I recently set my DVR to record all the Law and Order reruns. I knew the show was replayed a lot, but I didn’t realize just how often. One day, sixteen episodes were recorded off of four or five separate stations. For me, Briscoe is the magic ingredient that makes an episode worth watching. Briscoe/Green are still my favorite detective pairing from my days of watching live, but Briscoe/Logan have become a close second. It turns out that Lupo and Bernard were a solid team, though. It’s too bad the show was canceled right after they really started to gel.
The usual formula is great, but I am looking forward to seeing the episodes that did things differently - the crossover episodes, the death penalty episode on everyone’s day off, and the three (?) part episode where Briscoe and Green catch a new case every time they try to go home for the day.
This thread is for whatever - story-lines, characters, actors, as long as it’s related to the original series.
One of the things I like about L&O is that they kept the main characters personal drama to a minimum, unlike its spawn SVU. The most egregious exception was Rey Curtis and wife’s disease (M.S. IIRC) which is why he is my least favorite main character.
Was it Revisionist History that Jack and Claire Kincaid were having an affair? Because I can’t remember any explicit dialog between the two that said this.
Me too. It’s the reason the show could go on even with cast changes. And lets’s face it, life has cast changes.
There was an episode where an old assistant of Jack’s asked Claire point-blank whether she was sleeping with him, and she didn’t answer, but the look on her face said that the assistant had hit the nail on the head. Also, there was an episode where McCoy and Kincaid arrived for work in the morning in the same car.
I actually really liked those tiny drips of their personal lives that let you fill in things. I thought it was important to Lenny’s character that he was an alcoholic who was in recovery, but I liked that with that one exception, we never really saw it. I also liked that after he died, we found out in a single line on a CI episode that he used to go to the opera with ME Rodgers (the redhead). We never know whether they just went as friends or there was some hope of a romance on the part of at least on of them, or maybe even a full-blown affair. All we know is that they went to the opera together. Which we already knew Rodgers liked, but it was more of a surprise that Lenny took in an opera from time to time, in spite of the fact that he had made other references to things like enjoying the classics when he was in college (NYPD detectives have to have a college degree, IIRC, albeit, many of them get it part-time at night from community colleges while they are uniformed officers).
Elliot Stabler is more typical of a detective, in joining the force after the military, and using the GI bill to go to night school while he is a uniformed officer; Olivia Benson, who apparently went to a fairly prestigious university right out of high school, and was a member of a sorority, and then went to the police academy after her college graduation is less typical, but there are people like her in the force.
L&O is one of my all-time favorite shows, and probably my favorite US show. Certainly my objectively favorite show-- I like it because it’s good, not for sentimental reasons, because of the time in my life I watched it, and so forth, the way I have a soft-spot for One Day at a Time, which is a very good show, but not a great show. L&O is a great show.
While searching, I found this thread of favorite L&O quotes from last year. One that’s not there is from a case where Briscoe and Curits are called to the scene of an old, wealthy man strangled with Christmas lights. They see a picture of the man with a gorgeous young woman in a wedding dress. Rey thinks it’s his granddaughter, Lennie thinks she’s his wife. They make a bet on it, a hot pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli. A few seconds later the woman shows up wanting to know what happened to her husband. Lennie breaks the news to her and expresses his sympathy, then he leans close to Rey…
BRISCOE: Tell 'em extra mustard and don’t trim the fat.
It was set up at their first meeting. Claire tells Jack that she’s heard rumors that he’s slept with three of his female assistants during his time as an ADA. He admits it’s true. At the end of the episode she says she’s done some more checking on him and he’s only had three female assistants.
Jack knows how to pick 'em. One of them falsified evidence and cause quite a mess. Claire also slept with her mentor judge (IIRC) and THAT caused problems. I think she has Daddy issues.
At least I don’t think he slept with anyone after Claire. Jamie was too busy with her family life, “Hang 'em High” Abby would have just rolled her eyes if Jack asked, and break him in half if he tried anything, Serena wouldn’t, obviously, and I think he left Borgia alone, and Connie was supposed to be “for” Cutter, aka Jack Jr.
In the one I’m thinking of, the pattern of not being able to leave extends into at least one more episode. Just as Briscoe and Green are finally getting ready to go home at the end of the episode, Green answers the phone and says something like “We’ve got a jumper.” Then the next episode is focused on that case. It turns out that the “jumper” was an infant accidentally dropped out of a high rise window by his Michael Jackson-like father.
That was Couples; great episode, go read the quotes page I linked to.
There was another one that departed from the usual first-half-law/second-half-order format. Lennie is trying to wrap up an investigation so he can go to the Knicks game that evening. The prime suspect is a milquetoast who won’t give an alibi. After he’s arrested, his mother comes in and tells them her son is gay (he doesn’t think mom knows) and was too embarrassed to tell them he was with his partner. After confirming the story, they go to get him released from Riker’s. After a bit of a delay, they find out he’s in the jail’s morgue.
I do miss L&O. The remaining SVU series is pure soap opera, unworthy to bear the L&O name. Favorite DA for me was Adam Schiff and the worst by far was the woman whose name I cant even remember, I haven’t a clue why they thought it a good idea to cast her.
Favorite pairing of detectives was the short-lived season 15 partnership of Fontana and Falco played by Dennis Farina (sadly no longer with us) and Michael Imperioli. As for best ADA I have to go with Michael Moriarty; he’s such an amazing actor.
I’m watching right now. It’s a Lenny Curtis one, featuring one of the many, many appearances by whatshisname… the guy who played T-bag on Prison Break. The biker episode.
I love quiet Saturday and Sunday mornings and watching the TNT reruns in bed.
