March 13, 2007
Two good examples of why I don't watch Law & Order anymore
Time was I watched Law & Order every week. The writing was compelling, the legal issues well handled, the characters consistently interesting. Things started to slip when they started to spin out the franchise, and went over the cliff after Jerry Orbach died. I accidently caught about fifteen minutes of an episode last fall: the storyline was predictable and boring, the writing flaccid, the characters interchangeable, the politics oblique. Heck, watching Studio 60 was more interesting.
Here's the best explanation of what happened to Law & Order:
Having watched as the cable news networks stole the Anna Nicole Smith story right out from under the nose of "Access Hollywood" and "E! True Hollywood Story," Dick Wolf has lost no time planting NBC's flag in the long-form telling of the former Guess jeans model's untimely death before it gets grabbed by Discovery Channel, or ABC News.Posted by Steve-O at March 13, 2007 02:22 PM | TrackBackWolf will do the definitive piece on the subject when his "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" gives it the old ripped-from-the-headlines treatment just in time for the May ratings race.
Yes, some license is sure to be taken in the telling, for the sake of art (Fox News Channel's online gossip column says Larry Birkhead will vanish -- hooray -- and Anna Nicole's sister and mom are being merged into one glorious character) but no more than in, say, Discovery's documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus."
Kristy Swanson -- you remember, the former "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" star who more recently had a baby with her skating partner on Fox's "Skating With Celebrities" -- well, she's in talks to play Anna Nicole. The heiress died mysteriously in Florida last month at age 39, about five months after giving birth to a daughter, Dannielynn, in the Bahamas, which in turn was about three days before the methadone-fueled death of her 20-year-old son at the Bahamian hospital where he'd come to meet his new sister.
And, in what would be this year's most brilliant bit of casting by far, Jon Lovitz is rumored to be in talks to play Howard K. Stern, the lawyer, alleged lover and one of, I think we're up to at least four, men who claim to be the father of motherless potential billionaire Dannielynn.
Meanwhile, details are far sketchier on the plans of NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" to do a ripped-from-the-headlines version of the Lisa Nowak diapered-astronaut/would-be-kidnapper story.
Dumb question: Would Kristy Swanson be required to get ridiculouly huge implants to carry off this role?
Posted by: Gary at March 13, 2007 03:22 PMI quit watching Law & Order when it moved to Friday nights at 10:00, opposite NUMB3RS. A fun geeky cop show beats a worn-out tired plain cop show, every time.I never watched any of the spinoffs at all; they were just too nasty.
I agree that L&O lost something vital when Jerry Orbach left. I'm not sure why. Every other cast change had strengthened the show, but losing Detective Brisco was like a dagger to the heart. The show had already worn down a lot because of the relentless pressure toward PCness, but it was still watchable right up to Brisco's departure. I caught an episode of it a few weeks ago, during a rerun period, and it has virtually nothing in common with the show that premiered in 1990, or even the show that I still liked enough to watch it multiple times a day on cable a mere four years ago. The grittiness is gone, the hard edge is gone, the intellectual aspect is gone, and all that's left is tabloid TV.
Not to mention, when Chris Noth left.
And they got really preachy and Liberal in their leanings....
Posted by: GroovyVic at March 13, 2007 05:13 PMActually, there's a good article to be written on the politics of law in L&O. The series started out in a sort of Fort Apache the Bronx sort of mode, where you got the full sense of Dinkins-era NY City. I mean, you fully expected Snake Plisskin to come parasailing in at any moment to rescue the President. Then Rudy became Mayor, and the show got more conservative in its treatment of law--sterner, tougher, more, well, law and order-ey. Then when Pataki came in and brought back the de jure death penalty to New York, Wolf brought in the chick DA with the breathy Texas accent, and every week they were threating to give every criminal the death penalty. Heck, even the Waterson character was citing Scalia's precedents---not liking them per se, but using them when they forwarded the interests of their office. For the year or so after 9/11, while Waterson's character still wore an American flag lapel pin, it was even more hard core. Then around 03-04, they started drifting to the left, where now (if you read the plot summaries) every other week is some derranged soldier killing celebrity babies or innocent Sikhs because, you know, all our Jarheads like nothing better than killing brown people or something. That's my memory of the series, it would be neat though to do a content analysis and analyze the conservative/liberal handling of legal issues on the show over the course of its run. But that's Steve the professor not the LLamabutcher talking.
Posted by: Steve the LLamabutcher at March 13, 2007 06:21 PMI just watched for the eye candy. Chris "Mr Big" Noth, Benjamin Bratt.....Fred Thompson....!!!
Posted by: GroovyVic at March 14, 2007 07:31 AMNot to mention Paul Sorvino.....mmmmm, ravioli.
Posted by: Steve the LLamabutcher at March 14, 2007 09:47 AM
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