What Goes Around Goes Around

I’m a longstanding Law & Order fan, first with the original “mother ship” show, and then later, with the spin-off franchises, Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent. I applaud what Dick Wolf has done. I nearly lost it when Lenny Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) left the show.

But I recorded, and finally watched the season finale of L&O recently. And, frankly, I’m losing my patience. While I was disappointed to see Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Borgia’s (Annie Parisee) character killed off (I thought she was a good female replacement in the L&O ADA prototype--not flashy enough to upstage Jack McCoy [Sam Waterston], but a good, hard-working attorney, and easy on the eyes), her death provided the only infusion of energy in that season-ending episode. I thought the finale lacked sufficient spark. I’m blaming the casting for this. The actor who played the protected witness--the guy who was ratting out a corrupt DEA agent, and a major player in the scheme of things--has been on the show at least four times in various roles. Come on! [Aside: His role as a demented artist approximately five years ago was his strongest performance.] I’m not knocking the actor. He’s good, and hey, work is work. I am questioning the producers. There are almost as many actors in New York City as there are Starbucks coffeeshops. OK--maybe more. And characters lose credibility when they make too many appearances. I didn’t accept this character as a protected witness. Rather, I continued to see him through the lens of his other roles on the show. I couldn’t invest myself emotionally (though I’ve been told that I think TV characters are real-life people). And I am sure I wasn’t the only viewer having this experience. CI and SVU follow the same practice, reusing an identical revolving door of actors. In fact, you will see the very same people play major roles in L&O, who appear as major characters on CI. Pretty hard not to figure out the bad guy.

And while they are at it--L&O and CSI, its rival franchise (or, as they prefer to be called, “brands”), need to stop the incestuous nature of taking plot points from their respective franchisees. I have seen story lines used on L&O make encore appearances in SVU and CI. A woman faking a pregnancy to blackmail her many rich boyfriends? That one ran like wildfire through the L&O world. And the CSI brand is not exempt, either--I have recognized several plot points first used on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, being transferred over to CSI: Miami. In one instance, the CSI team in Vegas ran the pattern of a knife wound through their “database” to catch the bad guy, only to have that same technique used on the Miami show--one week later. If franchise crime series hope to increase their fan bases, and attract TV watchers across the board to all their shows, aren’t the producers taking their viewers for fools? Don’t they think those viewers are going to notice these redundancies, and become bored?

Maybe it’s time to rethink the whole franchise thing. If franchises have to borrow from within, then maybe it’s time to scale back. Let’s have maybe two kick-ass shows per brand, and cut back the redundancy. At the very least, hire more character actors, damn it.