Image Credit: Dean Hendler/NBLaw & Order: Los Angeles debuted last night with an episode that mashed together three separate pop culture story strands. There was the Bling Ring, that crew of SoCal teenyboppers who burgled celebrity homes by tracking their marks’ whereabouts via the Internet. There was a Brody Jenner-ish reality TV star, an L.A. rich kid who dated his way into pseudo-stardom. (Bizarro-Brody said, “Perez Hilton called me a douche-tard every day for six months,” which is the first and hopefully last time the words “douche-tard” and “Perez Hilton” will ever appear in the L&Overse.) And finally, there was a touching re-enactment of the Lindsay-Dina Lohan mommy-daughter psychodrama, complete with lots of heavy talk about living through/off your children. Also, lots of red hair. A better name for the sixth L&O would be Law & Order: Everything Annoying About Los Angeles.
There are signs of life in this West Coast reboot. There is an undeniably pleasant cheese factor to pumping the franchise’s ripped-from-the-headlines mentality full of Hollywood joy-juice. The pilot, directed by HBO veteran Allen Coulter, had a glossy sheen that looked screensaver-pretty. Corey Stoll’s Detective Mustache scores an 8 on the Noth-o-Meter as the acerbic supporting detective. (Skeet Ulrich’s lead detective only scores about a 3 on the Orbach-o-Meter, although his character actually seems like a more well-adjusted Detective Stabler. His name is “Rex Winters,” which sounds like it should be a comic strip from the ’30s or a porn star from the ’70s.)
The big twist of the episode was that Bizarro-Dina, who had killed a member of the Bizarro-Bling Ring when they burgled her house, was actually in charge the Bling Ring, and she sent Bizarro-Lindsay out to party with the marked celebrities as a distraction. That is the most insane plotline I’ve heard all week, but you won’t see that on Detroit 1-8-7.
The major downside of LO: LA is that, besides the sunshine and the paparazzi, it doesn’t really feel much different from the Original Blend. That may just speak to how colorless the L&O franchise has become. But in New York, that colorlessness made a bit of sense. In LA, it just makes everyone look kind of square, besides Detective Mustache, who has a mustache. (It certainly doesn’t help that Los Angeles has hosted some of the best cop shows in history — Southland, Boomtown, Robbery Homicide Division, fricking Dragnet.) Law and Order: Los Angeles makes CSI: New York look like NCIS: Los Angeles, which you can either take as a compliment or an insult.
Did you watch LO: LA? Do you agree that Detective Mustache is awesome? Don’t you wish they’d just gotten the Lohans to play themselves? Should they just rename the show Celebrity Law & Order and get faded C-listers to play themselves as murderers each week? Sound off below!
Read the pop culture police blotter @EWDarrenFranich
I don’t plan on watching the show, but if you keep writing about Detective Moustache I’ll be back every week for the recap.
I loved, loved, LOVED the mustache! Other than that the episode was just ‘meh’. But I’ll check back in to see if it gets any jazzier….and to stare at the ‘stache.
Detective Moustache is smoking hot.
I saw about half of the show because I was out for my nightly walk. Detective Mustache was awesome, but Skeet Ulrich needs to grow a personality. Alfred Molina is an international treasure – he’s such a great actor, but where was Terence Howard? Was he in the part that I missed? As for the ripped-from-the-headlines story line, I hope they can come up with some better story lines than the first show.
Yikes! The pilot took on THREE separate Hollywood stories…sounds like they’re going to blow their “ripped from the headlines” wad by episode 8.
By the way, I love that the black guy between/behind Ulrich and Detective Mustache looks to be sound asleep.
The show sucked – Law & Order is NYC and can NEVER be anything else.
Loved Det. Mustache! He and Alfred Molina were the only good things about the show…every time the Asst ADA came on screen i kept thinkg “Brenda!” It is best not to mention Skeet.
@Mr. Holloway…thanks for the hidden gem! Guy is totally conked out!
I would rather have had another season of the original. I don’t understand the reasoning behind that decision.
i refuse to watch, but will continue to read your recaps as long as its on the air
I watched the first episode because I wanted to see how the L&O franchise would fare on the west coast and because Alfred Molina always turns in a cool performance. I pretty wasted my time because the show (unless something drastic happens very soon) can’t hold a candle to the Mother Ship, even with Molina at the helm. And, Mr. Franich, the L&O franchise might be colorless now, but the original should still be on the air, minus Roach and deGarza. The minute they put Sam Waterston in the DA role the quality of the show plummeted. And putting Anderson in as one of the cops was a mistake, as well….he should have spent as much time rehearsing as he did making sure his hairline and beard were perfectly sliced in.
I agree Anderson is noy a detective at all He killed the show. IThought Law and Order was going to rocket in the first episode Wanda DeJesus was the Chief and next week it was someone eles. That was telling me in the begining it was going to be doomed I watch the old reruns Green and Lenny
They really should go LA – more day-glo with the palette. Det. Mustache FTW!
oh and your right it would make it better if you got the c list celeberities to play themselves, then maybe i would watch
The cast is fine, but it’d be good to get a flashier… I thought there was a little bit of Joe Simpson in this episode. Basically selling your child (and soul) just for some money.
L&O is NYC. I’ll give L&O LA one more chance b/c I love me some L&O, but I wasn’t impressed on the first go round.
I was disappointed in that they went Hollywood with the plot so quickly. I thought I had read that they weren’t going to focus on celebrity too much. Two questions: How much did TMZ pay for the frequent product placements? Isn’t Terence Howard supposed to be in the show? Det.’stache dude and Doc Oc were great though.
The only guest star who left me thinking, “haven’t I seen her in something before” was Bizzaro-Dina, so, according the laws of the L&O-verse, she had to be in charge of the bling ring and be the killer. Unfortunately, I figured this out by minute eight. Then I got bored.
This was just awful. The actors were wooden–even Alfred Molina, who usually is great. Bad writing. What a waste.
I totally agree with jfms777–the debut episode was so bad I stopped watching with 20′ remaining on my DVR copy. I then watched a few episodes of last year’s L&O UK, via DVD sent to me by a British pal. Although the plotlines of L&O UK are simply previous Law and Order episodes recast in London, the episodes are much more lively and engaging than the rubbish passing for L&O Los Angeles. As I commented in a previous post, I wonder why NBC simply didn’t rubberstamp a renewal for another season of the original Law and Order; as a TNT trailer proclaims, “the original is still the best!”. A renewal would have saved much extra labour and perhaps costs in show development and casting–and saved the viewers some bad television.