http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/66182/In its early seasons, Law & Order could feel as brisk as a sonnet: setup, Briscoe wisecrack, two plot detours, an ideological debate, then a juicy cross-examination and a wry punch line from the D.A. If you watched it enough, you could build a taxonomy of Manhattan evil. There were your Upper East Side aristocrats with dirty family secrets; your sociopathic prep-schoolers with their plaid skirts and smirky cover stories; the genuinely chilling episodes about the Russian mob; the jaunty roman-à-clef celebrity plots; assorted intra-ethnic feuds; a sparkling universe of skeezeball husbands; those scaremongering the-Internet-will-kill-you plots; the tragic, hard-to-watch tales of child abuse (eventually relegated to SVU); and the rare yet satisfyingly gonzo episodes where the show became nothing but a series of red herrings, or seemed to be about one thing (sex trafficking!) but were actually about another thing entirely (identity theft).
i like the early and mid-90s myself, as it mirrors the nyc i remember as a teenage tourist. well, not mirrors, as i wasn't around any homicides - but it reminds me of the flavor of that time period. and jerry orbach was such a dick.
