Law & Order

Law & Order creator Dick Wolf started his fourth series on the franchise this year with Law & Order: Los Angeles.  The original L&O started in 1990 but I didn't start watching until about 10 years later.  I have watched L&O Criminal Intent pretty faithfully (through several sets of detectives) but was completely dedicated to Law & Order: SVU since its beginning in 1999.

I fondly remember watching SVU in my college apartment on my futon late at night wondering what kind of danger Benson and Stabler would find themselves in this week. I never missed an episode, literally.  Around 2006 I started to notice that the show was becoming a little outrageous (and not in a good way) but I pushed that thought out of my mind.  How dare I question the plausibility of the situations on my precious evening drama.  With the acclaimed acting skills of Ice-T and levity of Richard Belzer I convinced myself to over look the fact that each of the episodes was exactly like the last.

Finally in 2009 my husband staged a Law & Order: SVU intervention.  He sat me down and told me it was time to give up the show.  He told me that SVU had become so dumb that it was a waste of my time to watch it and I should move on to bigger and better shows.  I made one last ditch effort to convince him (and myself) that it was still a good show.  I said, "let me tell you what exciting things happened on the last episode!"  He said, "Let me guess.  Someone was murdered and one of the detectives took it personally and went on a rogue mission to avenge the death of the victim?  And that same detective took it one step too far and put themselves in a grey moral area and ended up being chastised by the Captain?"  I had to concede and admit that every episode did in fact have the same plot line.  So it was a great 10 year run but I am glad I stopped watching.

Enter 2011 and new show Law & Order Los Angeles!!  The cast is weird: Skeet Ulrich from Scream, Alfred Molina from Spiderman, Terrence Howard from Hustle and Flow, and some dude with a mustache.  Surprisingly, mustache guy turned out to be the most entertaining of them all.  Sadly, L&O Los Angeles was cancelled before they even finished airing the first season.  Oh well.  I still have Law & Order: Criminal Intent which premieres next week welcoming back Vincent D'Onofrio.  (aka the guy from Men In Black, "Edgar, your skin is hanging off your bones")