|
Law
& Order: Special Audience Unit
Written
by James Koonce,
September 21st, 1999
Let's get it
out in the open, right up front: Dick Wolf has the Midas touch.
His ensemble
cop drama Law & Order is now in its tenth season on NBC,
has weathered multiple cast changes successfully, and hasn't suffered
the slightest dip in quality along the way (though it's remained
virtually ignored by the TV Academy over its lengthy run - shame
on you people). So if ever there was a show poised to spawn a successful
spinoff, this is the one. But rather than making an obvious and
safe choice, like splitting the show into two separate series (Simply
Law and Just Order), Wolf instead opted to copy his own success
and focus on a tough, little-known department within the halls of
justice, and thus begat Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
"Special
Victims Unit" is, of course, law enforcement parlance for "sex
crimes." So from the get-go we can tell that the show will be different,
likely even bleaker than some of the rank-and-file cases on the
regular Law & Order. (Which makes NBC's decision to put it
on at 9 PM rather than 10 PM questionable, but in a ratings-hungry
world, reasonably understandable.) Fortunately, and with typical
Wolf-ian aplomb, the show was cast successfully, with leads who
are attractive to look at, but not so much so that they end up being
distracting or unbelievable in their jobs (David E. Kelley, are
you listening?). Wolf knows actors as well as he seems to know cops,
and Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay both seem capable of doing
the tough work, ferreting out sex crime-doers from under whatever
rocks they call home.
In a pleasant
bit of inspired casting, joining Meloni and Hargitay is Richard
Belzer, reprising his role as Detective John Munch from Homicide:
Life on the Street (yet another gritty cop show featuring a
colon in the title and which can be boiled down to its initials
- H:LOTS, just as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will inevitably
become L&O: SVU). Personally, I think this crossover is kinda neat
- not only did the guy change cities, leaving Baltimore behind in
favor of the Big Apple, he changed executive producers too. Talk
about career building.
Anyway, with
all this stuff going for it before the show even hit the airwaves,
how could it go wrong?
Well, unfortunately
it kinda did. From the opening narration (a specialized riff on
the standard L&O voice-over), things seemed a little off. The gruff
voice spoke of "a unit created to solve sexually-oriented crimes
which are particularly heinous," and right away I couldn't help
but thinking what, are Wayne and Garth doing VO work now? Who says
"heinous" seriously? The whole thing seemed surreal, like a very
well-done SNL parody.
It didn't get
better right away. As we got into the story, which involved tracking
down the killer of a cab driver who had his you-know-what cut off
(might as well get our feet wet with the ultimate in sex crimes,
right?), the scenes all seemed to be culled from the regular L&O
at its most sweeps-worthy lurid. One suspect had been held prisoner
in a Sarajevo refugee camp by the deceased, and raped for twenty-three
days straight; another watched him kill her husband and grandson.
Now, it's a given that the prurient nature of sex crimes will provoke
a little more drama than garden variety crime, sure; but even so,
the whole structure of the show seemed way over the top, almost
as if Wolf wanted to include all the stuff he couldn't in the normal
run of the show - a sort of Law & Order: Fire Walk With Me. Which
was a little disappointing - if I want that kind of melodrama, I
can just watch NYPD Blue.
The first half
of the premiere hit its nadir when the detectives found themselves
questioning a witness of Indian descent, and I swear to God I thought
I was listening to Apu from The Simpsons. Now I'm all for ethnically-diverse
casting, don't get me wrong, but it was just so unintentionally
comical that I was yanked right out of the moment. Even Belzer was
disappointing - his snarky Munch seemed to be just going through
the motions. Besides which, the omnipresent sex chatter was inescapable;
I half expected David Duchovny to drop by and announce that I was
really watching Red Shoe Diaries Umpteen: The City That Never Sleeps.
But as I said
above, Dick Wolf has the Midas touch, and thankfully, his script
settled down after act two. (His reflexive, highly-polished writing
skills apparently kicked in, overcoming the conscious choices he
was making to push the show in a different, edgier direction.) We
fell back into the customary groove of learning about the characters
as they in turn fit together pieces of the criminal puzzle. Classic
L&O structure is bait-and-switch, hooking viewers with one aspect
of a crime and ending up showing them a whole other tangent which
becomes the story, and this was no exception - why meddle with success?
By the time the episode was nearing its climax, however, I guess
Wolf remembered he was writing to a different crowd, and juiced
up the ending in such a way that seemed incongruous with the scenes
before it, veering off into full-on histrionic Dynasty territory.
This is just
me talking, of course. I'm sure there are plenty of viewers who
thought it was great. Ultimately, however, just loving Law & Order
isn't enough to be on board for this spinoff. It's too much of a
niche market, and it just can't maintain the wider appeal of its
parent show. Which isn't to say it's not good, it just might prove
a little too skanky for some people's taste.
Just had a
thought, though - you know what might really be interesting is L&O:
SUV, in which we follow the adventures of a special department created
to thwart crime involving Ford Explorers…
Maybe next
season.
|
The Archives
Related Links