posted 2007/05/14 at 16:35
Law & Order shows get reprieve (AP via CNN.com)
After we moved back into the house following the fire, we didn't bother to get our cable hooked back up for a long while there, and really only got it hooked up so we could get cable modem access here once my father moved his office into the house. I'd started going back to college during this time, so of course I didn't have that much time to watch television, but I still wasn't too happy about being forced to rely on rabbit ears for a while. I started watching Monday Night Football on ABC for no other reason than there wasn't much else I could think of to watch, and that was the season in which ABC was promoting the hell of Dick Wolf's remake of Dragnet for midseason replacement. I checked that out and loved it, which in turn led to me checking out the various Law and Order shows for the first time ever.
To this day I'm a huge fan of SVU, although I haven't been catching the most recent episodes due to a combination of being busy with various projects as well as wanting to catch as much of the Stanley Cup playoffs as I possibly can. I have to admit that I really didn't catch that much of the original franchise after Jerry Orbach left, which doesn't make much sense because I love Sam Waterston and (the acting career of) Fred Thompson, but I'll always stop by repeats of the original series if I happen to be flipping by them on TNT. I've never liked Criminal Intent simply because Vincent D'Onofrio's character leads to some of the most implausible resolutions I've ever seen in crime dramas, and I loved Trial by Jury but of course no one else did, probably because American culture frowns upon women being strong and assertive, and Bebe Neuwirth's character likely threatened most of the viewing audience.
Anyway, although I can understand the franchise losing some of its shine in recent years, I don't get why NBC continues to treat it so poorly, particularly when it's brought them so much money over the years. (Were it not for TNT holding the cable rights to the original franchise, NBC Universal could probably create a Law and Order channel showing nothing but repeats of all the various shows.) Yes, I realize that CSI is the big ratings draw right now and CBS is aggressively marketing that franchise against the Law and Order franchise, but, well, Scott Ramsoomair pretty much captures my feelings about CSI perfectly in this cartoon. (Yes, I know linking to Internet cartoons isn't my usual modus operandi, but VG Cats is the only Internet cartoon I check out on a regular basis, and you should check it out if you don't already.) Television executives have always been bad about pulling the plug on shows that get respectable-but-not-great ratings in an attempt to clear more airtime to try out more new shoes -- the old "throw everything on the wall and see what sticks" approach -- and they've certainly gotten a whole lot worse about that in just the past decade -- but there is no reason why NBC should even be thinking about pulling the plug on the Law and Order franchise, even if you don't take into account how much the franchise has done for NBC in years past.
I loved Trial by Jury but of course no one else did, probably because American culture frowns upon women being strong and assertive, and Bebe Neuwirth's character likely threatened most of the viewing audience.
I don't think that's the case. SVU features a strong, assertive woman in a lead role (and a few more in supporting roles if you count ADA Novak and Judges Donnelly and Petrovsky), and it has the highest ratings in the L&O franchise.
The problem with TBJ from my point of view is that people tend to enjoy the police procedural portion of L&O moreso than the legal procedural part, Sam Waterson notwithstanding. If you take a look at Dick Wolf's second attempt at a fourth L&O show (Conviction), it suffered from the same problem and met the same fate.
I think Mariska's character doesn't take that much guff, though, because for one thing her assertiveness is somewhat overshadowed by Stabler's alpha male tendencies (so she's powerful but not THAT powerful), and for another thing Mariska definitely falls under the label of "conventionally attractive." Contrast that to TBJ, where the two leads were both very assertive females, and Bebe Neuwirth's character acted in a way that I imagine many males would refer to as that word that also means "female dog."
I never watched Conviction so I can't make any observations on it, but I agree with you that viewers likely didn't like the lack of police procedural in TBJ. I do think that American cultural attitudes towards assertive females did play a large part as well, though.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon