MSTed by Brendan Herlihy, with Steve Weinberg

Take me to this MSTing NOW!

We start with a short, "Teamwork". A purportedly non-mad scientist, Dr. Tim Ryan, tries his experimental growth serum on a monkey, and doggone it if it doesn’t grow, to the size of a 20-story building, or a 40-story building, depending on where the author’s brain is at the moment. Dr. Ryan’s wife decides that it’s up to her and her friend Laura to stop the rampaging ape. Why Laura? Why her for that matter? But they drink the growth serum, become even bigger than the ape, and proceed to dispense their own brand of street justice. It involves three pages of bragging about how "unbelievably huge" they’ve become.

Then the main feature: "Name of the Game", a fanfic of "Law & Order", of all things. Alexa Ryan is just your average drug-takin’, ER-watchin’, singer in a rock’n’roll band, until that fateful day (and hasn’t this happened to all of us?) when she finds out she was actually one of a pair of identical twins, separated at birth.

She tracks down her new sister, Amelia, who in a coincidence of Shakespearian dimensions, also lives on the isle of Manhattan. Amelia, who adopted into money, or maybe was born into it, who cares, insists that Alexa move right into her Upper West Side apartment and learn to dress and talk and act exactly like her. Well, sure, who wouldn’t? Then the Law & Order cops come to question Amelia about a peculiarly ill-defined murder. We’re never clear who the victim is, or how they were killed. But darn it, instead of Amelia, they find Alexa, who just pretends to be Amelia! Ha! Which is funny, because Alexa ISN’T THE ONE WANTED FOR MURDER, you see!

Anyway, Detective Logan and Alexa get one of them hate-at-first-sight-carnal-lust kind of deals going. So even though she’s a possible suspect, they have a date at a crummy disco, then go back to her place and for a hot and steamy- um, cuddle, I guess. Alexa’s a virgin, huh. Part One ends even though nothing’s really happened and we don’t even know who’s dead. You just want to punch something.

So never mind that this episode officially begins Pearl Forrester’s captivity on the SOL, put it out of your thoughts that Pearl, Gypsy and Magic Voice (who is being called Madge now- ignore that too!) are doing the riffing, and don’t even dwell on the fact that Daria does a guest spot and we introduce to not one but TWO new characters: Scratch the sky-blue dragon demon, and Eddie, Evil Mike’s cool brother.

Forget all that- I wanna talk about "Law & Order".

L&O, in its first two years, was a revelation. The mystery-unraveling aspects of police work, the morality-bending ethics of legal prosecution, and a healthy appetite for tackling controversial issues in a head-on, edgy, yet balanced manner, all this combined to make some of the most gripping television I’ve ever seen. Even though the quality of shows has slipped in recent years, it’s still sharp, smart television.

I say this because while it’s easy to see how hackneyed and cliched and poorly written "Name of the Game" is, folks who don’t watch "Law and Order" may not understand why it cuts so deeply. This story… this is just wrong. There are some things you don’t do. You don’t film "Moby Dick" from the point of view of the whale, you don’t remake "Casablanca" with Pamela Anderson Lee in the Humphrey Bogart role, and you don’t write a "Law & Order" fanfic where the bright, caustic characters are turned one-by-one into fluffy lovesick bunny-lumpkins.

A subtle point, perhaps, but there you are.

Unadvertised special: Three-quarters through the short, author Eddie Delaney totally forgets the name of his mad scientist. Dr. Timothy Ryan suddenly becomes Dr. Thomas Ryan. Look for it, and try not to snort that Mocha Coolatta through your nose.