TRUE STORIES

by Ana Marie Cox

While the characters on Seinfeld may as well be living on a different planet as in New York, there is one show on TV that gets the city right. The acting on NBC's Law and Order (Wednesdays at 10pm) is leaden enough to shield plutonium, but at least everyone drinks coffee out of blue deli paper cups and few characters have apartments beyond their means. Formulaic to the point of self-parody, the cops and lawyers drama makes up for its numerous faults in one significant way: it is one of the few shows set in New York to actually film in the city.

Its obsessiveness on this point is what hooked me to the show. Every scene opens with a title card proclaiming not just the neighborhood setting for a scene, but a specific address. Fuck virtual reality, all you need is this show and either a map or a good memory and you are there. True interactivity is reserved, of course, for those lucky enough to be barred from their own block while L & O is filmed.

The show scores its reality points on a cultural level as well. Producer Dick Wolf has estimated that it takes about ten weeks for a crime story to go from the front page of The Post into the hands of Detectives Brisco and Curtis. Most likely for legal reasons, L&O addresses the particulars of the tabloid screamers in only the most oblique way, but for the pop culture addict it's easy to spot the grain of truth amidst the general seediness. In past seasons, the cops of the 21st have taken on crimes which bear a striking resemblance to the O.J., Menendez and Bobbitt scenarios. This season, the easy money is on seeing oblique (or not-so oblique) references to Hugh Grant, the Queens "Abortion Butcher," and the Unibomber.

With this material to work with, L&O seems set for a killer season. But there is reason to doubt. This season's first two shows seems to have slipped slightly from their successful ground, touching on new-fangled legal issues like DNA and, Jesus, the internet. One can only hope the show will return to what it does best: highly moralistic and rather traditional fables of justice and injustice. Their new-found interest in character development is another unsettling trend. As long-time followers can attest, one of L&O's more sublime points was its acknowledgment that real life happens in neither a particularly linear nor dramatic fashion. My roommate calls L&O's fascination with trivia, like the exact criteria for 2nd degree murder, boring and its complete lack of depth offensive. Me, I call it accurate.