Last night’s Law and Order reached new highs, or lows, in the “ripped from the headlines” genre of television drama. It somehow managed to combine the Alycia Lane/Larry Mendte/Rich Eisen story with the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.

The story featured:

1. Murdered “complete package” (looks, brains, personality) local news anchor who sent photos of her bikini-clad self to a male journalist friend.

2. Said male journalist’s angry wife discovered the photos and sent the female anchor a nasty email reply.

3. The angry wife’s email reply became a hot gossip column item.

4. Bespectacled cherubic gossip columnist, who appeared to be an amalgam of Dan Gross, Michael Klein, and Perez Hilton. The Serpentor of gossip columnists.

5. A popular middle aged white male anchor (David Rasche, aka Inspector Sledge Hammer!) was the gossip columnist’s source of the email leak, because he was using a KEYSTROKE LOGGER to gain access to Alycia-esque reporter’s computer. PseudoMendte had an Emmy statue on his office desk.

The murdered reporter was investigating a ponzi scheme run by a Madoff-inspired hedge fund manager. The DA went after the Madoff charcters’s wife in an attempt to get the hedge fund manager to spill the beans on the reporter’s murder. The outcome is irrelevant but I have not laughed so hard at L&O since David Cross played the Howard K. Stern to a Law and Order version of Anna Nicole Smith.

Brendan O’Riordan is a frequent Philebrity commenter and apparent plot-driven network television loyalist.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 11:01 am.