Last night's Law & Order ripped its plot threads straight from the headlines ... that is, the headlines from the newspapers lining your cat box from several months or even years ago. When three Manhattan yuppie roommates are found shot dead in their apartment, the detectives are sent on a chase that manages to involve soldiers in Iraq, closeted gay politicians, crooked fundraisers, and a ruthless, manipulative lady senator with her eye on the Presidency.

What, did Fred Thompson ghost-write this episode?

After the three yupsters (well, two yupsters and one Iraq vet) are found riddled with bullets, detective Green (Jesse L. Martin) and Billy Chenowith (Jeremy Sisto) notice a subscription copy of a gay magazine on the coffee table and wonder if it might have been a gay love triangle. Naturally, because gay = multiple murder ... always, harder, and more often. 

The look into this and find out that only one of the roomies, environmental lawyer Josh, was actually gay. So maybe the soldier was a homophobe and shot him because he was gay ... and then shot the other roommate (the vet's childhood friend) because ... he had a gay roommate? They talk to the vet's ex-fiance and she says that doesn't seem likely.

They then notice that the gay guy has several more bullets in him than the straight guys. So they start investigating his personal life, and find out that he was having an affair with a married politician who had recently voted against gay marriage, which upset the gay guy greatly. Now, I'm not sure just how much righteous indignation a guy who is having an affair with a married man has the right to have over such behavior, but so be it. They find out that Senator Larry Craig the closeted politician stays at a flea-bag hotel across from Hellmann's department store (bring out the Hellmann's and bring out the best!) because it has the cruisiest bathrooms in the city. What, no one goes to Bloomingdale's anymore?

To Catch a Senator! They of course send Billy Chenowith, the newbie, in to catch the creep in a little bathroom stall Riverdance duet, and we actually see, in close-up, the whole toe-tapping thing first-hand. It's beyond silly ... and their shoes are atrocious. They arrest him (the real police, not the fashion ones) but find out that he had an alibi the night of the murders: some other chicken that he was shacking up with. My God, when I moved to this town I couldn't get a date to save my life, and this married closeted guy is getting his ticket punched in Junior Petites on a daily basis. Guess I should have done more shopping ...

Oh, the way they found out where the Creepator was cruising? By consulting a gayer-than-thou gossip blogger who had hair like sculpted marzipan and an enormous apartment filled with books. Puh-leeze. Books are, like, SO 5 years ago.

Anyway, when the detectives realize that they've just "played smear the queer with the wrong guy" (their words, not mine), they throw out his arrest report to spare the *sshole any embarrassment and move on to another roommate, realizing that this had nothing to do with the gay guy after all.

And they're right, as it all has to do with politics. Which is something that they do get right in this episode: it always boils down to money. The murder has nothing to do with love triangles or affairs or anything like that, it has to do with campaign financing. So after 20 minutes of dragging the gay guy through the mud, they get around to the real villains, namely the people trying to run the country. Accurate, but depressing nonetheless.

Was this that beatnik guy with the beard? David Patrick Kelly?

By the time the episode is over we've got a string-pulling lady Senator with an eye on the White House who is apparently the embodiment of manipulating evil, a borderline-personality immigrant who calls himself Victor Vargas (as in the movie Raising Victor Vargas?) and steals millions of dollars from investors, and the crazy villain from The Warriors and Dreamscape sporting a snazzy beard with beads in it (at least I swear it was him, although he's hard to recognize when he's not clinking bottles together or turning into a snake-man).

It was nice to see that the reaction to the gay roommate by the detectives wasn't one of horror or even of curiosity, but the fact that it's the first line of investigation that they pursue is a bit of a groaner (as are the stale Larry Craig parallels). In the end, this is just a gay guy who is killed and then whose secrets are exposed when he is at the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess we should be happy that in this story the gay men are just having sex in department store bathrooms and not killing one another? Or something?

And back to the question that kicked off the investigation: why DID the gay guy have more bullets in him than anyone else? Hmm. Any thoughts?