NBC
There is something in me that is just constitutionally unable to appreciate yet another cop procedural, even or especially when it’s another Law & Order. (I can appreciate why people loved the original, for instance—I just can’t feel it and am not interested in faking it.) So you won’t be surprised that I didn’t love last night’s debut of Law and Order: Los Angeles—but the first episode was worse than I would have expected it to be.
Law & Order, the original, was a meat-and-potatoes show, and it wasn’t aiming to be naturalistic fiction like The Wire. But in its way, I always felt like it tried to treat New York with verisimilitude, within TV bounds. The initial “Hollywood” episode of LOLA, on the other hand, seemed to embrace every those-showbiz-people-are-crazy stereotype. I would think that, if anything, as a New Yorker, I would be less sensitive to L.A. clichés, so I’d be especially interested to hear how Tuned Inland’s L.A. affiliates saw the episode.
Of course, it’s hard to go broke insulting Hollywood to America, and the success of the show overall, as Alan Sepinwall pointed out, will depend more on the chemistry among the regulars in any case. So tell me what you thought, and let’s hope the Los Feliz episode is better.