Law and Order

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domino harvey
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Law and Order

#1 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 13, 2010 7:39 pm

One of the few TV pleasures I make time for is Law and Order (and its various spinoffs), but sad to say that it looks like NBC has just canceled the series. It had been through some rough patches but the current cast is the strongest since Orbach was still around and it really refound its footing lately. Anyone else borderline-obsessed with LAO reruns, be they the original, SVU, or Criminal Intent?

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Jeff
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Re: Law and Order

#2 Post by Jeff » Thu May 13, 2010 7:56 pm

Yeah. I'll watch any L&O incarnation, and there's almost always one on. I've preferred SVU in recent years. It sounds like only the original series is getting the axe, and SVU, Criminal Intent, and the upcoming L.A. flavored edition will still be around.

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Re: Law and Order

#3 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu May 13, 2010 9:23 pm

Always preferred the original, as the spin-offs seemed a little more geared to the CSI crowd to me, especially SVU. L&O, to me is one step above the sorta cop shows you see now on the networks, while being one below the more intricate crime dramas on cable. But it's certainly one of those shows that delivers, even given the limited nature of network TV. As far as this recent news, someone in the article I read who is supposedly close to these talks is saying it isn't a done deal yet, so don't start handing out the shovels yet folks.

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Re: Law and Order

#4 Post by zombeaner » Thu May 13, 2010 9:40 pm

I love the show, it is like comfort food. It is always on some channel, and it always delivers. I swear, there isn't a day part that you can't find Law & Order on some channel.

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Polybius
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Re: Law and Order

#5 Post by Polybius » Fri May 14, 2010 3:14 am

Long time fan of the mothership, recently started rewatching it for the first time since Orbach's departure (I'm cool with all of the cops who followed him but Fred Thompson can burn in Hell and Elisabeth Rohm was a boring cypher), and I was enjoying watching McCoy turn into Schiff as Cutter turned into Circa 1995 McCoy.

Of the spinoffs, I dearly love SVU. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would compare it to any of those tiresome CSI variations. One of the main things I always liked most about SVU is that they broke Wolf's template of rarely dwelling on the cast's private lives. Some of the best moments of that show have been Stabler and Benson dealing with their demons, often none too successfully.

As for CI, it's always been a bit too gimmicky for my tastes (the whole Agatha Christie/Charlie Chan "I've gathered everyone together here..." tactic wore thin pretty quickly), but I always enjoyed Vincent and Erbe's work together and the people they were surrounded with (Vance, Sheridan and Bogosian) were always top drawer.

I really liked the reimportation of Chris Noth and his wonderful Mike Logan character from Staten Island exile a few years ago. It was a lot of fun to see the once green detective be the vet and pass along all of the info he'd learned from Greevey, Cerreta and Briscoe to his younger partners.

I'm kind of sorry they're being so unceremoniously dumped, but NBC is being run by people who seem intent on burning 30 Rockefeller Plaza down to collect the insurance check at this point, so I'm not really shocked.

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Re: Law and Order

#6 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri May 14, 2010 5:26 pm

Well, it is being canceled and replaced by a Los Angeles version of the show. I think this is one of those times when I understand the phrase "pop will eat itself".

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Matt
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Re: Law and Order

#7 Post by Matt » Fri May 14, 2010 6:14 pm

The cancellation has as much to do with low ratings for the show as it does that it is an extraordinarily expensive show to produce. An L.A. spin-off will probably draw about equal ratings, but will cost much less to make.

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Re: Law and Order

#8 Post by Polybius » Fri May 14, 2010 6:55 pm

There is an emerging meme that Wolf has turned off the core audience of late by shoehorning too much liberalism into the show's scripts.

It's patent nonsense (God knows it wasn't the case when they had McCoy wipe his ass with his character's whole history and personality in the years after 9-11, not to mention the way six or seven minutes were carved out of each episode for ol' Fred to blather on at length with his Jesse Helmesian cracker barrel horseshit), but expect it to take root and be something you have to fight when discussing this in the future.

