Law & Order

Cops and crooks go together like righteous and indignation, which helps explain the primal appeal and profligate success of the NBC crime-catcher drama Law & Order and its string of inflammatory spin-offs. The driven dicks and persistent prosecutors who lock away scum in the Law & Order precincts are practiced pillars of moral outrage. No matter how often these veteran guardians of decency encounter the heinous evidence of some skel’s debased moral values, each new perpetrator is scorned with a lip-curdled outrage that is still as fresh as the contempt heaped upon that long-gone lawbreaking jerk one hundred creeps before. To watch Law & Order is to be correct, to be superior, and to be part of the solution.