question of the day: What is the enduring appeal of the ‘Law and Order’ franchise?

You what they say, when you have a hit series...

you make spin-offs.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't watch the show until I met my wife back in 01, now I watch it religiously. It's too bad Criminal Intent isn't on anymore, that one was my favorite. Watching Vinny D get the suspects all nutted up was always good fun.

You almost get a classic Doctor Who effect from the show. Everyone has his era. Although there are some light ongoing continuity and character notes, each story is effectively self-contained. It can be written and shot and acted very well, or not.

The main interests for me are the chemistry in any given cast, and the quality of writing. Those have leapt upward since last season, and the most recent huge cast makeover. Season 18 was almost a soft reboot, like season seven of Doctor Who -- and on the other end, they had their shit together.

Which is well, because the show had been getting worse and worse since Tom Baker -- I mean, Jerry Orbach -- left. The new cast, and the new dynamics within it, is as good as the show has ever had. Even the returning cast members were energized and had far more to do with their characters.

At its worst, the show is just a turn of the TV meat grinder. At its best, it's a furious set of limitations leading to interesting reinvention.

The appeal of Law&Order:

1) The format: a basic whodunnit murder mystery, Agatha Christie-like with the body, the cast of suspects, the plot twists and hidden layers of guilt
2) The ripped-from-the-headlines timeliness of the stories: I'm willing to bet there's a L&O being scripted right now where a plane is forced to land in the Hudson River and while dredging it up they find a murder victim in the plane's bathroom
3) The fact that there are major shades of gray to each episode: the murder victim may have been deserving of death; the person on trial is genuinely innocent (or there are moral questions about why he/she is on trial); the wrong person is on trial and is suffering for the sins of a loved one; the person on trial is clearly guilty, but because of our society's mob mentality/blind spots on topics such as racial and gender issues the defendant gets away with it.
On this last point, the show has a lot of Catholicism to its worldview: guilt, penance, forgiveness, God's judgment shows up a lot as character motivators and plot points. My favorite episode was a roman a clef of the Moxley/Skakel murder trial, and an old friend of Briscoe's had been part of a 20-year coverup. At the end of the episode, after the murderer had pled guilty, Briscoe goes to see his friend. After a brief build-up of making the audience think the friend had committed suicide, Briscoe finds his friend tinkering in the back ("Think I was gonna eat my gun, Lenny?"). After they talk a bit about the case, Briscoe's friend admits he let a murderer go free for 20 years, and with tears forming he looks over and asks "Do you forgive me, Lenny?" "Every day," Briscoe answers, and sums up the whole point of the series (well, at least in my mind).

It's nice for a quick fix and a peek a boo at increasingly gory bodies, but the arguments they get into seem pretty by the boo. Cops getting the bad guys is a tried and true formula that makes us feel better about the world, even better because these shows, so far as I can tell, the good guys are playing by the rules and still obtain justice, unlike the Lethal Weapon movies, for example.

I have one friend who watched them to see his friends. He's an actor and these shows, with their constant need for revolving victims, mourners, witnesses, and criminals has been a boon for local employment.

maryann and i have often commented that it seems as if every NY actor's bio has an L&O listing. in england, it seems to be "The Bill" or "Doctor Who"...

To JasonJ, Criminal Intent is on USA network now, and with original episodes periodically. I've seen advertising for the new season, so I assume it'll be coming back soon.

I seem to recall NBC borrowing the new episodes to re-air, like they're doing with Friday Night Lights right now.

Law & Order (the original series) has an ongoing story arc, too, this year: McCoy's electoral campaign as District Attorney. And there are other smaller things, like Lupo's law classes. I started watching the show again last year because its renewed appeal for me was the new cast additions and the recently improved writing. The focus of the series isn't on the characters, but they are there and they make the episodes and the cases more interesting.

Problem with original flavour L&O is that after almost twenty years of pretty much the same formula - cops investigate, DAs prosecute, moral complexity galore - it starts getting a bit 'seen it all before' after a while.

Last season had a few light ongoing threads as well -- even a recurring villain!

I've never watched Law & Order. (It is shown in the UK but not on one of the main channels.) Do the guilty always (usually) get caught/punished and the innocent go free, or is it more like real life with mis-carriages of justice? Do they ever go back on a case if there has been a wrong decision and show the appeal process?

To JasonJ, Criminal Intent is on USA network now, and with original episodes periodically. I've seen advertising for the new season, so I assume it'll be coming back soon.

I have seen those, but they have a different feel to them due to not being produced by the same people. Their not bad, just not the same.

I think Jerry Orbach (who played Lenny for so many years - whose trademark snark makes him still the favorite character in my household) hit directly upon the enduring appeal of Law and Order. He likened the show to a ritual: crime/investigation/litigation/complication/resolution. Same thing every week, with a very slowly changing cast. It's religious in that matter (I've noticed at least one commenter here use the same language). A review of the latest session in the Atlanta Journal Constitution likened it to "comfort food."

There's something reassuring in the ritual of Law and Order - but there's also something very consistently intelligent about its writing and daring in the issues that the producers decide to raise and investigate.