Let’s be honest: last week’s premiere of Law & Order: Los Angeles was dismal. However, this week saw Terrence Howard’s debut in the lead District Attorney role, Teri Polo (Sports Night) starting her recurring role as Rex’s wife/former partner, Jay Karnes (The Shield) as a defense attorney, and Michael Massee (24) playing a creepy cult leader, so it had to get better, right?
It’s not encouraging when the show hasn’t learned from the outcry and reinstated the classic opening; instead, we get another tired pop song. Clunky dialogue abounds (“You’re around decent people now,” says one character in the definition of flat line reading) before Rex and TJ find a stabbing victim who was previously a member of a cult called the Echo Park Tribe. Rachel Ticotin (Con Air) makes her first appearance as the boys’ new boss, giving us all the exposition we need – namely that there are a lot of people who’d like to see “Baby Jane” (?!) dead, considering all the people she helped kill in her previous life.
What follows is a series of crazy people, from the cult leader (Massee in another creepy performance) to another member to the son of one of Jane’s victims; however, the path predictably leads to her abused former cellmate, Maura Dillon. The one refreshing note is that we get a glimpse at Rex’s home life when he and TJ work after hours, getting to meet his wife and ex-partner Casey Ryan Winters (Polo) and with a reference to his kids. That’s a difference that I actually like. Unfortunately, his personal life doesn’t stay personal – once she’s arrested, Maura accuses Casey of framing her for her past conviction, leaving her attorney (Karnes) out for blood. With two reliable actors in Skeet Ulrich and Polo, the plot twist provides the first sparks of intrigue for the show.
In the second half, we meet the show’s second DDA, Jonah Dekker (Terrence Howard) and his second chair, Lauren Gardner (Megan Boone), as well as the District Attorney (Peter Coyote, well used to this role by now). Howard fares better in his debut than Alfred Molina last week (possibly because he also has more to work with), though Boone’s inexperience shows, especially when Gardner is partnered with TJ to re-investigate Maura’s previous conviction. Coyote is always dependable in the supervisor role that’s come to be his forte. Dekker proves to be a crafty prosecutor, doing damage to his murder case simply to protect Casey Winters’ good name – the kind of unconventional move that Michael Cutter might have pulled in the original series. He’s able to coerce a confession on the stand, but his doing so lacks the fire that Cutter, Ben Stone or Jack McCoy would have brought to that moment.
“Echo Park” is certainly an improvement over “Hollywood,” but not by much. The writing is still annoyingly clunky, and the series lacks the soul and spark of its predecessor, coming off more flat than anything else. I don’t celebrate the victories when the good guys win. Not to mention the most interesting parts of the episode revolve around Rex’s wife and their relationship – a recurring guest star and an aspect that Law & Order is notorious for not utilizing, so one has to wonder if the positives here are just a flash in the pan.
Is it a better episode than the previous one? Yes. Does it make me any more interested to come back and keep watching? Unfortunately, no. Law & Order: Los Angeles continues to be a pale impersonation of the brand.
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