So who do you like, George Dzunda or Paul Sorvino? Angie Harmon or Jill Hennessy? Or maybe Carey Lowell? She’s my choice but I know she’s a dark horse. She’s the only one who played her ADA role with a little sexual awareness-even showed a little skin in exchange for some info from a skell at Riker’s. Personally I like Michael Moriarity over Sam Waterston. It just seemed like life and death to him. Just like it is to me. This is important stuff. This is Law & Order!
It’s hard to admit when you’re addicted to something. Harder still when your addiction is so dorky. It’s almost cool to be addicted to coke and a heroin addict just got engaged to Carmen Electra. Me? I can’t live without Law & Order. I’m waiting for someone to start a Law & Order rotisserie league. The move from A&E to TNT almost killed me. Changed my whole worldview. But TNT knows drama. Any other SAG member would want a principal role in a feature film. I just want to be the crime scene guy who explains the blood splatter to Jerry Orbach.
Law & Order is taking over the world and I love it. I watch the cable showings at 12, 7 and 11, and the regular Special Victims Unit on Friday and Criminal Intent on Sunday (well after the Sopranos season, but I tape it). On Monday and Tuesday, it seems like a L&O marathon on TNT. And let’s not forget the current reruns on USA. Of course, I watch the big daddy of the whole franchise on Wednesday night. That one, the original, keeps pumping out TV progeny like the giant mother alien Sigourney Weaver finds at the end of Aliens 2. OK, one big admission. I didn’t watch the real life Law & Order show. Hate shows with real people. I ignored that one like Happy Days ignored the Cunningham’s older son Chuck. It never happened.
I’m waiting for Law & Order: The Super Bowl. Why not? The games always suck. Let’s do the game Law & Order style. Show the winning play first and a dead obese woman in the end zone, and let Brisco, who always gets the opening comment, make some wisecrack about, “the game not being over until the fat lady sings.”
Actually the Law & Order people took a page out of my book with the names of the spin-offs. Not the actual names. Just adding a colon in the title. You know, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, etc. It adds the illusion of depth-that’s how I go t through college, added a colon to every paper I ever wrote. The colon says the writer of this paper has way too much depth to sum up his ideas without extra punctuation. Law & Order: Television program or sick obsession?
Law & Order has exposed me to some of our greatest working actors. Many an unknown-at least to me- Tony Award winner guest starred on L&O. The Captain of the Navy ship who murdered the woman who kept him from becoming an admiral. Broadway star. The lawyer who fixed up geriatric Mr. Triandos with the stripper whose mother killed him, another Broadway big shot—and the guy who got Kim Catrall in Porky’s for that matter.
I don’t need to go to plays or the movies; I have Law & Order. Elaine Stritch. From what I hear she’s some kind of Broadway legend, but she’ll always be women’s rights advocate Lainie Stieglitz to me. You remember her. She represented Felicity Huffman when she ran an interior decorating shop in Westchester and an interior fornicating business in Manhattan. Of course Felicity Huffman’s husband William H. Macy, who got an Academy Award nomination for some film, was the youth hostel supervisor who was convicted of raping the woman who’s now Paulie Walnut’s latina goomah on the Soprano’s. Screw Kevin Bacon and his little game.
The Masucci family story line, Hudson University, using the last name Tashijan for characters over and over again, guessing the episode from the opening scene, “this is the one where the guy gets his kidney stolen”, cantankerous Adam Schiff and his crusty wisdom between bites of tuna sandwich-I’m helpless. I freaked out a fellow actor on a charcoal audition. Somehow he thought it odd that I knew him from two separate L&O roles. He’ll have to get used to the price of fame. By the way Steven Hill who played Schiff is doing ads for a brokerage house. Same crotchety character just no sandwich-what range!
Sometimes, I like to end these columns with a bit of wisdom. Something to leave you better than I found you. Prepare to be moved because these are the most important words I know: “The people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” It’s 11 o’clock. I gotta go.