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domino harvey
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Re: Law and Order

#9 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 14, 2010 7:42 pm

Can't beat that out of nowhere throw-away reveal at the end of the episode where Elisabeth Rohm gets fired that she was gay-- take that, liberalism charges! Law and Order immediately post-Orbach is among the worst TV ever. I am allergic to Dennis Farina in even the best of circumstances, but he was just abysmal on the show, and God, trainwrecks like the Chevy Chase/Mel Gibson ep were cancelable offenses. But it had righted itself in a way most shows that have droned on this long don't and this is a real shame-- and you just know Wolf was going to tear it all down in the last episode of the never-to-be-filmed final season, too.

The first four seasons of Criminal Intent are just compulsively rewatchable. TV needed a new Sherlock Holmes that wasn't painfully wacky and while it's impossible to not queen it up a bit with any Sherlock-aping role, at least the hamminess of the performance is bolstered by scenarios worthy of overplaying. I used to love SVU, but it started to show wear for me around season six. I'd be interested in visiting the more recent seasons to see if I missed much, but it just got a bit repetitive for me.

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Re: Law and Order

#10 Post by Polybius » Sat May 15, 2010 2:09 am

domino harvey wrote:Can't beat that out of nowhere throw-away reveal at the end of the episode where Elisabeth Rohm gets fired that she was gay-- take that, liberalism charges!
Lance Manion's take on that.

I especially like the idea that Serena probably weirded Branch out, although he seems more like the kind of guy who would beg to be allowed to watch.

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Re: Law and Order

#11 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon May 17, 2010 1:00 am

Looks like NBC is in talks with the producers to do a movie to send the show off properly.

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Jeff
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Re: Law and Order

#12 Post by Jeff » Mon May 17, 2010 9:02 pm


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Re: Law and Order

#13 Post by dadaistnun » Thu May 20, 2010 9:04 am

I haven't watched a L&O series in years (was a big fan of the original show but started to tune out post-Orbach, never really took to SVU, have never seen a single CI). I've caught bits here & there when channel hopping, but never really got back into it.

So imagine my surprise last night when I happen upon SVU and fucking Isabelle Huppert is the guest star. And then this morning I discover that Leslie Caron and Jeanne Moreau have also been on the show. Maybe I shouldn't have tuned out after all.

Gotta say though: I thought Sharon Stone was pretty terrible in what I saw last night. I generally have no opinion on her one way or the other -- like a lot of people, I though she was good in Casino, but she hasn't made much of an impression on me otherwise. Of course she wasn't done any favors by having to act against someone that could eat her for breakfast.

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domino harvey
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Re: Law and Order

#14 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 21, 2010 5:09 pm

If you only watched SVU at the beginning, it got much better once they dumped Dean Winters and Michelle Hurd. And they consistently have good guest stars. Martin Short had a great role as a psychic a few years ago, and who could forget the infamous Mark Paul Gosselaar/Elizabeth Banks porno ep? And Will Arnett as a pedophile... :shock:

But above all else, you owe it to yourself to watch the early years of Criminal Intent. I think there's a two-pack of the first two seasons for only ~$20 at Amazon right now

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Re: Law and Order

#15 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri May 21, 2010 8:53 pm

I thought Matthew Modine was quite effective in his role on the show, though it was quite a drop-off from the usual roles he plays.

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Polybius
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Re: Law and Order

#16 Post by Polybius » Sat May 22, 2010 2:30 am

The relationship between Fin and Munch is one of the highlights of the series.

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Re: Law and Order

#17 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat May 22, 2010 4:55 pm

Belzer does good on SVU, but it's nowhere near his work on Homicide.

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Polybius
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Re: Law and Order

#18 Post by Polybius » Sun May 23, 2010 12:33 am

That's true.

"Tim, I don't know about you but...I don't want to see Munch run out a bunt." - Det. Frank Pembleton.

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Svevan
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Re: Law and Order

#19 Post by Svevan » Mon May 24, 2010 10:31 pm

NPR has aired a couple of interviews with executive producers and writers of Law and Order this last week. I caught one with Dick Wolf on Fresh Air from 2003 and another with Rene Balcer on Talk of the Nation today. I'm posting them here for group interest, but I also thought, while listening to both shows, that the two creatives were very defensive at times about their work. Here's the two examples I could find, and in retrospect they're kinda minor. On the radio it sounded like these guys were exasperated with the journalists who were trying to probe the show - perhaps because in its stripped down form, there's not much to probe. Law and Order is what it is, very up front and honest. Terry Gross loves to look deeper and I don't think Dick Wolf was buying it..
CONAN: But it was a show that was both famous for predictability. You had the same characters - from season to season, anyway. For several seasons, the pretty much the same cast continued. But also, the show was famous for its twist, the internal turns that every story we take.

