Twice-Told Tale of Zealous Prosecutor

Take that, Kenneth Starr.

When it comes to the fractious hubbub of President Clinton’s sex scandal and impeachment crisis, everything appears over but the fallout, notwithstanding the kinder, gentler Linda Tripp’s TV tour and Monica Lewinsky’s coming schmooze of the century with ABC’s Barbara Walters.

Well, nearly everything.

A two-part crossover of NBC’s superb crime series, “Law & Order” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” does to Starr this week what the White House and much of the nation have been doing to the independent counsel for months, dismissing him as a wickedly smarmy, self-serving, overreaching, ruthless bully who tramples and callously smears anyone interfering with his relentless crusade to destroy the president.

This is payback in prime time.

“He’s in our closets, he’s in our bedrooms,” a White House official frets about an independent counsel who blindsides victims from the deep like Jaws in tonight’s “Law & Order” and extends his ravenous predation in Friday’s “Homicide.”

This is not the mild, sensitive, moralistic patriot America saw posturing for the lens with Walters. This independent counsel’s name is not Starr. Nor does he have quite the righteous fervor or press his lips together in a frozen saccharine smile as Starr does when facing the cameras.

Yet bank on it, that’s exactly who William Dell (George Hearn) is supposed to be in this script by Rene Balcer (Part 1) and David Simon (Part 2). Usually a carnivore himself in “Law & Order,” Assistant D.A. Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) this time is being subpoenaed to appear before the independent counsel’s grand jury to reveal information gathered for a murder case he plans to prosecute. McCoy resists. Giving Dell what he demands will not only spike McCoy’s case, but also require him to go back on a promise of anonymity he made to a witness.

The two-parter has more going for it than a story inspired by a year’s worth of banner headlines and incessant chatter on the 24-hour news channels. It also features a crackerjack mystery and an update on ex-beauty queen Rene Sheppard (Michael Michele), the “Homicide” detective who was disarmed and savagely beaten by a thug in an earlier episode that left her emotionally scarred, and with damaged credibility in the eyes of her male partner.

Crossovers are viewed by networks as ratings rub-offs, in this case the durable hit “Law & Order” being expected to deliver some of its sizable audience to “Homicide,” which inexplicably struggles in the Nielsens.

But the best-laid plans. . . .

Although “Law & Order” and the more flamboyant and intimate “Homicide” share a pedestal as two of the elite crime series of TV’s half century, two earlier attempts to hybridize them for a ratings sweeps were undermined by their clashing styles and chemistries. Just as David E. Kelley has found no way to effectively mingle his oft-farcical “Ally McBeal” with his dead-on drama “The Practice.”

What “Law & Order” and “Homicide” also have in common, though, are smart stories executed by fine actors. And this week, with Beltway intrigue as mortar, the shows’ architectures and casts fit perfectly, narrowing the 200-mile distance between New York and Baltimore. The pairing of Jerry Orbach’s “Law & Order” Det. Lennie Briscoe and Richard Belzer’s “Homicide” Det. John Munch produces an amusing union of cynics, for example. Among other strong performances, Michele is steely no-nonsense as Sheppard (or “Detective Cutiepie,” as someone titles her), and Yaphet Kotto again delivers memorable quality time as “Homicide” Lt. Al Giardello. If only “Law & Order” occasionally granted this much stage to the compelling S. Epatha Merkerson as its own boss cop, Lt. Anita Van Buren.

The Starr plot was conceived by “Law & Order” executive producer Dick Wolf and “Homicide” executive producer Tom Fontana, but only after initial resistance from the latter. “We had decided not to do another crossover unless there was something to justify it,” Wolf said from New York Tuesday. “So in June or July I said to him we should really do something about Washington and what was going on with the special prosecutor. He said, ‘Are you crazy? It’s all going to be dead and buried in a couple of months.’ ”

Ha!

Clinton himself receives some glancing digs in the two episodes. “A liar in the White House?” comments “Law & Order” Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) sarcastically at one point. “Gee, what are the chances?”

And the plot opens in New York City’s Battery Park with a female tourist suggesting that a public bathroom be named “after Clinton.”

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Outside that bathroom, though, is the body of a fairly high-ranking official of the Social Security Administration. That discovery launches a murder investigation that will involve New York and Baltimore crime-busters and reach all the way to the White House in a case that the independent counsel will attempt to snatch away for his own devious reasons.

A sex scandal cover-up may be looming.

Although McCoy is forced by Dell to submit to questioning in front of the grand jury, it’s Starr whom “Law & Order” and “Homicide” are testifying against.

The antagonist’s m.o. is unmistakable.

Dell is a fanatic who has traveled so far beyond his original mandate to investigate “the financial misdealings of the administration” that McCoy accuses him of using “innuendo and allegations” to manufacture a case against the president. Sound familiar? Moreover, there’s talk of a possible “impeachment report to Congress,” and Dell is said to have denied an important potential witness the benefit of counsel, a serious breach of legal ethics spun from charges that Starr’s staff did just that in its initial contact with Lewinsky.

And when McCoy reminds Dell of “the leaks of grand jury testimony from your office” and that “the Justice Department is investigating your investigation,” it’s Starr the script has in its cross-hairs.

“I can’t take a chance on finding what I tell his grand jury on the front page of the [New York] Post,” says a resistant McCoy. There’s more, with Dell having no trouble locating closeted skeletons he can deploy against McCoy, Briscoe and a Baltimore states attorney (Zeljko Ivanek) working with the New Yorkers.

As Starr was accused of doing, Dell creates a cratered Washington fearscape recalling the Commie witch-hunting spectacle fostered by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. Observes one jittery government official tonight: “With the independent counsel tossing subpoenas left and right, everyone’s very careful whom they talk to.” When Dell attacks McCoy in front of the grand jury, the stunned New York prosecutor’s reply echoes attorney Joseph Welch’s famed rebuke of McCarthy during televised hearings on the U.S. Army.

“Mr. Dell, have you no shame?” McCoy asks hoarsely. “Have you no shame?”

The script has none, evidenced by the Rodney King-style overwhacking it gives Dell-Starr on occasion.

Wolf notes that “Law & Order” has tilted toward the conservative when it comes to prosecutorial matters. Nonetheless, isn’t the crossover an unfair attack of Starr?

“No,” he replied. “I’m certainly not an apologist for what Clinton did, but I think [Starr] will go down in history as taking everything past any rational extreme.”

At such times, it’s best to remind everyone that these episodes are the views and interpretations of writers and producers who have no more insight or inside knowledge than anyone else. What they excel at is creating television that is provocative and highly watchable.

While America wonders whether Starr has an indictment waiting for Clinton, “Law & Order” and “Homicide” deliver their own against the independent counsel.

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* “Law & Order” airs at 10 tonight and “Homicide: Life on the Street” at 10 p.m. Friday, both on NBC. The network has rated both TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).