I used to give the show Law and Order a hard time. When I was growing up, it seemed like this show was on every station at any time of the day. Old people television, I would call it. A friend of mine showed me this game you could play at the beginning of every episode: count how many seconds it takes from the “bum bum” before you saw a dead body (it was always less than 60, unless it was a kidnapping case). Predictable television and BORING.
But I’ve changed my mind, and here’s why:
I don’t need to know backstory when I watch a Law and Order episode. For the most part, the main characters don’t have any season long arcs (in fact, they never change), there are no inside jokes that I wouldn’t get had I not seen every previous episode, and I absolutely do not need to see the episodes in sequential order.
Normally, a show that has these characteristics would make me cringe, but there’s something to be said about TV for people with short attention spans. Most people turn to Reality TV. With that, one can turn on an episode at any time and know exactly what was going on, sit down, and be entertained. Now personally I don’t like watching idiots do idiot things. I prefer something with a script. And while I can’t watch L&O from any point but the beginning, at least I don’t have to start it from series premier.
The show has numerous spin offs that are even better than the original. All of these episodes are on “Watch it Now” on Netflix. Add that to the fact that I have never seen an episode before this year, and you have one happy subscriber.
One hour mysteries.
I won’t go into detail about these episodes when I watch them. To me, they’re just filler between the deep shows I do watch, but it’s the filler I turn to over anything else.
1 comment:
Great point. It's an interesting idea that in this era of television a completely self-contained episode is a novelty. Every other show has to have some through-line that leads to the end of the season (and sometimes well beyond. Lost springs to mind, in a bad way). In ye olde days of TV every program had a beginning, middle and end. Now if you haven't seen the previous dozen or so episodes you're hopelessly lost (or just missing out on all the cool stuff).
I still do find it weird after all these years that Christopher Meloni plays a cop, though. He scarred me in OZ (metaphorically speaking...)
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