Law and Order
7:03 PM, Monday, 9th February, 2009 - by Asha

I've recently been getting into Law and Order again (the original, not the spin offs). It's always been one of my favourite TV shows, but a year or two ago I started to get a bit sick of it and stopped watching it (the fact that Channel Ten started airing it very inconsistantly didn't help either). Realising a couple of weeks ago it was back on, I decided to give it another go and I'm completely hooked again.

There are several reasons for this: they seem to be getting away from those increasingly annoying "I killed the guy, but it wasn't my fault because I had roid rage/racism as a mental illness/god made me do it" plots and back to some good old fashioned mysteries. Secondly, promoted Jack McCoy to DA is probably one of the best decisions they have ever made - having a different guy doing the prosections really changes the feel of the show (for the better). One of the main things that made me lose interest in the first place was characters like McCoy and Van Buren who had been on the show for a long, long time and just would not leave. Admittedly they still haven't, but it's a lot less noticable.

Thirdly, I'm really liking the new characters, particularly Micheal Cutter, who is a nice contrast from McCoy (and manages to do the whole tricking the defendant into incriminated themself thing so much better than in Criminal Intent), and Cyrus Lupo, who is growing on me more with each episode and I think has the potential to become one of the stand out characters. Fourthly (is that a word?), "Burn Card" was just amazing - a great exit for a great character, and an excellent performance from Jesse L Martin. The one with the fighting dogs was very cool too.

It isn't perfect - I kinda miss Annie Parisse, and I don't think much of her replacement. Don't get me wrong, there isn't anything particularly wrong with Rubirosa or the way she is written, and Alana de la Garza is a very good actress (particularly in "Strike"), but she just feels like your standard identakit pretty female ADA - there is very little that seems to seperate her from any of the previous ADAs, and she seems to have very little personality. Not completely sold on Anthony Anderson's character either. And that Scientology episode was pretty lame. But, on the whole, I'm really liking where the show is going, and I'm starting to get very addicted again.

Oh, and Comic #11 is up!