I love most of the actors and characters, but my least favorite is Rohm (which I think we fairly recently had a thread about hating her?). Cutter is my second least favorite lawyer. His accent is distracting and I don’t like how he has the same kind of personality and temperament as McCoy. I think it would have worked better if he had been noticeably different, just like each of the other character changes were markedly different than the person they were replacing.
I only watched SVU for one season. HATED IT. I love CI and I enjoyed LA ok enough. I didn’t watch the Briscoe spinoff one.
I’m still baffled as to why it was canceled and I laughed so hard when 30 Rock echoed my consternation.
I love watching them on different channels because it’s all over the place. Right now Curtis has an ancient laptop that looks like a joke but it was probably state-of-the-art at the time. In the last few seasons everyone was starting to get cell phones, in the early early ones no one knew what the internet really was.
There’s an Angie Harmon episode where she whips out a cell phone the size of a cinderblock. It’s so funny to see how far we’ve come with technology in such a relatively short time (although it’s depressing to realize the Briscoe/Curtis episodes are 21 years old.)
Hennessey once said in an interview that she didn’t know they were dating until one of the scripts made it explicit (I think the scene mentioned above, when a former assistant asked her). As noted, there were numerous indications, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away. For instance, in the biker ep Claire says to a store owner that a friend of hers rides a motorcycle - even the actress didn’t know she was talking about Jack. I think there’s a later scene in the ep when McCoy is seen getting off the bike she describes, but if you don’t know bikes you don’t make the connection.
Off the top of my head, you can catch the original Law & Order (all times EST):
Sunday: TNT (5AM to 1PM)
Monday: Ion TV (noon to midnight)
Tuesday: WE TV (6PM - 1AM)
Wednesday: Ion TV (11 AM - midnight) and WE TV (2PM to 8PM)
Thursday: Sundance Channel (3PM - 1AM)
Friday: Sundance Channel (3PM - 1AM)
Saturday: TNT (6AM to 11AM) and WE TV (5PM to 2AM)
That’s “Mayhem.” They never do catch the guy with the same style glasses he was mistaken for in that episode, and we’re left hanging on that, but on a later season on CI, they bring him in for a similar crime, and I think Briscoe appears briefly on the episode to say that they were looking at him for another crime.
That was Oscar winner, Dianne Weist, and I loved her. She played Nora Lewin. IIRC, she came on when Carmichael was just on. Carmichael was a hard nose, and a bad match for Schiff and McCoy. They needed a softer personality, so they brought in the Lewin character.
When Carmichael left and Southerlyn came on, they needed a new hard nose, so they brought on Arthur Branch.
Favorite pairing of detectives was the short-lived season 15 partnership of Fontana and Falco played by Dennis Farina (sadly no longer with us) and Michael Imperioli. As for best ADA I have to go with Michael Moriarty; he’s such an amazing actor.
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You have to know Briscoe for that exchange to work, but then it’s brilliant.
He did eventually make it back to Manhattan, of course, 36 episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I never really watched CI at all (an episode here and there) so I don’t know if they said much about his character’s past. Was there any reference to his exile on Staten Island?
It would be interesting to compile a list of those interesting character moments across the franchise. I’m glad that the show didn’t focus on the private lives hardly at all, but it’s fun to find those things like Easter eggs. I just saw an episode last night where Lennie meets Rey’s wife and daughters for the first time.
Yes. In fact the captain who requested Logan join CI is under a lot of pressure in his first few episodes by the higher ups, who are just waiting for Mike to lose it and embarrass the department
Since Lenny is sort of the heart of the show, especially the police side of L&O, I like how different his partnerships were:
Brisco & Logan - Because Lenny joined Logan, was the “new” partner (what with Mike losing his past two partners, one to death and one to requesting a change of assignment) it’s up to Briscoe to fit at first. He’s dealing with a questionable past, as an alcoholic cop. With two detectives who have obvious faults (Mike’s hot-headiness) I think they wound up having the most balanced partnership.
Brisco and Curtis - This partnership started off rocky. Probably a combination of the way Logan was bounced and Rey’s youth rubbed Lenny the wrong way. After awhile Brisco comes across as an older uncle/ to nephew relationship with Rey. I like how over time, after dismissing Rey’s “modern ways” Lenny slowly begins to catch up (even gets a cell phone!) Of Briscoe’s three partnerships this one was probably the closest. Despite their differences, age, religion, etc… I think these two cared the most for the other. I could see Brisco actually visiting the Curtis household for a holiday or Sunday dinner.
Brisco and Green - This partnership started off very contentiously! I think there are several reasons why. First, it was seeing Curtis have to leave, a partner that Lenny had come to like and trust. Another may have been that Green was another “hot-shot” younger partner. Maybe even that with a black partner and LT., Briscoe may have felt as a white detective he was now a minority. I think though, the main reason the Briscoe & Green duo had such a difficult beginning was that, well, Lenny might have begun to feel weary of the job. He’d been a NY cop so long, especially in homicide, maybe dealing with death every day was getting to him. I think a mutual respect was formed over time and there’s a real look of sadness and disappointment in Green’s face when he hears that Lenny has submitted his papers.
Yes, many more references than the ones about Lennie dying (one).
In many of his early ones in CI them mentioned him as a “liability” in high profile cases, but Deakins backed him. Even Logan himself used the fact to intimidate a suspect (I’m a loose cannon!"). In one episode he noted how much he wanted to punch a slimy suspect, and said “it would have been worth another five years on Staten island.”
Logan has some good CI episodes; Diamond Dogs, Stress Position, The Healer, The Good, Contract.
Exile was good except for making Profacci crooked.