Deaf Firefighter’s Blog

Last week, I went on a rare daytime fire with my department. I say it’s rare because a) I’m usually too busy at work to be able to go and b) the paid guys in our department who work the daytime shifts (volunteers take over from 5:30pm to 7:30am) are usually gone by the time I get to the station.

The fire was centered primarily on the second floor. While 9 people lived in the house, all got out safely and one man was treated for chest pains. Our department was called on the second-alarm and since it’s a bit of a drive, by the time we got there, most of the fire had been knocked down. Our crew was assigned to overhaul and putting down wet spots in the building.

Right now, the deaf blog-o-sphere is buzzing about last night’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I think a friend of mine summed it up nicely when he IM’d me and said: “Thought L and Order was okay. It wasn’t impressive.”

(and this is a hispanic guy who has two masters degree, can barely speak english and signs much worse.)

I think he summed it up nicely. Never mind the cultural or linguistic issues that the program touched on (or didn’t.) I’ll leave that to the other bloggers to discuss. I grew up watching L&O and I know it’s had its phenomenal episodes and its lackluster ones. This, unfortunately, was one of the latter.

The deaf actors, for the most part, did an excellent job. Darren Frazier (full disclosure: he’s a frat. brother of mine) did a particularly good job of representing people I’ve encountered who cannot see the larger world beyond cultural/linguistic “deaf”.

I’m also glad that they opened the dialogue with something along the lines of “getting an interpreter” but I’m disappointed that it wasn’t a REAL interpreter: instead it was another cop who presumably was NYPD’s Deaf Outreach Liaison. I know this was probably a central part of the plot but it falsely reinforces the idea that professional and certified interpreters don’t have a place in criminal investigations.

I’m glad these actors had a chance to get some time on a national production. However, the writing of this episode was weak. It seemed overly ambitious, trying to cover a lot of “deaf” territory in a short timeframe. When the finale came and it was time to bust the killer, the explanations of motives were flimsy and the reactions seemed to be overwrought.

I’ve seen some excellent episodes and while this is certainly a memorable one, it’s, by far, not representative of Dick Wolf’s best work.