TV: Law & Order

Law & Order

Love this fucking show. My ex got me into it, L&O: Special Victims Unit is by far the best. I like the actors and the storylines WAY better. All of the shows grab my interest though. I love how they show re-runs often on TBS, I think???

I know someone else has gotta love the suspense of Law & Order!!! So many twists and turns I love how half the time I NEVER expect whats going to go down or the ending. Tricky producer bastards

-weez

I love the original. L&O: SVU is a bit too graphic for my tastes and L&O: Criminal Intent, in my opinion, just plain sucks.

Original L&O will always be the best. The show isn't going to be the same w/ out Jerry Orbach tho.

R.I.P Lenny.

yeah it won't be the same without him. I have the fist season on DVD and watch it all the time.

jerry orbach isn't in the first season. and every law and order spinoff sucks. if i see one more episode of SVU where either chris meloni goes batshit because he's got kids or mariska hagaritay goes psycho because of a rape that results in pregnancy my head is gonna explode. get a new gimmick already.

me and the ladyfriend were incredibly sad when lenny died. what a sad moment.

and on a side note, did anyone see will arnet(gob from arrested development) on conan a few months ago when he did air guitar to the theme song. it was by far one of the funniest things i have ever seen. he was rocking out, conan was busting the flute, genius

i can't keep all the shows and spin offs straight. occassionally, they even will be running on NBC and USA at the same time. some of the casts are very good and others make me skwirm the acting is so bad. the one with Dennis Farina isn't that great but the Jerry Orbach episodes are indeed the best. One of the casts has a hot blonde chick who talks like she's reading off cue cards the whole time. It's hit or miss.

Wow, im surprised at others dissapointment in the other shows.

-weez

michael said:

jerry orbach isn't in the first season. and every law and order spinoff sucks. if i see one more episode of SVU where either chris meloni goes batshit because he's got kids or mariska hagaritay goes psycho because of a rape that results in pregnancy my head is gonna explode. get a new gimmick already.

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lol! yeah i really get sick how they make her out to be weak just because she's the woman.. and how he gets all silent and angry - b/c he's the man.

it's tired

i prefer meloni in OZ

I love Law and Order - and I really must say i like most of the versions of it. I'm definitely a fan of SVU, although I do agree that the stereotyping in the characters gets a bit old at times.

and look S_F, I'm posting here!!!!!

I love the original the best-SVU grates on me cause I can't stand Mariska, but I do LOVE Munch to death. Munch is the MAN.

I loved TBJ, but NBC did the kiss of death to it by putting it fridays at 10-they should have given CI that time slot. Now they're trying to save CI by putting West Wing and Crossing Jordan on either side of it. I admit-it does give me more reason to watch it, no point in going up, watching West Wing, coming down for an hour and then going back up for Crossing Jordan.

mike logan (chris noth) is back with l&o in ci this season
yay

god forbid noth has to investigate any wrongdoing centered around a catholic, because there's another overdone l&o stereotype.

some things ive noticed about l&o

-anytime they get a call on a cell phone, its a big break in the case

-when everything looks like its gone to shit, Mccoy always finds some radical new way of twisting legal language to fix it

-most of the time when they go to talk to the old guy head DA, they catch him right as he's putting on his hat and coat and leaving the office

-sometimes, simply recounting the brutality of the crime is a surefire way of securing the conviction

Show is great but sometimes a little too formulaic.

This show is more amusing to me than anything else which is why I can stand watching it from time to time when someone has it on. I find I can't identify with any of the characters and everyone's role seems completely cliche. I agree with all of pennywise's complaints about the show being overly formulaic as well.

I don't really see what all the fuss is about.

Love this franchise but it does need some fresh writing. I thought TRIAL BY JUSY was great & cannot understand why it got axed. Bene Neuwirth was fun to watch & I'm hoping they spin her character into one of the other three shows.

Of the 3 I now prefer SVU although it is showing signs of age (like Michael points out they REALLy can't have another Meloni kid freakout for a while).

BTW one L&O cliche I've noticed: If a judge is going to make a stupid ruling or if the judge turns out to be incompetent or corrupt it will ALWAYS be a white male judge. Almost every time you see a white male judge on any of the L&O shows you know a stupid ruling is coming. Unless of course he has an ethnic name.

of course it is formulaic... it has been on 15 years and they know what works and what doesnt (the abundance of bad spin offs and sorry episodes shows that)
but i agree it needs new fresh blood to keep it alive and in the top 20 or 30 in the ratings.
but really... every time they get a phone call it is a break in the case- well yeah, would you want to see phone calls that arent? pointless chats with mommy for the main dectivites? it is an easy, albiet overused, way of moving the story along without a jump- the continuity is there and it makes a nice exit scene.

they have been playing the safe -stick with what you know works- forumlas for the orginal law & order series while trying their hand at new ideas with the tbj and other spin offs... which have failed. what would you do? possibly take down the series with new innovations? yes it is failing, slowly, on its own but i doubt anyone wants to put the final blow on it with something they arent sure will work.

imo they could make it more character based, getting more into the personal lives of the detectives and so forth. Right now stabler always plays angry and benson always plays protective. They are both decent actors, they could do so much more.

btw - they could get important info on the case from other sources besides the phone.

no, they tried that shit with getting into their personal lives. it sucked.

pennywise said:

imo they could make it more character based, getting more into the personal lives of the detectives and so forth. Right now stabler always plays angry and benson always plays protective. They are both decent actors, they could do so much more.
.

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Actually the whole point of the show is to NOT have too much of the cops personal lives. The focus of the show is the crime, how the cops solve the case & how the case is prosecuted. L&O fans don't WANT to know too much about the cop's personal lives because then the shows become like every other lame-o cop drama that has come before. Too many shows, like LA LAW & NYPD BLUE, began to suck once they devolved into soap operas about the personal lives of the main characters.

LA LAW started out VERY strong as an interesting look at how lawyers defended cases. People tuned in to see the courtroom scenes & how the lawyers built a case. Along the way we'd get glimpses of their personal lives but for the most part the show, at it's best, was about how these people did their jobs. I can remember exactly when the show Jumped The Shark: it got a new producer who publically stated that "I want to move the focus to the personal stories" . The next season was like a lame soap opera aboout one of the partners recovereing from a beating during the LA riots. More of the show focused on the characters at home. Viewers tuned out in droves & NBC ended up paying Stephen Bochco a WAD of cash to come back & prodice another season. It was too late though as the damage was done & the show which had been the #1 show on TV got cancelled.

I dont mean turn it into a soap opera, I just mean do something to make the characters a little less one dimensional than "the angry family man" or "the fierce lioness protector". If thats all they can do then its inevitably going to get stale and boring. The show needs to evolve.