Fridge / Law & Order

Fridge Brilliance

• The Season 14 finale "C.O.D." from the original series has Adele Byrne and Belinda Gardner kill each other's husbands John and Randall by using different guns but similar models, each one involving three shots. Briscoe quips "Not bad for a beginner" when he thinks Adele shot John, who was only hit twice while Randall got hit with all three bullets. Since Belinda killed John though, that means Adele who killed Randall—is the one who got her target with all three shots.
• Serena Southerlyn's infamous "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" seems moronic, until you realize that the whole point of Law & Order is that you have absolutely no idea what goes on their personal lives—other than what's shown. This actually becomes less true after her departure, but up until then it was a miracle if we knew anything about anything that wasn't strictly work.
  • Also, considering the fact that Jack McCoy had seduced/fallen in love with four out of five of his previous assistants, it does show his sweet but odd behavior towards his current assistant isn't necessarily sexual - it's just how he is - because he treats Abbie Carmichael and Serena almost identically.
  • The last relationship Jack McCoy had with an assistant was with Claire Kincaid. Kincaid was killed in a car accident after going to pick up a drunk Detective Briscoe. He felt tremendous guilt over her death and kept the rest of his relationships with his assistants professional.
  • But fanon says Abbie's gay as well.
    • Only because lots of fans want to see her with Olivia Benson. Which would actually be the hottest thing ever, so no complaints.
    • This piece of fanon comes from the same school of thought which ships Alex Cabot with Serena Southerlyn, which would also be incredible.
  • And Jack didn't seem to have any more idea than Arthur did that Serena was a lesbian.
  • There was one episode that gave a hint that she was gay, and that Jack knew about it. In that episode (near the end of her run) Jack went to Albany and successfully had the court overturn a gay marriage law, all so he could have the marriage between the defendant and his spouse ruled invalid so the spouse would not be covered by spousal privilege and thus be forced to testify. Although Serena was normally very liberal in her opinions and questioned Jack on his tactics many times, in this particular case she was clearly outright pissed and simply stated she was obviously not going to go to Albany to assist him. Uncharacteristically, Jack didn't even try to argue with her, which would make sense if he knew she had a personal reason to be outraged at his plan.
  • Two episodes. "Girl Most Likely" was running on a lot of Gayngst (turns out the victim was murdered by her girlfriend, who wanted to stay closeted). Serena is a scant step from screaming a What the Hell, Hero? at Jack when Jack gets the idea to use the threat of outing one of the suspects to force a confession and/or plea deal. Serena also uses the "I Have This Friend" card when discussing how and why a gay teen girl would stay closeted until college.
• Abbie's stunning lack of sympathy towards the prisoner who claimed that the victim, a prison guard, had turned her into his Sex Slave. Abbie spent years blaming herself for her own rape, so why wouldn't she blame another woman for hers?
• If you count closely during Connie's closing argument in "Family Hour" she stabbed the book 13 times. The exact amount the defendant stabbed his daughter.
• As noted on the character page, Cragen takes on Team Dad characteristics during his time on Law & Order: SVU, but not on this show. But consider that most of the SVU detectives were significantly younger than him, but Greevey, Cerreta, and Lennie were all about his age and are all suggested to be people he already knows when they come to work for him, so of course his dynamic with them would be different. The one exception at the 2-7 is Logan, and Cragen does take a mentor/father figure role towards him, much like how he does with the SVU detectives. (Conversely, his dynamic with Munch, who is around the same age as Cragen, on SVU is very much like that which he has with the detectives in the original.)
• Initially, there appears to be a bit of Continuity Drift regarding Logan's history of abuse from his childhood, which seems to get worse every time he talks about it: in the first mention, it's a "whack" in direct response to his father hitting her, but in subsequent episodes, he alludes to things that are a lot more serious; by the time it comes up in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, it's stated to be violent beatings practically every day. But it actually makes perfect sense if you consider that he's probably never told anyone about the abuse before. When he first opens up to Max about it, it's all he can do to admit that anything happened, let alone talk about how bad it actually was. Once he gets past that initial barrier, he slowly finds himself able to reveal small details that suggest the true magnitude of the abuse, but he still can't bring himself to reveal the full extent of it; it's only when he's directly put on the spot (in Criminal Intent), a full fifteen years after that first disclosure, that he actually tells the full story for possibly the first time ever.