There has been a fair amount of cast turnover since Law & Order came back in 2022 after a 12-year absence. Anthony Anderson was replaced by Mehcad Brooks, Sam Watterson was replaced by Tony Goldwyn and Jeffrey Donovan was replaced by Reid Scott. Now another well-known face, Camryn Manheim, is being replaced as the squad’s lieutenant by an equally well-known actor, Maura Tierney.
LAW & ORDER SEASON 24: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important, groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” DUN-DUN!
The Gist: While Manhattan District Attorney Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn) is speaking on a TV news program about how it’s his job to keep politics out of his office, we see a woman packing. She answers the door, then we cut to scenes of her getting severely beaten. The next thing we know, the NYPD is on the scene, and her body is lying on the floor.
Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) and Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks) enter the scene, and are soon joined by someone they’ve never seen before: Lt. Jessica Brady (Maura Tierney), who is taking over the squad from Lt. Kate Dixon (Camryn Manheim), though no one seemed to tell the people serving under her, or even Lt. Brady, why she left.
It turns out that the woman worked as an ADA in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office; ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) knew her when they worked together in the Manhattan DA’s office. At first the detectives collar a refugee staying at a nearby hotel, but under questioning, Lt. Brady figures out he’s not the guy. This is after she has a talk with Riley, telling him that he has to do what she tells him until she’s had some more time at the precinct and can learn to trust him or anyone else who reports to her.
Because the victim was an ADA, Baxter is under a lot of pressure to get this case to court, and when suspicion eventually lands on the woman’s fiance, he asks executive ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) and Maroun to find enough evidence to charge him. However, this case is hitting a bit close to home with Maroun, who has a family member who died because of domestic violence.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Law & Order Seasons 1-23, though the faces have all changed on the police side of the ledger since the show’s comeback Season 21.
Our Take: No matter what faces we see on either side of the Law & Order formula, the show is basically the same. The casting of Tierney as the new lieutenant was a fascinating move, though, given the fact that Tierney has been spending much of her on-screen time in the last few years on cable and streaming shows like The Affair and American Rust. But it’s not like this is the first time she’s joined a venerable franchise midstream — ER, of course — and she fits right in here as Lt. Brady.
Will there be a bit of conflict with Riley and Shaw? Probably. But that conflict seemed to be a low-priority part of the police part of the season premiere’s story. Maybe it’s because we’re still not buying Scott as a hard-bitten NYPD detective; he certainly isn’t as world-weary and quippy as the late Jerry Orbach was as Lenny Briscoe, the ur-example of a L&O detective, but maybe that’s too high a bar. Even the character he replaced, Jeffrey Donovan’s Kevin Cosgrove, had more grit and anger than Reid does as Riley.
The story seemed to pick up steam on the DA’s side of the story, probably given how personal it was to Maroun. Halevi does a convincing job showing how Maroun can barely keep her feelings in check on this case. What was good about this side of the story is that courtroom dramatics were kept to a minimum, with Maroun and Price doing almost investigating as the cops do.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Maroun is about to make a huge mistake with a witness that was supposed to solidify their case against a right-wing news executive who is a friend of the victim’s fiance.
Sleeper Star: Goldwyn seems to embody some of the weariness of Sam Watterson’s Jack McCoy, but he brings enough that’s new to the District Attorney role to make it his own.
Most Pilot-y Line: When the victim’s fiance hears that the cops like him for her murder, he tells the detectives to get out. “What are ya gonna do? Call the cops?” asks Riley with some not so convincing snark.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though the case in the Season 24 premiere of Law & Order had a few holes in it, there were some good performances in the episode, including Tierney’s turn as the squad’s new lieutenant.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
