Lookin' at the Teevee

OK, I've just watched Law and Order, and for the life of me, no matter how many times I watch this show I cannot understand the following it inspires. But hey, at least next week's episode is apparently going to be "ripped from the headlines".

As for the other Wednesday night shows:

Ed seems to be doing a good job at moving past the oft-cited Moonlighting factor -- i.e., the way a show deflates when the two romantic leads finally "do the dirty", as Ed Stevens and Carol Vessey did. (Full disclosure: I hated Moonlighting both before and after they "did the dirty".) The keys here are a strong supporting cast around whom interesting stories can be told, and the fact that Ed was always best when Ed-and-Carol was a subplot, and that's what they are now.

And then there's The West Wing. Three episodes are probably not enough to judge, but I'm gonna anyway, because it's my blog. Anyhow: with the exception of Abby Bartlet's fury at her husband (obviously they're setting up some manner of blow-up later on), I think the show is doing just fine without Aaron Sorkin. Part of that is the fact that the cast and crew well knows what they are doing at this point, and part of it is good writing. Some of the political nuts-and-bolts stuff that marked the show's first two seasons is back, and the dialogue is, dare I say it, sharp. No, it doesn't sound like Sorkin's dialogue, but the characters still sound like themselves. To draw an overwrought analogy, Hemingway's not a lesser writer just because he doesn't sound like Dickens.