Law & Order: Season 17- Talking Points: Featuring Charlotte Ross & Ron Silver

Source: Law & Order- Ron Silver & Louis Cancelmi, on Law & Order Talking Points. 

“Judith Barlow (guest star Charlotte Ross, “NYPD Blue”), a controversial speaker, participates in a question-and-answer at Gramercy College when the stage is mobbed, a gun is fired and one student is found dead. Detectives Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) and Nina Cassady (Milena Govich) question the victim’s friend Malcolm Yates (guest star Louis Cancelmi), an older PhD student who creates human embryos to harvest stem cells. It is discovered that Yates has Parkinson’s disease and finds Barlow’s tactics as a direct threat to his job and life. But Yates, aided by his attorney, Bernie Adler (guest star Ron Silver, “The West Wing”), is not afraid to play up his illness to get sympathy from the jury. S. Epatha Merkerson, Sam Waterston and Fred Dalton Thompson also star.”

From Law & Order

Just on a personal note first, I'm a huge fan of Law & Order. It was one of 3-5 network shows that I watched regularly in the 1990s when I was in high school and just out of high school. It always had a great cast, great storylines, great writing, plots, guest stars like Charlotte Ross and Ron Silver in the Talking Points episode. We're talking about one of the most popular and best TV series that has ever come out of Hollywood and certainly one of the best series that NBC has ever produced along with their great sitcoms from the 1980s and Columbo before that.

Source: Charlotte Ross- Charlotte Ross, as Judith Barlow on Law & Order Talking Points 

And a few weeks ago I'm flipping around the tube after just finishing work and getting and eating dinner and I see a Law & Order marathon on ION-TV ( I guess it's called ) and if you're familiar with that network you know they only show old TV reruns and reruns in general. They've produced maybe one TV series of their own which is Private Eyes which is still on. And each night during the week they do a marathon of reruns for one particular TV series. On Wednesday it's Law & Order all day and all night. TNT, has a similar Law & Order marathon late Tuesday and Saturday night as well. Every other week and sometimes every week.

Source: Getty Images- Sam Waterston, as NYC Executive Asst. DA Jack McCoy 

So, watching this Law & Order marathon on ION 3-4 weeks ago is where I came across the Talking Points episode which is one of my favorite LO episodes or I wouldn't be writing about it, because it was so perfect with the times of the late 2000s. This show came out in 2007 when free speech and political correctness were real issues on campus and where you had controversial right-wing authors and speakers, talk show hosts, like Charlotte Ross's character on this show, speaking on college campuses that tend to be dominated by left-wing students who believed that controversial right-wing speakers didn't have a right to speak, at least at their school and to them.

Source: ION Television- Jesse Martin & Milena Govich, on Law & Order's Talking Points episode 

Judith Barlow, ( played by Charlotte Ross ) is controversial right-wing author and speaker who speaks on college campuses and is basically the Ann Coulter of this show who says nasty things to piss people off and to sell her books and other writings. She gives a speech on campus at a New York college to a bunch of leftist students ( to be kind ) who perhaps believe she doesn't have a right to her own opinion and perhaps not familiar with the First Amendment which unfortunately wouldn't have been in common back during the 2000s or certainly today. She goes too far at least for one particular student there and he not just brings a gun to this event but fires it into the crowd trying to shoot her and instead shoots and kills and innocent bystander there. Obviously not the work of a professional hitman.

The star of this show is Charlotte Ross, not the only star, but the star of this particular show. Ron Silver, does a great job playing the defense lawyer here, Fred Thompson is still on the show as the District Attorney, with Sam Waterston as his deputy and Alana De Le Garza has his assistant. Jesse Martin, as the lead NYPD Detective on the case, Milena Govich as his partner. Like I said before, Law & Order always had a great cast and both as far as regulars and as guest stars and Talking Points is a perfect example of that. But Charlotte Ross, on this show plays Ann Coulter better than Ann Coulter plays herself, but is a helluva lot better looking and so much cuter and sexier as she normally is and perhaps even funnier than Ann Coulter who also has a good wit, when she's not a witch from hell.