I haven’t watched Law & Order in years but it’s currently on season 24. Last night episode 16 was a thinly veiled retelling of the Luigi Mangione story with the title “Folk Hero.”
In the episode, Ethan, played by actor Ty Molbak, guns down the CEO of a fictitious health insurance company on the sidewalk as he is about to enter a Manhattan building. Ethan is eventually tracked down by detectives as he is preparing to kill another insurance company CEO. Investigators find the gun used in the slaying and a notebook where he details his plan to kill other healthcare CEOs…
During the fictitious trial on Law & Order, Ethan told the jury he killed the CEO because the insurance company refused to pay for the drug that he believed would cure his mother’s terminal breast cancer.
This sort of “ripped from the headlines” storytelling is what Law & Order has been doing for years, so it’s really no surprise the writers would jump on the Luigi story. However, it sounds like they bent over backwards to make Luigi’s sympathetic.
American Crime alum Benito Martinez is wasted as Judge Moscatello, who does head-scratching things just to keep the story interesting. He allows Ethan — who admits he shot Andrews after OptiShield denied his mother’s cancer treatment — to tearfully monologue to the jury, lets him testify as to whether or not his mother would have survived despite Nolan Price pointing out that Ethan has no medical expertise, and a later scene has Price decrying Moscatello’s various responses to the jury’s questions. In no way is this character believable, which further pulls the audience out of the story. Ethan’s defense that he was protecting other people whose lives would be ruined by OptiShield requires some suspension of disbelief, but would be worth debating if it wasn’t couched in these other implausibilities.
In case that wasn’t clear, the defense offered in this fictional trial is that Luigi/Ethan was trying to save lives by murdering the executive.
To Price’s shock, Ethan’s lawyer, Megan Stratton (Laila Robins), in her opening statement (which she gives after the people rest), says that Ethan had a legal reason for killing Andrews: He was trying to save lives. Andrews caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people by denying legitimate claims, and more would have died as a result. Ethan killed him before he could kill again, and his actions are completely legal under the laws of New York. […]
— Read More: hotair.com
