Law & Order (TV Series) Subterranean Homeboy Blues (1990) User Reviews

The Bernhard Goetz case

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 12 June 2012]

Bernhard Goetz became in some eyes an urban folk hero when some punks picked on him during a desultory subway ride in the Eighties and he shot four of them. In this episode from the first season of Law And Order the number of victims became only two and the perpetrator became a former dancer played by Cynthia Nixon. A dancer I might add who lost her former profession because of an encounter on a subway when she was not armed.

Michael Moriarty and Richard Brooks have one hard road in trying to convict a very appealing perpetrator. As in the Goetz case you could have argued it from many aspects on both sides. Unlike in the Goetz case, Nixon did not try to exploit the notoriety.

Making her first appearance in a Law And Order episode in what was the second episode of the series was Lorraine Toussaint as Shambala Greene who became one of the regular floating defense attorneys who left the show when Moriarty did. Toussaint did make one appearance with a client when Sam Waterston took over. She was tough and passionate in her client's behalf, definitely a woman I want defending me if I'm really innocent. She's worth watching the show for herself.

"Trust and lawyer, that's a pair of words that don't match"

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 18 July 2019]

In my mind, 'Law and Order' was at its best in the Briscoe years (especially in the 90s). Pre-Briscoe it still made for solid and more television, and on the whole the 'Law and Order' that started it all (this) is still the best. Post-Briscoe, again from personal opinion, it didn't feel the same. Do like 'Criminal Intent' quite a bit and 'Special Victims Unit', again the early seasons being better by quite a bit, has grown on me on re-watch.

"Subterranean Homeboy Blues" had to follow on from a very, very good start in "Prescription for Death", which also handled a difficult subject and based on a real life case that divided opinion. Didn't feel that it was quite as good, while still considering it very well done and crafted on the whole. 'Law and Order' when it had properly found its feet did become tighter and meatier later, in pace, character writing and character chemistry, but it is great to see the tone of the show established well so early on.

The difficult and heavy subject is every bit as much as that in the previous episode and really makes one probe a lot of thought and try and form an opinion on a moral issue that can be seen from both sides. Again the handling of it is admirable and intelligently done. At the same time, the subject in "Prescription for Death" was done with a little more subtlety and had a little more poignancy in my opinion.

Otherwise, there is not anything wrong really with "Subterranean Homeboy Blues". Visually, the gritty tone of the episode is matched by the slick photography and New York is both beautiful and unforgiving. The music is neither placed and composed with a heavy hand, and the main theme is one that does stick in the head (likewise with the opening voice over). The dialogue, with the music used relatively sparingly, really gets to shine because it doesn't have anything intruding or overbearing it.

Furthermore, the dialogue is of high-quality, being very thought-provoking. Although there is not as much of Stone's dry humour, it doesn't feel over-serious that it becomes dreary, to me there are things done here that are done better than "Prescription for Death". There is more of the facts of the case it's based on and more is done with them. Really liked that you could see the issues from both sides so it doesn't feel biased. The characters are interesting, with a perpetrator that is oddly rootable despite it being a case of not being sure as to whether that is the right thing to do. Stone is still the juiciest character and Shambala Green makes a memorable first appearance.

Have no issues with the acting. Cynthia Nixon excels in the first of three 'Law and Order' (the overall franchise, not just this show) appearances and Lorraine Toussaint is suitably tough as nails. George Dzundza and Chris Noth have enough of the hard-boiled edge needed for their roles, even if their chemistry has yet to gel fully, and Michael Moriaty's authority and dryness adds hugely to his juicy part.

Concluding, very well done. 8/10

Ice T is rapping on the boom box on the subway

[digdoug-19694 · 6/10 · 1 March 2020]

Ice T is rapping on the boom box on the subway in the intro and set up. Was he already in line for TV?

Death in the Subway

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 6 September 2022]

A gorgeous woman enters in a wagon of the subway and is followed by two Afro-Americans. Out of the blue, there is a shooting and the two youths are seriously wounded. Following the lead of witnesses, Detectives Max Greevey and Mike Logan find that the X-ray technician Laura Di Biasi is the shooter and she claims self-defense since she believed the punks would rape her. They learn that Laura was a ballerina that had to give up her career due to damages in her body caused by a violent assault by three men and since then, she is armed. Now the DA office wants to prove that her shooting was a revenge of her previous attack and they must contain to the public opinion the idea of commuting by subway armed for safety reasons.

"Subterranean Homeboy Blues" is a great episode of "Law & Order" that raises a polemic theme good to be discussed. Laura Di Biasi, performed by the beautiful Cynthia Nixon, is an abused woman with a great trauma that affected her career, therefore, her life. When two punks attack her in a subway train, she does not hesitate and shoots them in self-defense. However, the DA office has political reasons to prosecute her to avoid opening precedent and let people embark in the public transportation with guns. The final result is reasonable regarding justice to Laura. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Terror no Metrô" ("Terror in the Subway")

Murder in the Subway

[alzeem-34953 · 10/10 · 9 February 2023]

"Subterranean Homeboy Blues". This episode was first aired on September 26, 1990, and was directed by Michael Pressman. In this episode, detectives Logan and Greevey investigate the murder of a young man who was involved in the city's subway graffiti subculture. As they dig deeper into the case, they uncover a web of crime and corruption that reaches all the way to City Hall.

If you're a fan of "Law & Order," you may be interested in checking out this classic episode, which was one of the first to establish the formula that would come to define the series: a police investigation followed by a court trial.

Shoot!

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 5 October 2017]

I'll make this short. Young Cynthia Nixon was beaten and raped by some black youths, incurring injuries that ruined her career as a dancer. Three or four menacing looking black youths are now prowling through a subway car. She sits next to them. They inch up in front of her (one with a screw driver in his pocket), lean over and say, "How about a taste, Baby. Boom. She shoots a couple of them, one of them while he's sitting down.

It's a courageous episode because it resonates with so much of the public. The case prompting it was certainly Bernard Goetz, who a few years earlier had done pretty much the same thing.

But -- BREAKING NEWS! In Florida, which has a "stand-your-ground" law, which doesn't require the threatened person to retreat, a man named Zimmerman following a black kid through an apartment complex (against the advice of the police), a confrontation followed and Zimmerman killed the black kid.

He got off.

In his episode though, Cynthia Nixon is convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun and reckless endangerment for firing a gun in a crowded environment. Her sentence is relatively easy because neither the DA nor the Public Defender know exactly how to juggle the utility of their arguments.

If she'd done it in Florida, like Zimmerman, she'd be at liberty.

Mr Big

[safenoe · 6/10 · 24 January 2023]

This is the second episode of a landmark series that endured (and rightfully so) for around two decades and has spun-off who knows how many (I still think Law and Order: Los Angeles was criminally underrated and deserved time to grow). Anyway, Cynthia Nixon guest stars (later on she would co-star with Chris Noth in Sex and the City) as a subway vigilante who you wonder is racist or not, with subway crime (I don't mean robberies in sandwich stores) gripping New York (remember Escape from New York?).

There's a kind of an 80s look to this episode, and the quick editing is something you'll see later on.

Striding Both Sides of the Fence undermines the episode

[sixshooter500 · 5/10 · 5 May 2020]

I feel like the episode here wanted to make more than one message here. A message about women being taken advantage of by thuggish men, or a message about being black and people shooting you out of racism.

It didn't know what it wanted, so it sort of tried both, and didn't get either. It's fails to achieve the potential that any premise wants to, failing to take up the cause of racism, or sexist behavior, or the rights of the self dense, and as a result, middling and weak, but as good as you can get without actually succeeding at least.

5/10