Law & Order: Kid Pro Quo (2003)
Season 13, Episode 20
7/10
The Knowles School
20 January 2012
Warning: Spoilers
This episode of Law And Order, Kid Pro Quo, takes us into a world of exclusivity like we plain folk rarely see. Like Jerry Orbach and Jesse Martin, I can't wrap myself around the concept that it's so important that kids get into a prep school kindergarten. I have trouble turning over in my mind the idea of a prep school kindergarten. As Orbach says he's got a legacy his father went to PS 26 and so did he.

Roger Rees as the headmaster of the Knowles School who puts on such highfalutin' condescending airs and yet is not above a little upper crust bribery to bump some kid out of a scholarship to get dibs on an otherwise expensive Co-op totally dominates this episode. He's such a condescending twit you want to smack him on general principles even before Briscoe and Green arrest for murdering the woman who was the admissions director at the Knowles School.

I remember years ago seeing a production of The Cherry Orchard and one of Chekov's great characters was that of Piers who was the house servant to the aristocratic Russian family who were the protagonists. He totally identifies with them and their point of view that he thinks of himself as one of them. But when they flee to Crimea until this peasant revolution blows over, he's left behind like the furniture in the mansion. And as the play ends he's wandering around like a lost soul not believing he was abandoned.

Something very similar like that happens after Sam Waterston does a devastating cross examination to Rees. He's left high and dry after the verdict. He thought he was one of the upper crust and he finds out he's just hired help like poor Piers.

Nice episode of the fabled anthology series, don't miss what Roger Rees does with the pompous and pretentious Wyatt Scofield.
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