‘Law & Order’ is fresh and urgent again
Did I say there was nothing to watch on TV? Well, I lied. Law & Order returns tonight with a two-hour premiere of its 18th season. And all of a sudden, the show feels fresh and urgent again.
I’ve dabbled a bit with Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit over the years, and I like them just fine, but I’d fallen out of the habit of regularly watching the original series -- though it’s impossible not to stumble across reruns all over the cableverse at all hours of the day. But no matter how many plotlines L&O ripped from the headlines, it was feeling a bit, well, moribund. No more. With a simple switchout of a few cast members (which I wrote about earlier at Film.com), the show has been almost completely revitalized.
The two hours of L&O tonight -- airing from 9 to 11pm Eastern on NBC -- are two back-to-back episodes. In the first one, “Called Home,” Detective Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) gets a new partner in Detective Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), who returns home from “overseas,” where he’s been working “intelligence” for several years when his brother dies, apparently the victim of a drug overdose. (The ethics of a cop investigating the murder of a member of his own family gets smoothed over pretty quickly.) Sisto’s Lupo is a quiet, thoughtful guy, perhaps not what you’d expect if you’ve seen his performances in Six Feet Under or Waitress, but the same intensity the actor always brings is in full force, it’s just more sublimated here. I’m looking forward to seeing how the show works Lupo’s mysterious “intelligence” background into the upcoming stories -- the series has done terrorism stories before, but now, with Lupo and his special talents, they could take on a whole new potency.
On the Order side, there’s a new prosecuting attorney in Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), who brings a particularly pragmatic attitude to his cases. In tonight’s second episode, “Darkness” -- which starts off with a kidnapping and gets tangled into Enron-esque corporate malfeasance -- Cutter makes a call to take a legal shortcut that comes back to bite him on the ass. It looks like he’s going to be butting heads with the more idealistic Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), his boss the D.A., over the best way to put the bad guys behind bars.
A skeptical practicality: it’s the defining characteristic of both Lupo and Cutter, like even though they’re part of the system, they realize it can’t quite be trusted to do the right thing. They get things done, and it’s not about bending rules but about making up new ones to deal with circumstances the rules never imagined. It’s what makes the show suddenly feel like it’s of the moment again, and I love it.
(Technorati tags: Law & Order, Jeremy Sisto, Linus Roache)
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comments
posted by Orodemniades (Thu Jan 03 08, 9:13PM)
I like the new characters, but I was pretty 'meh' about the first episode, and didn't hang around for the second.
Good to see Brad Dourif doing his thang in a non SF genre, though.
posted by MaryAnn (Thu Jan 03 08, 10:19PM)
I love the new characters, and both actors, so maybe I'm a little biased, but I've now seen the first five episodes of the new L&O season (NBC must be happy with 'em to send so many -- I was expecting only the 2-hour premiere), and there's some really interesting stuff coming up. Give it a chance...
posted by Clayj (Fri Jan 04 08, 8:43AM)
I really liked both new characters, especially Linus Roache. Love how the guy is always playing with his Blackberry; he seems like the sort of EADA who's Googling the names of everyone involved in a case to see what else they've been up to that might help him win a case.
I like that Sam Waterston hasn't been relegated to the typical L&O DA role previously filled by Steven Hill, Dianne Wiest, and Fred Thompson. We may not see him in court, but we got more of him in those two episodes than we ever got of any of the other DAs.
posted by MaryAnn (Fri Jan 04 08, 11:51AM)
Yeah, I love Roache with his Blackberry, too. And in an upcoming episode, there's a little throwaway line about something he bought on eBay.