Noonan

Caught the season premier last night. The new guy is OK. My biggest takeaway is that I think the downtime from the strike has made me more snobby with TV. All I've been watching lately are quality series. I don't know if these procedurals are for me anymore. The writing is so poor compared to what it used to be for these same type of shows. I found myself fast forwarding through scenes in L&O and I didn't even get through the full episode of Chicago PD, a show I used to love.

Meathead

I started all the Law & Order series last season but after a couple of episodes, the next thing I knew I had 6-8 of each show unwatched. I'm out (again).

DJariya

I missed a good chunk of season 22, except the premiere which was part of a 3 parter with SVU and OC.

But, Law & Order’s licensing is so fucked up. Only 8 seasons are on Peacock out of the 22 are there. 21 and 22 were removed after the seasons wrapped and they didn’t reair on TV. Actually nothing repeats anymore. So I’m starting season 23 blind, but I guess you can since Donovan left and the show isn’t serialized.

I understand that procedural dramas aren’t must see TV for most of you, so they don’t get priority viewing and some of you completely fall off keeping up with then.

Noonan

There's no carryover from last season so you're fine going in blind. I think they gave one line explaining why Donovan's character is gone.

Topic of the first episode is Israel/Gaza so they jumped right into the most controversial of topics.

Paff

And with all the subtlety of a large sledgehammer.

Noonan

As only a L&O episode can!

MrX

All I could picture was Dan from Veep trying to play a cop.

SVU is still the best of the 3. This mothership is as bad as OC, but without the unintentional comedy.

bluesix

Yes! Dead on. As much as I like the actor on Veep, he doesn't seem right here. Jeffrey Donavan was way better and Im sorry to see him gone.

Agree this episode was pretty 'ripped from the headlines boring'. It was predictable that the jury would side with the radical nut job Professor.

I think SVU is the best of the 3 because Mariska has some say in the direction of the show and her character and wants to protect it from turning into the schlock of OC. Altho I was pulling my hair out that they spent the whole episode searching for this girl and then never resolved it!

Paff

Whoa. News alert. An actual good episode of the L&O revival. And while the ripped-from-the-headlines topic du jour (AI) is rammed down our throats as L&O is wont to do, it does figure into the plot rather well.

bluesix

I was just waiting for them to find out the AI had become sentient and generated the photo on its own to help protect its evil master! Thankfully they never went down this route altho they left it open ended as to how the photo came into existence.

DJariya

This day was eventually coming. Jack McCoy is calling it quits

X - Formerly Twitter

Paff

It's rough, because to me Law & Order IS Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy. Someone recently asked me if I was a "Paul Sorvino, Jerry Orbach, or Jesse L. Martin guy", and I said, "none of them. To me the show didn't really start till Waterston came in".

But Waterston is just not the same anymore, and I never really cared for him as DA anyway, he was always best on the courtroom floor. Times change though. Time to move on. The show has improved the last two episodes, a lot less mallet-like subtlety of introducing a current event into the story. Hope it continues that trajectory.

DJariya

Tony Goldwyn is a good veteran actor. He should be fine as Waterston’s replacement. Waterston’s 83, it was inevitable that his days were coming to an end.

Mike86

I was really into the Law & Order franchise for a while. I liked the original and Criminal Intent the best. To me Special Victims Unit had its moments but got super repetitive and was never my favorite.

Personally I always liked the original show up to the point where Briscoe left. The show was never quite as good after that to me. Although I didn’t mind Dennis Farina’s short run. He and Jesse L. Martin were the last two detectives I was into as characters.

Waterson is the last legacy character but understandable that he’s stepping down at this point.

Red Dog

To me L&O is Briscoe/Orbach (the mid-late 90s episodes were the absolute best). But Sam was great as a ADA. I never got into SVU and the others were laughably bad.

bluesix

Agreed. Waterston was averaging like 5 minutes of screen time per show. Why bother. At 83 does he really need to keep doing this? God love him I figured he was in his 70s.

I like Tony Goldwyn. He's always been solid in anything he's in. I hope the writers give him more to do than just grill the DAs on whether or not they think they can win the case each week. Maybe this will open some new storyline ideas.

bluesix

Agreed. Waterston was averaging like 5 minutes of screen time per show. Why bother. At 83 does he really need to keep doing this? God love him I figured he was in his 70s.

I like Tony Goldwyn. He's always been solid in anything he's in. I hope the writers give him more to do than just grill the DAs on whether or not they think they can win the case each week. Maybe this will open some new storyline ideas.

Paff

I'm only just catching up to last week's episode, and it was really good. After the ham-handed Israel conflict ep they opened with, they've pretty much dumped the "current events" plotlines. I absolutely love moral conflict, and this past outing where the only witness to a murder is a guy who's been busted for child pornography and he'll only testify if they drop his charges was really compelling. I'm back on board fully.

bluesix

Yup. This has easily taken my second favorite L&O show ranking away from Criminal Intent! Taking me a while to warm up to Dan from VEEP but I guess he will do ok.
Writing is amazing considering how tight these episodes are and they squeeze so much info into the 30 minutes for the law side and the order side!

There was a great episode last season about parents trying to understand their trans kid that I thought was the best they have done so far.

Runaway

The D.A. and Captain/Lieutenant roles have never been really interesting and they needn't the be series regulars, but I liked S. Epatha Merkerson, Dann Florek and Fred Thompson anyway. Steven Hill and Dianne Wiest didn't give me anything.

Paff

^ But Steven Hill had one of my favorite lines, one I occasionally use when appropriate. In the episode, a boyfriend and girlfriend were accused of killing their newborn, and McCoy realized the best play was to charge one of them and give the other immunity, but didn't know which one to choose. Hill said, in his typical deadpan style "I just flipped a coin in my head. It came up tails. Charge the boyfriend"

Red Dog

He was great in that role. Much better than Fred and Dianne.

MrX

Glad they had Jack back trying a case in Waterson’s final episode. I’d still take Waterson over Dancy as the ADA.

Paff

Not as good last night. The moral conflict I love so much was certainly there, but it didn't really fit the story.

I did like the "Law" part of the show though, much more than usual. It involved a lot more questioning by the detectives, and red herring after red herring. Usually it's "check the footage from the street camera...run the face through facial recognition...arrest him" (and for some reason the guy always runs). This was closer to old Briscoe and Curtis eps.

bluesix

I don't like what they are doing with Tony Goldwyn. Do they have to make his character an asshole? This poor guy always gets cast as the jerk and it looks like it will be more of the same on this show.