Law & Order & Food
May 20, 2012 8:17 PM   Subscribe

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders." This is them eating lunch. Single link tumblr.
posted by sweetkid (41 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Those photos shouldn't feel so dirty, but Benjamin Bratt eating things in sub rolls? Yeah.
posted by xingcat at 8:22 PM on May 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


Hmm. I guess I don't get it. People eat a lot on this tv show? That there have been eleventy billion episodes of?
posted by Night_owl at 8:24 PM on May 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've always thought that the show was different, in that they show people eating like people eat. Nothing fancy. Sloppy pizza, greasy food, lukewarm hot dogs, etc. Rarely do they show trendy places or fancy restaurants.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 8:32 PM on May 20, 2012 [6 favorites]


The DAs often eat in fancy places.
posted by squorch at 8:34 PM on May 20, 2012


Hmm. I guess I don't get it. People eat a lot on this tv show? That there have been eleventy billion episodes of?

You must be new to Tumblr.
posted by desjardins at 8:37 PM on May 20, 2012 [13 favorites]


Sorry, sqorch, I meant more about the cops. You are right about the DAs.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 8:42 PM on May 20, 2012


Is there a tumblr of L&O scenes where the New Yorker is too busy unloading a truck or filing something to stop for a second and answer the detective's questions?
posted by birdherder at 8:44 PM on May 20, 2012 [21 favorites]


I await the spinoff Tumblrs Law & Order: Edible Intent or Law & Order: Special Victuals Unit.
posted by MegoSteve at 8:48 PM on May 20, 2012 [17 favorites]


Frankly, I'm disappointed that it shows television police and detectives, not real police and detectives.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:49 PM on May 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


Order in the court!
posted by loquacious at 8:50 PM on May 20, 2012


You could probably do an entire tumblr about Briscoe eating; his ability to charm free food out of people was a running gag. BBQ, soup, an entire bag of muffins...
posted by thomas j wise at 8:54 PM on May 20, 2012 [5 favorites]


My wife and I make comments about this all the time. She has a peeve about people talking and eating, so I hear a lot of tongue clicking during these scenes.

More Law & Order tropes:

Defense attorneys sitting through a full meeting with the ADA only to produce a motion to dismiss.

Judges throwing out key evidence.

Bad bad defense attorneys. This is mostly limited to CI.

There's more I'm sure, but these are the few that seem to persist.
posted by Brocktoon at 8:57 PM on May 20, 2012


This is great.
posted by clockzero at 9:01 PM on May 20, 2012


Needs more Munching.
posted by awfurby at 9:05 PM on May 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh I almost forgot maybe the biggest one:

Witnesses go about their business while the detectives try to question them.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:07 PM on May 20, 2012


I thought I could look at this all night, but the end of the third page had just too many shots in a row of Briscoe rolling his eyes as he crams it in, and I got a little queasy.
posted by Pistache at 9:13 PM on May 20, 2012 [3 favorites]


Witnesses go about their business while the detectives try to question them.

BONG BONG!!!

Dinner!
posted by awfurby at 9:17 PM on May 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


I remember an NPR interview with Paul Thomas Anderson a few years back. He said that he avoids at all costs characters eating food in a scene. It's messy, there's a lot of prep work, and worst of all, it can really fuck up continuity--food eaten suddenly reappears, for example. I'm trying to think of an eating scene in a PTA movie and am coming up blank...
posted by zardoz at 9:19 PM on May 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


ooh, can someone do a Tumblr like with with screencaps/subtitles featuring all of Briscoe's best standing-near-a-dead-body one-liners?

i'd do it but i'm busy
posted by ninjew at 9:22 PM on May 20, 2012


Smoking would be the worst though - smoke after smoke after smoke.
posted by awfurby at 9:23 PM on May 20, 2012


Not all lunch, there's some breakfast and dinner in there too.
posted by unliteral at 10:09 PM on May 20, 2012


I know, but I liked my joke with lunch.
posted by sweetkid at 10:15 PM on May 20, 2012


Is it just me, or do "next" and "previous" mean opposite things on different blogs?
posted by latkes at 10:59 PM on May 20, 2012 [9 favorites]


I've Googled, but I can't find a picture anywhere of former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren E. Burger eating a burger.
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:02 PM on May 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


Night_owl: "Hmm. I guess I don't get it. People eat a lot on this tv show? That there have been eleventy billion episodes of?"

