Law And Order Fans, Eat This

Before you wonder if I intend to become your resident TV critic, I assure you that the combo of my article on Tuesday and this one is purely coincidental. I just felt that it wouldn't be a half-bad idea to present a review of a new cops-and-politicians drama that breaks all the rules of liberal pipe dreams. And it takes place in Chicago, of all things. I refer to Chicago Code on the Fox Network.

I saw the early previews a couple of months ago, and after the disaster of Detroit 1-8-7 my initial thought was "oh, please, not another one." But for some reason that I entirely forget, I watched the premier episode and was immediately hooked. I was considering doing a review of the show, but I wanted to wait awhile to see if I was imagining things. The fourth episode, entitled "Cabrini Green" clinched it, and I decided it was time to recommend the show to you.

For those unfamiliar with Chicago, Cabrini Green was the first public mega-housing project in America. It was named after the loving Catholic social activist (the good kind) Mother Cabrini. Despite its good intentions of helping the poor and largely black underclass in Chicago, the Green ended up being the poster for everything that is wrong with public housing and something-for-nothing projects.

Seemingly overnight, the residents turned a relatively decent looking but architecturally uninteresting high rise into the largest trash bin and vertical sewer in the nation. The picture here is of one of the frequent trash fires set by the model citizens living in the project, as it spread from floor to floor. Filth, urine and feces in the hallways, and gangsters moving from floor to floor menacing, robbing and raping as they preyed on the weaker residents. Poverty and hopelessness perpetuated. A community organizer's dream revealed as the nightmare it truly was.

The show's story arc centers around crooked, race-baiting, black City Alderman Ronin Gibbons, played like a symphony by Delroy Lindo. He claims to be the man to protect the interest of oppressed minorities. But in reality, he cares only for power, uses his fellow blacks as naive pawns in his crooked game, all the while making deals with the Northside Irish Mob to carve up the city's neighborhoods into profitable criminal enterprises. The episode that triggered this review focuses on Gibbons's lifelong campaign to purge his soul of the demeaning and tragic life he lived as a resident of Cabrini Green. The episode ends with his clear look of pleasure as he watches the demolition of the decayed and empty Cabrini Green project.

Now, for the good guys. Jennifer Beals (never one of my favorites until now) plays Chicago's first female Superintendent of Police, Teresa Colvin. She has plenty of personal ambition, but she is honest, and utterly determined to bring down Alderman Gibbons's organization which has caused the death of some of her former fellow police officers. To do so, she has tasked her former partner Detective Jake Wysocki with working sub rosa to ferret out Gibbons's activities and bring them to prosecution. Wysocki is played by the excellent Jason Clarke, formerly a member of the cast of Brotherhood. Early on, Wysocki gets a new partner, Caleb Evers, a young, smart and totally dedicated law and order (the real kind) cop. Evers is played by Matt Lauria, late of Friday Night Lights. Rounding out the secret unit is undercover cop Liam Hennessy who has infiltrated the Irish Mob and is making connections to Gibbons's enterprises.

The show is gritty, and it makes no pretense that the Chicago police are largely honest and tarred by the sins of a small minority of crooked cops. The show is very blunt about the endemic nature of crime and corruption in the department as well as the politicians in City Hall. And none of the cops, good or bad, are liberal do-gooders disguised as officers of the law the way they are in Law And Order.

But this episode had a hook that was impossible to walk away from (at least for me, a conservative and former 60s radical). Bring in Professor of Education and 70s radical David Argyle. Argyle has come into town to tout his great education ideas and radical leftist views. He is smarmy and vicious at the same time. The good professor escaped prosecution for his leadership in a radical group which bombed buildings and killed a night watchman working in one of those buildings. Ayers, oops, Argyle was known to have been a prime organizer of the bombings, but too clever and too cowardly to get his own hands dirty.

During the Cabrini Green episode, the show finally goes slightly off the reality path by having Argyle inadvertently admitting to his involvement in the death of the night watchman. But you can't blame the writers for wishing that something like that would actually happen to certain academic Friends of Obama. I won't spoil the denouement of the episode for those of you who haven't seen it. It can be watched on Fox.com at Cabrini Green, or you can wait for the re-run. I will tell you that there is a surprising and shocking twist near the end. Even though I didn't see it coming, as soon as it happened I dishonestly jumped up and shouted "I knew it!"

The show isn't perfect, but what is? Sometimes it moves so fast that you lose track of the plotline or the characters, but only temporarily. Some "cop things" are cliche. Occasionally the relationship between the street team and the revelations of the undercover cop seems contrived. But the overarching theme of a few tough and honest cops taking on a rotten system in the most corrupt major city in America, being frustrated at almost every turn, yet going right back into battle is downright exhilarating. Its jabs at liberal orthodoxy are delicious. This is Beethoven's Fifth compared to Law and Order's "Merrily We Roll Along" and Detroit 1-8-7's "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing."