Law and Order: Search and Destroy

It's really quite simple, it's all about the narrative. I want one. I want one with tension, unpredictable and curious, or I want to laugh at life's folly. I don't want fate's cold repetition.

The show certainly succeeds at something, but I'm not sure I like the terms it has set for itself under which it is successful. We're supposed to view each hour-long show as one story, from crime to courtroom, with an ensemble cast of heroic, if possibly flawed, police and lawyers all working together courageously, if perhaps imperfectly, to drive the plot towards it final destination of the punishment of social evil. Rather like any cop show since Hill Street Blues. Its conceit is its two sections, one of police work and one of prosecution.

In order to get to the second half-hour, in order to justify the show's two part structure, the cops have to capture a criminal. There is no drama in this, no chance that our heroes' flaws might hinder the easy and inevitable progression of suspect to indictment to trial. There is no chance that something missed in the previous weeks' episodes could lead to further tension. The police always get their man.

The second half-hour is only marginally better, with all the possibilities our legal system affords for putting up barriers in the path of justice. Will our steely-jawed protagonists with their flashing eyes and careful hair convince the common twelve, or will a theatrical and cunning defense attorney game the system and get the court to set the guilty free? Since guilt has largely been established in the first half of the show, the tension in the second half is not in the trial's assumption of innocence and proofs to the contrary. What tension there is lies in the working of the system itself, the tricks and games, the tics and bargains of a byzantine legal code and a capricious justice.

I am not impressed. Political or bureaucratic infighting can make fascinating drama if the characters are compelling, if the characters grow and change and what has come before affects what comes after. Stringing together two half-hours of foregone conclusions is not a recipe for continuing chacterization and any chance for drama is lost. After all, every television viewer knows that a half-hour show is supposed to be comedy.

Others are free to differ.

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!! which episode was this?!

haha xpost

Ben Stone for '04--he's tan, rested, and ready!! :)

i watched the other two reruns but not the city hall shooting one last night.

Hi rosemary! I miss you, please come home, or at least IM me (hstencil23) sometime.

Do you work downtown? Are you near William St? I maybe be going there sometime this month, we should do lunch! We could eat in the park in front of the courthouses and have a Law and Order moment.