‘Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders’ Episode 1: The Limits of Nostalgia (Published 2017) (2024)

Season 1, Episode 1

Murder, it seems, just ain’t what it used to be. American nostalgia reliably follows a two-decade cycle — today we miss the ’90s; in the ’90s it was the ’70s; and I’m told that in the ’70s sock hops made a comeback. If the recent flood of ’90s-based true-crime TV is any indication, we clearly feel some similar nostalgia toward even violent crime. It’s a little bit twisted (guilty), and the reason is anybody’s guess (Dr. Freud?), but it’s no less true for its strangeness: ’90s crime is as much a part of the zeitgeist as chokers and emo-band reunions.

And now, into that crowded courtroom strides “Law & Order,” a colossus of crime procedural that, at 27-years-old, has been around long enough to be a beneficiary of its own clichés — itself a form of nostalgia. The question that awaits it: Can a show whose essence (and part of its appeal) is its formulism add value to the ’90s anthology crime series — a sub-subgenre whose gold standard, “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” won nine Emmys last year? Should it even try?

Any dramatization of a case as infamous as the murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez faces challenges that fictional dramas do not. It can’t, for example, rely on a central mystery to drive the action — everyone knows who murdered Jose and Kitty in Beverly Hills the night of Aug. 20, 1989 — so its success will depend upon the strength of its character-building and whatever insights it offers into the nature of violence writ large. Few of us are killers, but even fewer are saints, and “The People v. O.J.,” for example, succeeded by forcing us to face our baser instincts — racism, hubris, “gratuitous alliteration” — unflinchingly and without sentimentality. One key to accomplishing that is a strict avoidance of caricature, but the notion that a “Law & Order” franchise might achieve such discipline is almost as laughable as Ice-T’s one-liners.

Still, I write that as a fan: “Law & Order” depends on its caricatures. They’re part of the fun.

Based on the first episode, the eight-part “Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders” is still “Law & Order,” and one’s feelings about it may depend on one’s feelings about the entire brand. Do you dig the corny one-liners? The grave nods between detectives? The plot twists you can set your watch to? The heedless confessions under pressure? (The overacting?) The multipart format promises more than that, but the pilot promises exactly that, which I’ll insist could be a good thing for fans. (Imagine my relief when, after inexplicably missing during several opportunities, that first “bong! bong!” to cue the scene-change finally sounded, more than 12 minutes in.) For non-fans, it’s too early to tell.

Luckily, this series has one of the most telegenic crimes in living memory as its source: Jose, a Hollywood executive, and Kitty, his miserable and pill-addled wife, are classic Fall of Camelot. The murders have one of the most glamorous addresses in the country. The victims are nouveaux riches, whose tragic end provides a convenient moral tale for the vieux riches who snub them and the not-at-all riches who love to see powerful people undone. Parricide writes its own Shakespearean arc, and even the killers, Lyle and Erik, are handsome, tan and swaggering. (As the older brother and Princeton flunky, Lyle, the actor Miles Gaston Villanueva is an excellent vessel, as steely of demeanor as he is of jaw; Gus Halper plays Erik with the wild eyes appropriate to a boy who’s perhaps gone along with his older brother’s schemes one too many times.)