Written on May 19, 2010 at 7:58 am by Shawn Deena

Law & Order, We’ll Miss You

Filed under Current TV {no comments}

By Shawn Deena
Big announcements came out this week about the cancellation of one of NBC’s longest running shows; one has to wonder what prompted them to make the change. For fans of the show that has become an icon of the procedural crime, the big question to ask is why kill one of your most well known and consistently strong dramas. Why, NBC?

The Drama Workhorse That Was Law & Order

One more year and it could have beaten the record. The record they will now share with the old western, Gunsmoke. Couldn’t they have kept it one more year? It’s a crime show about stories that are “ripped from the headlines.” How could you ever possibly run out?

And they had a winning formula that worked so well they made two more shows out of it and gave Ice-T the most ironic job of all time. Over its lifespan, L&O has had a vast array of talented actors come through the halls of the police station and the court house, became the standard of excellence for the police/law drama and has consistently delivered quality television during its long tenure.

The show developed a dependability you could always take comfort in. Crime committed, cops figure it out, arrest bad guy, trial and they win or lose. Even with variations on the theme it was still a solid format that gave the cast and writers enough room to deal not just with the crime, but some of the issues and moral ambiguities involved with some of the situations.

Apparently in addition to poor ratings this season, NBC cited creative fatigue as the other reason. Creative fatigue? How you get tired writing about crime and punishment? Not that we expected the show to go on forever but we at least hoped that a show that has left behind such an amazing legacy, would have a better send off than the NBC chopping block news blotter.

Maybe one of the problems was they kept moving the show around (we can thank Jay Leno for some of that last year). Hopefully they’ll pull something together to give this show a proper finale rather than just stop airing. Of course the show is on every day, so in some sense it won’t be off the air. Just not on NBC.

I suggest they close out with the “chung chung” noise.

Shawn Deena is a writer, musician, gamer and all around comic book and sci-fi nerd. As lover of films and television he has entirely useless library of knowledge that has now been increased thanks to the large volume of movies and TV shows Netflix offers on their instant play. As someone who likes to share his opinion, having a forum where he can rant incessantly about things in entertainment that bother him, make him laugh or make him want to hit himself in the face with a DVD box is a good thing. Having written about everything from Office Depot chairs to the page turning excitement of CPA guidebooks nothing pleases him more than writing about the stuff he loves and knows.