Reply #11: That's a big jump to a false conclusion, shari [View All]

[Elspeth]

You had to be watching the show for many years to understand that it was typically pretty thoughtful. In the early days, L & O was kind of a morality play, with murder investigations as a pretext. What was really being hashed out were social issues, political issues, moral dilemmas. No argument was shut down and conservative characters were always a part of the landscape, and sometimes very appealing. If McCoy was unabashedly liberal in his beliefs, he also upheld the law to a fault, regardless of politics.

When Thompson came on the show, he was quite pendantic and overtly political, and his lines often smacked of political rhetoric. He simply wasn't believable in the position of DA and seemed never to have any challenges to his belief system, like every other character did on the show. He was simply the resident neocon and never developed any depth. His leaving has made the stories more interesting and has put everything back in play.