The show’s first episode in 12 years has the intro, the music, the dun-dun, and a couple of the old stars. But it’s missing the things that made the series essential.
An unsuspecting pair of New Yorkers walk past Rockefeller Center and see something alarming under an NBC sign. It’s the body of a television show, barely breathing. The first officer on the scene tells the detectives it’s that famous old series with the funny noise, and it was trying for a comeback. Lennie Briscoe eyes the stiff and declares, “Nothing to see here.”
The one thing we can rule out right away is a crime of passion, because based on Thursday night’s Season 21 premiere, no one’s going to get that worked up over of the return of “Law & Order.” The show’s first episode in 12 years is a cookie-cutter exercise. The two-act structure, the “separate but equally important” intro, the Mike Post theme music and the dun-dun are still there. But the hallmarks of the show at its best — urgency, tricky plotting, bourbon-dry humor and, especially, powerful but economical acting — are missing. Maybe someone can subpoena them before the season’s over.
There’s disappointment here, but not surprise. The “Law & Order” that NBC abruptly canceled in 2010 was already long past its glory days, though it had perked up a bit in its last few seasons. The prime-time empire of “F.B.I.,” “Chicago” and “Law & Order” shows ruled by the producer Dick Wolf — he now has control of three full nights of network programming — is an exercise in the maintenance of audience-pleasing formulas. Based on the evidence, there was no reason to expect anything different.
Still, you could hope that “The Right Thing,” the show’s 457th episode, would at least buff up the old routines, make them shiny and snappy for a night. But the prevailing feeling, from the writing to the staging to the performances, is of people going through the motions and being careful not to knock anything over. It’s a ritual re-enactment.
The story is ripped from the headlines of last summer, when Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction was overturned. A famous entertainer, convicted of a rape and accused of many more, is released from prison because of a prosecutor’s error; his bullet-riddled corpse is then found outside his townhouse. Anthony Anderson, who returns as Detective Kevin Bernard, gets to deliver the opening kiss-off: “Every victim deserves respect. Even the ones that raped 40 women.”
It’s a little heavy-handed, as “Law & Order” benedictions go, but it’s an apt beginning for an episode that takes a blunt-force approach. The series has a proud legacy of treating complicated issues with subtlety, and of finding clever ways to dramatize them through the dilemmas faced by cops and prosecutors. Not here.
Jeffrey Donovan, playing Bernard’s new partner, Frank Cosgrove, is the designated old-school cop. But in 2022, in the age of ubiquitous cellphones, would a street-wise Manhattan detective really fly into a rage and get physical when a Black man swears at him? (And would any cop who would do that ever make detective?) Even more head-scratching is Bernard’s non-ironic declaration, with regard to the dead celebrity, “First time in 20 years people actually care about a Black man getting shot.” Apparently he wasn’t watching TV during that 12-year hiatus.
These might be minor offenses when writers have just a handful of minutes to establish characters, but they jump out, and they’re indicative of an overall obviousness, a lack of the finesse that used to mark the show. The investigation feels cursory and the resolution of the case goes in the most heavily emotional direction possible; it’s one of those episodes where the second half-hour is less about ingenuity or questions of law than about passionate speeches and modest scenery chewing.
The prosecutorial half-hour does offer the pleasure of a reunion with the show’s other returning star, Sam Waterston as District Attorney Jack McCoy, and it’s good to see him in action, though he isn’t given a lot to do. He’s involved in the one moment, a simple reaction shot, that has some of the old “Law & Order” zing: The prosecutor whose mistake led to the entertainer’s release is an old McCoy protégée (no spoilers here), and as she walks out of the courtroom, she passes him and has to endure a classic Waterston glare.
The new cast members, in addition to Donovan, are Camryn Manheim as the police lieutenant and Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi as the assistant district attorneys. None of them stand out in the episode, though Halevi has an unaffected, natural presence. Donovan (of “Burn Notice”) may just need better material — he’s fine in a key scene where Cosgrove lies to a suspect to elicit a confession.
The real value of “Law & Order” was always less about plot and message and more about acting. Over the years, an impressive roster of regular cast members managed to do excellent work within the show’s constraints: Jerry Orbach, Chris Noth, Dann Florek, Michael Moriarty, Steven Hill, Paul Sorvino, S. Epatha Merkerson, Jill Hennessy, Jesse L. Martin, Linus Roache. The list goes on, but it isn’t endless, and the new season doesn’t promise to add anyone to it.
For many viewers, though, familiarity will be its own reward. If a troubled country has one more way to chill out and get to sleep at night, what’s the crime?