Mr. BALCER: That's correct. And, you never knew at the end of the show whether the bad guys would get convicted or not. You know, there was always question mark. So that's why the - predictability, I don't know how predictable it was, ultimately.
GROSS: "Law & Order," one of the things it's known for is that a lot of the shows are the kind of ripped-from-the-headlines type of shows where they're based on actual news stories.

Mr. WOLF: No. They're not based on them. We steal the headline, but not the body copy.

GROSS: Oh, really?

Mr. WOLF: Yeah. I mean, if you actually have knowledge of any of the cases as they unroll, that's that case, it never is. The headline, the top-of-mind awareness, is what we're after, and then the reality is most real-life murders take a very predictable road to fruition, that most murders are solved within the first 48 hours, and most people are convicted. That does not give you the twist and turns that make for an entertaining hour of television.
Gross took that one like a trooper, but Wolf sounded really mean with his gruff "Nope, sorry, you're wrong." Maybe it's a New York thing that I just don't get.

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Re: Law and Order

#20 Post by Polybius » Tue May 25, 2010 12:22 am

All of that "Ripped from the headlines" jazz delayed my getting really interested in this show for a few years. That and Moriarty's presence (although I eventually grew, mostly through reruns, to have a bit of a soft spot for Stone, especially the way he could make the word "Sir" the effective equivalent of "asshole" with his inflections.)

If this turns out to have been the series finale, Balcer stepped up to the plate admirably. Epatha and Sam have been in the saddle for a long time and I think their contributions are overlooked (her) and taken for granted (him.) They each deserve a great deal of credit for their holding the fort down, even when it was being occupied by the incompetent likes of Rohm and Thompson or even the great, (but miscast), Weist.

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Re: Law and Order

#21 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri May 28, 2010 1:21 am

Is CI exclusively on USA now?

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Polybius
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Re: Law and Order

#22 Post by Polybius » Fri May 28, 2010 3:50 am

Yes. Has been for a couple of years.

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dad1153
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Re: Law and Order

#23 Post by dad1153 » Fri May 28, 2010 1:34 pm

I'm the luckiest TV viewer in the world. I didn't care for "L&O" until Labor Day 1999 when A&E ran one of their usual day-long marathons of episodes. Saw a couple including a really bad one with Michael Imperioli playing a limo driver infatuated with a model, but something about the dynamics of the format seemed appealing. Started watching the weekday A&E repeats at 11PM and was hooked. Then "Special Victims Unit" premiered and I started watching that (Jefferies is every bit as bad as advertised but I kind-of liked Dean Winters' Det. Cassidy, to date the only regular cast member that we know slept with Benson! :o), then I started catching up the NBC new episodes, then "Criminal Intent" in 2001 (the week after 9/11... anyone remember the special voice-over intro they had that week on all three "L&O" shows mentioned the terrorist attacks?).

I love all three "Law & Order" shows equally. Some days I like "Criminal Intent" more (the Nicole Wallace episodes in particular but pretty much anything that Rene Balcer wrote), other days "SVU" tickles my fancy (the 2nd to 5th seasons were the peak of the show, when whole episodes were devoted to Munch or Finn and it wasn't 'The Benson & Stabler' show almost all the time) and most days I can count on the mothership "L&O" to have at least one good repeat (preferably with Kincaid or Carmichael as Assistant ADA, although the Ben Stone episodes are beloved to me since TNT will only show them overnights on weekends). Betweem the three shows there are close to 700 repeats on constant rotation over half-a-dozen cable and local TV channels (Saturday mornings on WGN, Sunday nights on Bravo, all-day Monday and Tuesday on USA, Thursday nights on Oxygen, weekday afternoons on TNT, etc.). I've seen every episode from every "L&O" show at least twice (except the new one's from the just-concluded season... will catch them again when they get repeated on cable), some so many got damn times I'm reciting dialogue along with the witnesses and characters. And no, "Conviction" doesn't count as "L&O" canon (but "Trial By Jury" does). I can pick-and-choose wich episodes to watch or not based on a plot synopsis (was never really good with the names) but even the one's I skip I make a mental note to catch them again next (or the time after next) chance they get put back on rotation. Yes, I'm a "Law & Order" whore! :P

