"LAW & ORDER": AS YOU LIKE IT

My fellow Iddiot Nora Lee, who's also very vocal in support of quality Television (unlike me who thinks it's all good!), had a Toobworldian moment while brushing up her Shakespeare....

We saw free "As You Like It" at the Delacorte last night after a rain delay - and I didn't even have to look at the credits to realize that Orlando was Sam Waterston's son (not that it says that in the Playbill, other than his name).

He sure looks like a taller, rangier version of his dad when he was young, though with a higher voice. They could do a good 'Cold Case' episode of young/old murderer or witness.

-- from 'The Idiot's Delight Digest'

I think it was Fred Allen who once said the sincerest form of flattery is Television. So even though it's not likely we'll ever see Nora Lee's suggestion come to pass on CBS' 'Cold Case', perhaps Dick Wolf should steal that little conceit from the show and use it on 'Law & Order'.

In the past, we never dealt very much with the histories of the characters on the original show in the franchise. (It's obviously different with the 'Criminal Intent' and 'Special Victims Unit'.) But as the years have gone by, we have learned little bits and pieces of the long-term characters' pasts. Briscoe's failed marriages and the loss of his daughter, the illness of Curtis' wife, and Jack McCoy's indiscretions and the accusations against him of sexual harrassment.

After fifteen years, 'Law & Order' might be facing danger from calcification and fosselization. It had its first major threat from a competitor at the beginning of the season from 'CSI: NY' on CBS. An episode in which Jack McCoy's past comes back to haunt him, and which is acted out with Waterston's son as the younger version of his father's role, might be just the thing to make old-time viewers take notice and come back to the show.

Just an idea, and my thanks to Nora Lee for inspiring it.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby
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