DanMargarita.com

I've become a big fan of the show and its spin-offs "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." Fortunately for us fans, it seems to have replaced "Martha Stewart Living" as a show that you can find somewhere on TV on any given night of the week. They've come up with almost as many variations of the show as "Star Trek."

The original franchise seemed to be a unique concept in TV. The show was neither a cop show nor a courtroom drama, but both. The police would investigate a crime the first half of the show and the District Attorney's office would prosecute it during the second half. A pretty good gig for the actors who get a paid a nice salary to only learn half of a script.

One remarkable aspect of the original show is that it has maintained a loyal following despite numerous cast changes. No one on the current show was a member of the original cast. This is a drastic difference from when John Travolta left "Welcome Back, Kotter" and that show's ratings plummeted. Although if "L & O" had replaced one of its original cast members with a Ted McGinley look-alike as "Kotter" did, perhaps I wouldn't be writing this.

Clearly, the fictional D.A.'s office seems to be in favor of affirmative action. After the initial all-male cast, they've apparently adopted a practice of having at least one gorgeous female Assistant District Attorney at all times, although in reality this is more of a Hollywood version of affirmative action. As a supporter of affirmative action, if I ever get in the position of hiring anyone, I'll consider those same guidelines (kidding).

The problem that "Special Victims Unit" or "S.V.U." presents for me is that I have a hard time mentioning it without someone thinking about a large, gas-guzzling vehicle.

"L & O" has been a practitioner of what is known in TV as "crossover" where characters from one show appear on another show. Several "L & O" members appeared on the former NBC cop show "Homicide: Life on the Street" and vice-versa. They're not the first to do it since long ago Kermit the Frog crossed over from "The Muppets" to "Sesame Street." One can only wonder about the possibilities of stretching the crossover boundaries. How about cast members from "Sesame Street" on "S.V.U." for an episode?

"Now, Miss Piggy...did you get a good look your attacker?"

The courtroom scenes seem to be more realistic than they were once portrayed on TV. The most famous courtroom drama of all time is probably "Perry Mason." Raymond Burr starred as the attorney who always defended genuinely innocent people and never seemed to lose a case. What would Mason do if Pablo Escobar, the head of the notorious Medellin drug cartel wanted to hire Mason to represent him?

The hour-long show had Mason take a case, investigate it and then question several witnesses on the stand until the last few minutes when he would simply badger someone into making a confession while having no proof whatsoever.

One issue I have with "L & O" is that with such a constant need for material, they have a tendency to take recent real-life headlines and turn it into an episode, the Jayson Blair/New York Times plagiarism case being one recent example. Remarkably, they haven't turned Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" into a murder plot yet. This would make "dusting for prints" a lot more interesting.

"Law & Order" can be either a boon or a stigma for New York City depending on whether you view the series as a depiction of city officials who wage a constant and heroic battle against the criminal element, or as a place where one shouldn't venture for fear of imminently being sexually assaulted or murdered.

As much as I enjoy them, I hope they don't come up with another version of "Law & Order" because it'll leave little time for eating and sleeping.