That said the current incarnations of the show were lacking this year. "CI" is the most consistent and better of the three right now (Burrows and Goldblum are playing their roles as a partnership of equals, a refreshing change from the 'Master Goren drags third-wheel Eames around' format) but it's not as good as it was. "SVU" has been on a major creative rut for the past four seasons (the Chester Lake year and the year before the just-concluded season were particularly wretched) but there's something bonding about having been with Cragen/Benson/Stabler/Finn/Munch for all these years that makes me put up with the crap the writers are giving them to do. They just have to stop with the rotating ADA's and settle on one that isn't supermodel-pretty but can't act (i.e. Michaela McManus! :-&). Van Buren was given 'THE ARC' of the season on the mothership and it was OK (too much Ernie Hudson though, and he was only in with cameo guest appearances) but I just don't like it when "L&O" gets personal unless it involves the case at hand (like the episode where we learned Bernard had a son, or Connie had slept with a colleague turned defense attorney scum). Anthony Anderson is dead weight and candidate to become the next show-killing Ted McGinley, but the strength of Sisto, De la Garza, Roache and Waterston (as the elder statement with a conscience that "L&O" hasn't had since Adam Schiff retired) more than compensated for that. In a weird way I don't feel like "L&O" is dead because I can't conceive of such an excellent and fine-tuned TV production not getting picked-up by an ambitious and deep-pocketed cable network with taste. TNT has passed on saving "L&O" though (http://www.latimesblogs.latimes.com/sho ... umors.html) so it's either a Hail Mary or a wrap-up TV movie next year to end the 20-year journey on a whimper of a note. Oh well, there's always rerun heaven! :|

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Polybius
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Re: Law and Order

#24 Post by Polybius » Sat May 29, 2010 4:40 am

dad1153 wrote:Some days I like "Criminal Intent" more (the Nicole Wallace episodes in particular but pretty much anything that Rene Balcer wrote)
How brilliant was it to make Goren's Moriarity a knee buckling beautiful sociopath who is on his intellectual level?
other days "SVU" tickles my fancy (the 2nd to 5th seasons were the peak of the show, when whole episodes were devoted to Munch or Finn and it wasn't 'The Benson & Stabler' show almost all the time)
That was always a major strength of that show. Sometimes it was Liv and Fin, sometimes Stabler and Munch...you literally didn't know from week to week how it would play out. I love Benson and Stabler together but the episode where he went to Prague by himself and the one where she kept the little Honduran girl on the phone until they could track her down are some of the series' greatest moments and those were done without the other partner in the mix at all.
and most days I can count on the mothership "L&O" to have at least one good repeat (preferably with Kincaid or Carmichael as Assistant ADA
No love for Jamie? I liked the three of them in sequence about equally, with a slight nod to the soulful and quietly strong Claire.
Anthony Anderson is dead weight and candidate to become the next show-killing Ted McGinley, but the strength of Sisto, De la Garza, Roache and Waterston (as the elder statement with a conscience that "L&O" hasn't had since Adam Schiff retired) more than compensated for that.
I made the same point about Sam earlier. It's clearly by design (McCoy drifts toward Schiff-hood while Cutter needles him exactly like McCoy once did Schiff) and the two of them play it perfectly.

I know I'm not going to change your mind, but I'm cool with Anderson. I like the dynamic between Bernard and Lupo.

I loved the scene, either this past year or last, when one of the civillians they were questioning introduced them to another one as Bernard (pointing to Lupo) and Lupo (to Bernard). The half hearted way Sisto sort of pointed to Anderson, started to correct them and then just let if go, all in a couple of flashes, was wonderful. A small moment but one that's stuck in my mind.

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dad1153
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Re: Law and Order

#25 Post by dad1153 » Sat May 29, 2010 5:27 pm

Is CI exclusively on USA now?
New episodes, yes. NBC will be showing re-purposed repeats of "CI" this summer (no schedule yet) and, of course, USA can repeat their batch of "CI"-produced episodes as often as they want.

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