Law & Order, s8 (1997-1998)

The Law & Order franchise continues its twisty ways in the eighth season. There is some increasingly ongoing misbegotten attempt to humanize the principals. Detective Curtis’s wife is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and begins to deteriorate. Lt. Van Buren files a lawsuit alleging discrimination when she was passed over for a promotion. Lennie’s daughter is in trouble with the law over drugs. These threads are random, sideline themes advanced even as single throwaway lines in an episode. They feel mechanical but they can be affecting—or I am a ridiculous softy. On the other hand, we are explicitly left hanging on all of them. Interested to see whether and if so how they are resolved in the next season. There’s a two-part tie-in episode here with Homicide—the first part is a Law & Order episode and the second a Homicide, with all the orange-filtered jittery japing style of a show I never cared much for. Some of the Law & Order episodes in this season I could recognize from the very first scenes and sometimes even knew the line on which the plot turned, such as one where Lt. Van Buren turns to a key suspect in a murder and says, “Hello, my brother.” Another, starting in a rooftop parking lot, involves clitoridectomies—surgical removal of the clitoris, an ancient barbaric practice in some cultures. It’s feeling ripped from the headlines, as usual. You can tell because, in the more sensitive ones, the disclaimer is the first thing you see. Other episodes I was not even sure I had seen before. They must not have appeared as much in reruns, because I faithfully watched them for years. Dr. Emil Skoda (J.K. Simmons) is introduced as the new forensic psychologist, a hard-ass replacing the more touchy-feely Elizabeth Olivet. Trump gets name-checked occasionally. In one case involving real estate shenanigans, Curtis says, “If the other owners jump on the bandwagon, Donald Trump Jr. goes right down the tube.” For the record, Lennie, as usual, bites off the best and most bitter observations about the human condition. “I guess the macarena wasn’t exciting enough for them,” he says one time, reminding us this series arguably had its heyday in the ‘90s. But the formula stands up—about 20 minutes of police procedure and 20 minutes of a trial, with lots of variation involving plea bargains and other legal maneuvering. It stands up and would keep me loyal to the show for years. But I would never be as happy again with the casting decisions and other developments. From now on Jack McCoy is a fixture and all of his assistants will be beautiful babes he may or may not bed. I think Claire Kincaid is the only we’re sure of? He’s still losing (a minority of) his cases. As the show went on he would tend to win them all. We have probably reached the ceiling of Law & Order by this point in the franchise, but it also has a surprisingly durable, high floor. It may be starting to feel somewhat stale, but the scripts remain zippy and the cases complex and interesting. You could do worse with a 20th-century crime show—say, Homicide.