Last week, I told you about an upcoming episode of NBC's Law & Order that was filmed in my neighborhood, Brooklyn's Windsor Terrace. I had speculated as to which neighborhood they might try and pass our street off as, but instead of making it a stand-in for a specific place, our block was labeled simply, "Queens."
For some reason, the show informs its viewers of the exact address of locations in Manhattan, but anytime they wander into other boroughs, they don't bother to specify. In Monday's episode, they visit a dentist's office, and the screen reads, "721 East 26th Street." When the action moves outside of Manhattan, we get no location and date card, and no signature "doink doink" sound; we just have to infer from the dialogue that they are in some unspecified area of Queens, which just happens to be the city's largest borough. Were they in Astoria, which presumably is close to the fictitious 27th Precinct where the detectives work (which would be somewhere in Harlem, based on the locations of the real-life 26th and 28th Precincts) or did they have to drive an hour and a half out to Rosedale? This can have an impact on the story, as the detectives frequently moan about having to drive to Westchester or Albany, and it matters to us lowly outer-boroughers (at least, it matters to me).
For some reason, the show informs its viewers of the exact address of locations in Manhattan, but anytime they wander into other boroughs, they don't bother to specify. In Monday's episode, they visit a dentist's office, and the screen reads, "721 East 26th Street." When the action moves outside of Manhattan, we get no location and date card, and no signature "doink doink" sound; we just have to infer from the dialogue that they are in some unspecified area of Queens, which just happens to be the city's largest borough. Were they in Astoria, which presumably is close to the fictitious 27th Precinct where the detectives work (which would be somewhere in Harlem, based on the locations of the real-life 26th and 28th Precincts) or did they have to drive an hour and a half out to Rosedale? This can have an impact on the story, as the detectives frequently moan about having to drive to Westchester or Albany, and it matters to us lowly outer-boroughers (at least, it matters to me).
'We're looking for a guy somewhere in Queens. You seen him?'
Speaking of the story, the episode "Four Cops Shot" was loosely based on an incident in Lakewood, Washington last November, when four police officers were shot dead in a coffee shop. The Law & Order episode had the added twist of the suspect potentially facing the federal death penalty – in the real incident, the shooter, Maurice Clemmons, never faced a court, as he was shot and killed by a police officer two days after the murders. It is somewhat eerie that the episode filmed on my block also happened to be about federalizing murder cases in order to seek the death penalty in states without capital punishment (the death penalty in New York was struck down by the courts in 2004), which is a topic I have been studying and writing about for the past year.
It doesn't matter if it's Brooklyn or Queens when you're inside.