters or plotlines, do you ever try to correct them? wasn’t madhur jaffrey in this? i don’t know why a cast full of brown people couldn’t help the directors out a bit.