The originalLaw & Orderpremiered on Thursday, Sept. 13, 1990.
Fourteen million people tuned in.
It was theMAS*Hof the first decade of the 21st century.
Jerry Orbach (left) as Det. Lennie Briscoe and Chris Noth as Det. Mike Logan in 1994.NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images
During every cold open, youd keep your fingers crossed it was a Jerry Orbach episode.
But I hadnt seen them in years.
Few shows offer the opportunity for such comprehensive time-traveling.
Its also a map of a vanished New York no box stores, no banks!
Oh, to time-travel through these series cold opens with an apartment down payment in hand).
Talk about only murders in the building.
Was Nora Ephronhome and also watching, one wonders?
These days youd needmillions of dollarsto get a glimpse inside one of those apartments.
Whatever else the show provides, its a New York real estate junkies dream.
When the show premiered, New Yorks murder rate was at its highest in recorded history.
Just a few short years later, it had plummeted to levels not seen in nearly half a century.
A period, formerNew York Observereditor Peter Kaplan once wrote, when nothing seemed to go wrong.
In those first seasons, that violent, crime-ridden city was its own character.
The main characters in the beginning, all male had little backstory.
In theLaw & Orderuniverse, neither the cops nor the law are heroes.
Also deeply familiar is the tabloid hysteria, which has since become our universal ALL-CAPS way of communicating.
Despite each episode assuring viewers that This story is fictional.
And good lord, are some of these storylines alarmingly familiar.
People are shot on the subway.
It all starts with white men trying to protect white women from the big bad Black man.
It was the prime argument in favor of segregation.
And its what made lynching an honorable diversion.
Especially considering this wasnetworktelevision and not a cable show.
She cant be raped because shes a prostitute?
(The prostitutes defense attorney, Lanie Stieglitz the Betty Friedan militia is played by Elaine Stritch.)
Exposure therapy for the culture wars we are embedded in today.
Nothing looms larger inLaw & Orderthan the tabloids.
They are the id of the city.
The front page of thePostwas the original Twitter.
And no one loves thePostmore than our once and again president.
Not as a character so much as a reference point in casual dialogue.
That those roles have now flipped so completely is dizzying.
Indeed, the city we find in the originalLaw & Orderis the New York from whence Trump emerged.
This tracks, too.
Shockingly quickly, the city became notably safer.
Email begins to make an appearance (much to Briscoes befuddlement: Me?
I used a computer once, lost 27 straight games of solitaire).
Continually hoping that some semblance of law and order survives whats coming.