In addition to being on for eleventy billion episodes, Law and Order was also the most procedural show on TV arguably since Dragnet, and is rerun in a bunch of different places all the time. That it was so frequently on, and predictable makes it a sort of common currency in a medium defined by how everybody watches something totally different. I don't think I'm alone in watching lots of Law and Order in hotel rooms. There's something of its regularity, of its subtle changes in hairstyle and content as the country changed and the culture changed that are really reassuring and speak of home. Put it this way: if 24 is a show made for the post-911 era, Law and Order is a show which predates it, but found itself in the post-911 era just the way the rest of us did, by happenstance.

In ways that are funny and silly, but also part of that comforting narrative, people on the show eat a lot, just like two guys with stereotypical New York accents are talking about how they're gonna get laid when they find a body, or a busboy at a restaurant doesn't stop clearing tables even though he's being interviewed by the murder police. It's all part of that rhythm.
posted by Apropos of Something at 11:07 PM on May 20, 2012 [9 favorites]


I find this pleasing. Thank you.
posted by hot soup girl at 11:08 PM on May 20, 2012


I've Googled, but I can't find a picture anywhere of former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren E. Burger eating a burger.

What about Felix Frankfurter?
posted by maqsarian at 11:12 PM on May 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


After he was president, William H. Taft became Chief Justice of Supreme Court. He's the only Chief Justice I can find eating a pizza.
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:22 PM on May 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren E. Burger eating a burger at Murf's.
posted by unliteral at 11:48 PM on May 20, 2012


A Tough Day at the Office

(WARNING: lots of coffee drinking, face-rubbing, and gratuitous snatching eyeglasses off one's own face for dramatic effect)
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 12:39 AM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


I didn't realize how awkward people looked while eating food until now. Clearly some people like to get intimate with their pizza and hot dogs. HOT DIGGITY DOG.
posted by livinglearning at 2:16 AM on May 21, 2012


I didn't realize how awkward people looked while eating food until now.

A lot of things look unremarkable in motion, but really awkward in a still photo. Sports, for example. Athletes often make goofy faces.
posted by asciident at 4:30 AM on May 21, 2012


Man, Orbach just goes to town on everything.
posted by psoas at 4:42 AM on May 21, 2012


Is there a tumblr of L&O scenes where the New Yorker is too busy unloading a truck or filing something to stop for a second and answer the detective's questions?

There isn't enough room on the Internet for all of those scenes.
posted by Etrigan at 4:57 AM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh, Internet, stay weird and awesome.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:39 AM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


The trope of witnesses not stopping unloading the truck or whatever is unrealistic, but saves us from endless talking head scenes. Writers of detective fiction in book form have an even worse time of it. They need to unload a bunch of witness stuff and can't even show the back end of a truck while they do it. Just page after page of "and then what happened?" in every possible way.
posted by DU at 5:44 AM on May 21, 2012


Love this. I'm nearly finished watching *all* of the L&O on Netflix and I can't tell you how many times the show has made me want to eat chow mein out of a white takeout box, using chopsticks.
posted by youngergirl44 at 5:57 AM on May 21, 2012


Because the Internet needs more TV!
posted by sneebler at 7:03 AM on May 21, 2012


Defense attorneys sitting through a full meeting with the ADA only to produce a motion to dismiss.

Judges throwing out key evidence.

Bad bad defense attorneys. This is mostly limited to CI.

There's more I'm sure, but these are the few that seem to persist.


Don't forget the ridiculous "blue envelope" that the motions were always delivered in. LOL!
posted by Ironmouth at 8:24 AM on May 21, 2012


That blue envelope is a blue-back, and is required for many filings in state court in NY. I'm sure the props department just had one fake motion that they re-used in every episode, like that famously recurring prop newspaper.
posted by opposite_sketches at 10:42 AM on May 21, 2012


From the creative mind of Malkah, a force to be reckoned with.
posted by evilDoug at 9:39 PM on May 21, 2012


« Older Robert Altman's "3 Women"   |   /bin/rm -r -f * Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments