There are some older shows that are somewhat addictive. When they are on, I will inevitably watch them. One of those shows is Law & Order.
I'm talking about the original.
I'm tried to watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit but I cannot account for it's continuing popularity. It is way too lurid and disturbing for my tastes.
In addition, a new spin off was launched this spring, Law & Order: Organized Crime with two more green lit of next season, Law & Order: Hate Crimes and Law & Order: For the Defense.
But nothing beats the original series.
Mostly I love the original Law & Order for the stark simplicity of it's format, laid out in it's opening narration each episode.
In the criminal justice system,
the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups:
the police who investigate crime,
and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.
These are their stories.
For the first half hour, we follow two police detectives who piece together various clues to finally lead to an arrest for this week's murder.
In the 2nd half hour, we watch a a pair of Prosecutors from the New York County District Attorney's Office, an Executive Assistant District Attorney and an Assistant District Attorney. Their job is to make sure the case assembled by the cops in the first half hour sticks the landing and the accused murderer goes to jail.
Not all episodes are that cut and dry. Sometimes the attorneys show up early in the police part of the show and sometimes the detectives have more leg work to do in the attorney half.
Sometimes like an episode of the Simpsons, an episode of Law & Order starts in a way that is far different from where the show ends. The instigating murder in the first half leads our prosecutors into a totally different crime in the second half.
There are certain tropes that are frequently invoked.
Finding the dead body.
Usually involves a couple of people engaged in some inane personal banter while jogging or walking to work or going to a restaurant or what have you when "OH MY GOD!" It's a dead body!
The detective has a pithy comment.
The longest serving police detective on the show was Lennie Briscoe played with acerbic wit and timing by Jerry Orbach. Showing up at the crime scene, Briscoe will inevitably have a snarky quip to make.
I ain't got time to stop doing my job to talk about murder.
Comedian John Mulaney has observed this recurring feature as the detectives are trying to piece together what happened and some potential witness or source will not stop doing their damn job to talk to the cops even though someone has DIED! Well, someone may have been MURDERED but these boxes are not going to load themselves into this van!
The longest serving Executive Assistant District Attorney was Jack McCoy played by Sam Waterston. I would comment on McCoy's ability to scowl but I thinking scowling is Waterston's normal resting face.
A number of Assistant District Attorneys came and went over the course of the series. My favorite was Abbie Carmichael played by Angie Harmon. Her Texas drawl and her forthright approach made her distinctive from other ADAs.
My favorite detective partner for Brisco was Jesse Martin's Ed Greene. I know Benjamin Bratt's Rey Curtis had a devoted fan base because women thought he was sexy as hell. But I found Ed Greene to be more relatable.
The police side of the show never quite found it's way after Jerry Orbach left the show. Dennis Farina was brought in to replace him as Det. Joe Fontana. Farina has spent too much time in various movies and TV shows playing mob thugs to be acceptable as a good guy.
Generally, the original Law & Order was pretty much one and done episodes that focused on the murder of the week and the subsequent legal battles spinning out of that murder. Not much was done with the principal characters other than oblique references. (Briscoe would drop a quip about his gambling issues and his many divorces.)
There were some attempts at ongoing sub plots involving the cast. Curtis's marital woes and his wife's subsequent diagnosis of multiple sclerosis played out over several episodes. ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell) had problems with finding time to spend with her young daughter and her ex-husband's attempts to take away her custody rights. L&O fans were not entirely on board with such efforts at such soap opera plotting so these fell by the wayside with some exceptions.
S. Epatha Merkerson squad leader Lieutenant Anita Van Buren got an ongoing storyline in the show's 20th and final season about Van Buren's battle with cervical cancer. If the show had not been cancelled, it was going to be Merkerson's last season with the show. I loved Van Buren who ran her squad like a fierce den mother; she supported her officers but she would not put up with any of their shit either.
With the original series running from September 13, 1990 to May 24, 2010, Law & Order re-runs are a time capsule into evolving technology, fashion and attitudes. Fax machines and phone booths and pagers are part of the L&O landscape. Some episodes revolving around race or sexual identity might be a bit awkward in light of evolving perspectives on those topics.
With the show's focus on cops and prosecutors, it might be easy to dismiss the show as a being platform bolstering those institutions. Yes, our starring detectives and attorneys are depicted as good guys as fighting the good fight but they are flawed human beings. They make mistakes. Sometimes you can see the point where the detectives make a questionable decision that you know the defense attorney will make hay over. ("Your honor, the officer's warrant was explicitly for the defendant's house and not his tool shed.") Sometimes Jack McCoy is too damned determined to get a conviction. But these slip ups are called out and acknowledged.
The criminal justice system is on full display in Law & Order, warts and all. It may be a bit idealized. The defendant is always guilty even if the jury doesn't always agree. But even if idealized in the world of Law & Order, the criminal justice system is still a messy business.
And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase. Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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