Dun dun.
Aww yeah. We here at Samuel Fuckett (okay, ONE of us here at Samuel Fuckett) have a notable obsession with this television show. So it makes sense that it would be the first to undergo this dissection.
Overview: Law and Order was basically the granddaddy for all these crime dramas. Without Law and Order, we wouldn't have CSI or any of its spinoffs. (Okay, maybe the world would be a better place without David Caruso and his one-liners, but we digressed.) It was, essentially, the first real "procedural": the show begins with the discovery of a body, and moves from there. We see the police investigate the crime. We see them go to the DA to get warrants. We see the DA prosecute the crime. We see Dick Wolf's name. Every single episode is the same, it can be boiled down.
Did You Know That: Law and Order is, as of this season, tied (with Gunsmoke) as the longest-running crime drama in the history of television. It first aired in 1990.
Law and Order has three spin-offs: Law and Order: Criminal Intent (CI, for short), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), and Law and Order: Trial by Jury (which was short-lived, as it was Jerry Orbach's show, and he passed away after filming roughly half a season). SVU is currently the most popular show in the franchise.
Mariska Hargitay, the female lead of SVU, is the highest-paid actress on television.
Richard Belzer, Detective Munch on SVU, has played his character on eight different television series. (SVU, Trial by Jury, Law and Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, and once on episodes of The Wire, Arrested Development, The Beat, and The X-Files)
Sam Waterston, DA Jack McCoy on regular Law and Order, holds the record for longest recurring character in consecutive episodes. He was in 333 (!) episodes straight. If you were to watch the episodes non-stop, it would take you ten days, provided you had them on DVD sans commercials.
Talking Points: Controlled Manipulation. If we human beings love one thing, it's the unexpected. However, we also love schadenfreude, so we prefer it when it happens to other people. Law and Order is notorious for its little twists: cliffhanger endings, surprise jury findings, suspects killing themselves at the end, victims not being as innocent as they look--just about anything that the writers can feasibly throw in there. There's a reason this show has run so long: it gets at what people really enjoy.
The Dun Dun: It's actually a combo of many different sounds, including monks stamping on a concrete floor. Consider its place in pop culture: undeniable. People love that noise. We're Pavlov's dogs: dun dun? It's become the sound of drama. Twists. Justice, maybe. Dick Wolf, by making that sound the cornerstone of his show, also guaranteed it would last for a long time.
The Idea of a TV Franchise: CSI has one now. Shonda Rhimes has Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice. NCIS has a new spin-off set in LA. Law and Order became a monster. And, via the injection of youth, as well as character development in SVU, the spin-off became more popular than the original. Consider the details: the theme song stayed the same, as did the "dun dun." It was essentially the same show, only with a different focus on the crimes (sexual crimes, as well as crimes dealing with children, as opposed to just murder.) The same holds true of CI, where clips of the perpetrators scheming are interlaced with the detectives tracking them down. CI builds suspense. SVU, with its concentration on crimes of an emotion-spurring nature, builds loyalty of the audience to the characters. While the detectives on the other shows shift often, Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni have been on the show since the beginning. People of nearly every walk of life watch one show or another: each spinoff centers around a different idea, so there is one that appeals to everyone.
Dun dun.
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