Law And Order -1990-2010--complete 20 Seasons B... -

The show never answered these questions with a hug. It answered them with a four-minute closing argument, then cut to black. There was no personal life. No "will they/won’t they" romance. You never saw Jerry Orbach’s Lennie Briscoe at home. You didn’t want to. The work was the point. Law & Order treated its cast like a repertory company. Actors came, actors went, and the show never blinked. Over 20 seasons, the only constant was S. Epatha Merkerson as Lt. Anita Van Buren (seasons 4–20)—the calm, weary anchor of the 27th Precinct.

By season 20 (2010), Giuliani and Bloomberg have sanitized the streets. The detectives use laptops. The Twin Towers are a void in the skyline. The villains are hedge fund managers and corrupt politicians, not street-corner drug dealers. The show changed because New York changed. Few series have ever been such a faithful mirror of their setting. Why do we still care? Because Law & Order believed in something radical: that institutions, however flawed, are worth defending. Jack McCoy lost cases. Briscoe got the wrong guy sometimes. Van Buren battled cancer and departmental racism. But every single week, they showed up. They did the work. They read the suspect their rights. They filed the motion. They made the argument. Law and Order -1990-2010--Complete 20 Seasons B...

Chung-Chung.