Law & Order, s7 (1996-1997)

Law & Order was well-primed for the mid-'90s surge of interest in true-crime, with the OJ Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey cases occurring bang-bang even as DNA and other forensic technology burgeoned. All of a sudden cases were being solved that had never been solved, innocents freed from prison, and everyone seemed to have detailed opinions about any given case. The show played to the interest simply by sticking resolutely to the formula that got it there, focusing on police and court roles in complicated cases more than characters, willy-nilly removing another mainstay the previous season in ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy)—killing her off, in fact, which ended her tenure absolutely as this is one show that does not do flashbacks. She was replaced by ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), unfortunately introducing a bad habit of making that role a series of highly attractive women. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) annoyingly beds them all, or so we may surmise because at least the show tends to be reasonably subtle about it. To be sure, there are character arcs happening all over the peripheries: Detective Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) is a self-righteous religious conservative going through a separation from his wife. Detective Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) had an alcoholic relapse at the end of the previous season and now there's concern about his sobriety. Ross is divorced from her former law partner, a high-flying defense attorney who plays head games with her over custody of their daughter. One of the best episodes in this season is the finale, in which DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill) has to decide whether to pull the plug on his dying wife. But the primary focus remains the twisting, turning cases that confront the principals and viewers with each episode. There's usually a murder in the first scene before the titles but it can go anywhere from there. A number of episodes are more about legal principles than guilt or innocence in the specific cases at hand. I thought the prosecutors seemed to lose more often, or at best come up with mixed results, more so than I think would be the case later in the series, when they were regular winners, the New York Yankees of New York City jurisprudence. It's actually nice to see McCoy lose a few. This season does have perhaps the nadir of the whole franchise in a three-part arc that takes the crew to Los Angeles—not a very interesting case, and little point forcing in the West Coast setting, especially across the interminable, padded-out three episodes. To be scrupulously fair, as nadirs go it's still better than the high points of many other series. As always, the show attracted a good many obvious but unfamiliar talents from within the New York theatrical world, one of its great secrets. Various up-and-comers with later careers can also be spotted here, such as Edie Falco as a defense attorney, but there didn't seem to be as many in this season. The most tantalizing who-is-that-anyway for me was Reiko Aylesworth, whose face kept bothering me for a whole episode until I later recalled through the miracle of IMDb that she was Michelle Dessler on 24. In its seventh season Law & Order is all product, a juggernaut coming into its own ratings-wise with the dread spinoffs not many years away now. As product, it is A-1.