Does anyone know what’s going on with “Law & Order: Los Angeles”?
Not only does it seem like it has been aired on every single night of the week (they seem to have finally stuck with Monday’s) but I am so confused by the cast. It started out with Skeet Ulrich as a cop and Alfred Molina as the DA, then the show went on a break for a while and when it came back, Ulrich’s character was killed and Molina went back to being a detective. There was a whole sub-plot developing about his partner trying to look for his killers in Mexico, but for the past few weeks even though all the episodes have been listed as “New,” and my DVR automatically recorded them, Ulrich is still alive and Molina is the DA. And I know I never saw these episodes before.
My DVR also seems to be under the impression that the episodes currently being shown are new ones. And they certainly seem to be new to me, too; I’ve watched every episode since the show started, and the ones that have aired the past month or two are ones I haven’t seen before. I suspect that they’re episodes that had been filmed before the show was cancelled, however.
I’ve seen every episode and I have never seen any of these before. And the promo after tonight’s episode for the next one (in two weeks on Wednesday, wtf!?) said that was also a new one, and Ulrich was again in the episode.
And it’s canceled!? When did *that *happen!? Dammit! First the original, then Criminal Intent and now this. SVU better not be next. I can’t imagine a TV world without a Law & Order series running.
No, SVU is just fine. In fact, they just announced what I would consider to be two solid casting choices for new detectives: Kelli Giddish (Chase) and Danny Pino (Cold Case). I think the series dodged a tremendous bullet when the negotiations with Jennifer Love Hewitt – that’s right, Jennifer Love Hewitt – fell through. Although I have to admit that I would have made sure to tune in and watch her subdue suspects with the world-changing power of her awesome sweater meat.
Yeah they are just burning off episodes like Dewey Finn says. They’re canceled. It’s not a DVR issue, these are just episodes that have been produced but not shown yet.
No. They’re not re-runs. This was their first airing.
I think it goes something like this: The show was put on hiatus after I think about a dozen episodes had aired. It wasn’t doing very well and NBC decided on a re-tooling (Ulrich dead, Molina partners up with moustachioed cop, Connie from L&O Original moves to LA, moustachioed cop loses the moustache). They shot a few new episodes with this format, but there were apparently episodes from the older format with Ulrich already in the can. I don’t know if it’s because the show got canceled, but all of a sudden a “new format” episode was followed be an “old format” episode. They started showing the old format episodes again, but as “new” episodes - the episode numbers are all out of order.
So it’s kind of weird. One week, episode 17 or so, you’ve got the new cast; the next week, episode 18 stars a dead detective and the cop/former lawyer is a lawyer again.
Like I said I’m not sure if the decision was, “Okay we’re canceled, just show what we shot before the switch-up to fill up airtime for a few weeks”, but I suppose it’s another in a long line of NBC what-the-fuck decisions.
And I really, really hope moustache cop lands on his feet. I thought he was fantastic.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect the show to survive. My partner and I saw the trailer for the series late one Saturday night and we thought it was one of the fake SNL commercials, although we appreciated the high production values of the parody. Then, when there was no obvious SNL punch line we got confused. “That wasn’t for real, was it?”
My partner had zero interest, but I gave the show a try. I saw only two and a half episodes. There was something critically wrong with the tone and pacing. It did not feel at all like it was a part of the same franchise. They had a good cast, but Ulrich and Stoll spoke their lines without conviction, and I got the impression that they had barely learned them. I didn’t feel there was any fault in the actors, rather at the time it gave me a suspicion that there had been a lot of re-writes and tinkering with the episode scripts, so they weren’t able to come up with the performances for which they are perfectly capable. Overall, I got the impression that the series started broadcasting before they were 100% ready to do so.
The above is based on 2.5 episodes, I had assumed it was growing pains and they would sort it out, but the series rapidly disappeared from the networks here. Did it get any better?
For what it’s worth, the new Criminal Minds franchise “Suspect Behaviour” leaves me with a very similar impression and I generally like most of the cast members.
BTW, here’s a bit of news about Law & Order: SVU, the only Law & Order show remaining.
Christopher Meloni (Elliot Stabler) isn’t returning because he and the production company were not able to come to terms on his salary. And Mariska Hargitay (Oliva Benson) will be only about half the episodes. See here for details.
Okay then. It looks like my feeling of “hmm… this is missing the mark” was an accurate one. Criminal Minds had an excellent ensemble approach. They were a believable team. Suspect Approach felt wrong somehow, never finding the characteristic rhythm and tone of the original -exactly like L&O: LA. They were messed up in exactly the same way, and even had very similar production values and overall looks Edit: from what little I saw of each.
It kind of looks like the only RECENT franchise to keep up with its parent has been NCIS LA, which seems to be working.
I do believe you’re right about them not being entirely ready. It did get better, a bit, and I think the rocky start was based on more NBC WTF-ness. IIRC, the plan was to have the original L&O run for its final season this year (2010/11), with one episode being the backdoor pilot to L&O:LA. But then, out of nowhere, original Law and Order was cancelled in May of last year and NBC wanted the LA one to start in the fall. You can really tell how slapped together the first few episodes were. And I guess the Law and Order format is way better for New York theater actors looking for a small part than TV/movie actors looking for a bit part because the people they found for victim/bad guy/whatever of the week in LA were TERRIBLE. But anyway, after the re-format it was much better.
And yes, Suspect Behaviour was cancelled. It wasn’t great but I adore Garofalo and Schiff so it was unfortunate.
Yes, that definitely explains it. Bumping the production up aa few months would have made the show brutal! It had a “dress rehearsal” feel - actually not even that clean - for the episodes I saw and the camera work reminded me more of ChiPS than the L&O style of shooting.
Any idea why they decided to kill off Skeet’s character? Was he too baby-faced to fit the grimness of the franchise formula?
I think the official line was “blahblah Two Oscar nominees in cast, use them weekly instead of alternating weeks blahblahcakes”. So how do you keep Terrence Howard and Alfred Molina in every script? Well, you’ve mentioned over and over that Molina’s character was a cop, so send him back to the blue.
So why kill off Ulrich instead of Stoll? Who knows. My guess is that part of it would be that Skeet’s salary demands were greater, but I don’t know for sure. Another factor may be that there would be a more compelling story involved in killing off the cop with a more established background - wife, kid(s?), etc. - and having the other cop avenge his death, which is obviously where they were going with the drug lord/Mexico storyline.
