Friday Night TV

It's sweeps, but that's not good for Friday Night TV. Why? The networks schedule some of their worst programming for Fridays, and since they're sure to be up against first run network episodes, cable channels don't schedule many first-run stuff for sweeps. But we did get a new Law & Order and Acceptable TV.

Law & Order: A Russian in the business of importing girls for prostitution turns up dead from military-grade ricin poisoning. The victim's brother and partner takes a deal on the prostitution and leads the cops to Nicholas Brezin, an ex-KGB agent whose daughter was apparently recruited by the victim and later killed. But Brezin manages to escape to the Russian consulate just in time to avoid arrest.

Jack works out a deal with the Russians to trade the victim's brother, who the Russians want for kidnapping Russian girls, for Brezin. That seems extremely shady. Rubirosa thinks their case is weak so she starts digging and finds Brezin's daughter alive and kicking. The case rests almost entirely on whether he believed his daughter was alive, because he claims he would never kill the only man who might lead him to his daughter.

Rubirosa decides to dig even more, and discovers phone records implicating Brezin in selling his daughter into prostitution. He explains that he was backed into a corner and given a choice between his two daughters, and since his other daughter was only 14, the only choice was clear. But he'll do anything to keep his family from learning about this, so he agrees to a 10 year manslaughter sentence.


But the big shocker is that Jack got all misty about fathers and daughters in the end, and meets his daughter (completely unmentioned, I think, in his 12 years on the show until this season) for dinner, and in classic Law & Order fashion, we get to learn exactly nothing about them. But Jack sure looks happy to see her.

Acceptable TV: Mr. Sprinkles and Kitten Calendar are unstoppable juggernauts, huh? Only one new sketch did anything for me though: