In another era, Eliot Spitzer would've loved for any of his big takedowns to be picked up by Law & Order producers and made into a ripped-from-the-headlines storyline. His prostitution scandal that cost him his career? Probably not so much.

Too bad!

On tomorrow's L&O, substitute "Gov. Eliot Spitzer" for "Gov. Donald Shalvoy" and "Emperors Club" for "Excalibur."

The unraveling of Gov. Donald Shalvoy (Tom Everett Scott), the governor with a hooker problem on "L&O," begins when a guy who owns a gold refinery is found stuffed into his furnace.

That leads homicide detectives Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) to investigate the refinery's clients. Oops.

Lo and behold! They come upon a money-laundering scheme which, in turn, leads them to the shady world of escort services.

The escort service in real life was called grandly The Emperors Club. In the show, it's the "Excalibur" (which causes the cops to wisecrack in one of the better lines of the night: "It's for guys with big swords!").

All of this sword play leads to a voice overheard on a wiretap that is instantly recognizable as the you-know-who. And he really does sound like Spitzer on that phone, I must say.

When the whole thing lands in DA Jack McCoy's (Sam Waterston's) lap, it gets even more complicated. We learn that the governor was McCoy's biggest supporter for the DA job.

One hand is supposed to wash the other (especially after sex with a hooker), but McCoy isn't a creep like the governor and won't play along.

The DA begs him to come clean and spend some time explaining everything to his family before it all becomes public knowledge.

But you don't have to worry about that because . . . it won't.

The twist "Law & Order" has put on the case is that the governor gets caught, sure, but it doesn't become a criminal case, or even a public scandal. Now I know why the show's creator, Dick Wolf, say all the episodes are fiction.

In real life, the governor of New York went from Eliot to John to Client-9 quicker than it took him to transfer money - and there was nothing he could do about it except cry "wolf!" [NYP]