NBC's 'Law & Order' will take on polygamy

"Law & Order" returns for its 19th season tonight (9 p.m., Ch. 5), and — defying all odds — it's still hitting on all cylinders.

Start watching tonight's episode and you won't be able to stop. It starts out with a dead Wall Street stockbroker and turns into an investigation of organized street fighting — then takes a turn into vigilante justice with all sorts of shades of gray.

Local viewers, however, will be even more interested in this season's fourth episode, scheduled to air Wednesday, Dec. 3. It's titled "Lost Boys," and it's the latest episode of a prime-time TV show to involve polygamists, with multiple references to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It's also quite obvious that a whole lot of research went into this episode, which handles some very tough issues without climbing on a soapbox and pretending there are easy answers. (Like, for example, last week's episode of "Boston Legal.")

Without giving away too much of the plot, the lost boys in the episode are exactly what local viewers would expect. They are teenagers and young men in their 20s who have been thrown out of a polygamist community in the fictional community of Boyd Canyon, Ariz.

There's a disclaimer on the front end of the episode declaring, "The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event." But, as "Law & Order" has been doing for more than 400 episodes, it takes real-life events and adapts them. And, quite obviously, Boyd Canyon, Ariz. — home of the fictional Church of the True Path — is standing in for Colorado City, Ariz., and the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

Without giving too much of the plot away, one of the lost boys is murdered in the opening scenes of the episode. The detectives come to the erroneous conclusion that the young men involved in the case are Mormon because of homemade markings on their T-shirts (and information from a Web site).

And some of the language that detective Bernard (Anthony Anderson) uses is downright offensive to faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — although it's said in ignorance.

Bernard displays his misapprehensions about Mormons — ignorance that's not that far-fetched — but he's quickly corrected by Van Buren when he opines that it "kind of fits" that one of the lost boys is Mormon.

"Luke has never been to a movie, and he's afraid of black people," Bernard says.

(Both of which are true of the character.)