The Unemployed Writer

I love Law and Order. Everyone loves Law and Order. They’d have to. Otherwise, why the hell would it be on every channel for at least 6 of the 24 program hours. You cannot flip through every channel without running into Law and Order at least once. The other day, after All Star game, TNT played the show for 24 hours straight. I watched a couple of episodes, went to bed, woke up and my roommate was still watching it. I retreated to my room for a few hours to work and came back out….and he it was still on. And yet I sat and watched it each time. And by the grace of more than two dozen seasons and 500 episodes between all three shows, you’re going to stand a decent chance of catching a new one fairly often. Unless it’s Criminal Intent, in which case, I’ve seen them all already.What makes this show so compelling though.

First off, they always take stuff from the news. Almost every episode is based on something that happened in the world and thus people are automatically invested. They throw in a couple of extra murders, and now we’re gossip mongers….”ooh, what if?”

Then they throw the exact same formula for the show out every time. You might think this would kill the suspense. But no. It’s a trick. It’s really their way of getting you to think that the show is predictable, that you can tag along with the detectives and help them out. For you to yell at the stupid defense attorney, “Bail?! Your client doesn’t deserve no stinking bail!” in one of the least important but always present scenes in the show. It’s Law and Order being very orderly and yet opening itself up to break rules and surprise everyone when it does. Most of all, it makes every episode about the crime. It’s not about the detectives, or the lawyers, the writers, or the director of the show. You could train a monkey to direct an episode of Law and Order. No, it’s about the crime and the solving of that crime. And that’s it.

Which is why the two spinoff shows are so interesting. These shows actually went out of their way to create characters for their detectives. The first, SVU, is my least favorite. Here’s why: the characters are all over the top. That’s it. Yeah, they’ve been in SVU for too long. Yeah, they see terrible things done to innocent people. But, all the detectives see horrible things and these ones get a little nutty sometimes. Stabler’s an ass. He’s good at being an ass, but he’s an ass. And he keeps being an ass, and for whatever reason he still has his job. Why does he still have his job? Television Aura of Mystery on that on. And Ice-T? Are you kidding me? Who thought putting an ex-gangster-rapper in a crime drama about sexually heinous crimes would be a good idea?

Criminal Intent however is one of the best shows on television. It’s basically you’re Law and Order setup with an old school Columbo feel to it. They cut out the court rooms because that’s not why we’re watching. Bobby Gorin is so damn good, he can always get the confession out of his suspects. And he is good, frighteningly, ‘wow, is he special?’ good. The man knows Eastern African dialects, Ancient Egyptian cyphers, what color an ink stain should be through six sheets of wet paper and can read a man like a book. He’s a psychological safe cracker and when he gets in, the episode is over. The joy of the episode however is watching him get in. Vincent Donofrio is therefore one of the coolest people on television.

Law and Order is a staple of any good couch potato, TV dwelling 20-something. I’ll bet a dollar I watch at least one episode of it tonight.