What's the use of wondrin'?

It has taken me many weeks to get used to the fact that Law & Order (original flavor) is now on Friday nights. I liked it better on Wednesdays; it seemed like I often found myself in the mood for some just-short-of-mindless TV entertainment at 10:00 on a Wednesday night, and I was always glad to see Sam Waterston and S. Epatha (and, to a lesser extent, the other regulars), ready to keep me company just when I needed them the most. But I have less patience for the blandness of the original Law & Order (as compared to my drug of choice, the much spicier, though sadly now irretrievably off-the-rails, SVU) on Fridays. Still, last night the boyfriend and I found ourselves sitting in front of the television just as a new L&O was about to come on, and so we watched. And I realized (not for the first time) that this show has become, for me, like a bad relationship in which I am hopelessly mired. Every time I tune in, hoping to recapture the magic of the old days, I spend the whole hour thinking about how terrible Milena Govich is (seriously, have you ever seen anyone less comfortable in a role?) and how she needs to stop it with the henleys and the funny walk already, and how the plots are getting more and more outlandish and twist-heavy, and the courtroom arguments are becoming less and less interesting…and yet I can’t quite convince myself to walk away and not look back, because I keep remembering the good times we used to have. NBC is going to have to cancel the show to break me out of this self-destructive cycle, because I’ll keep watching as long as they keep stringing me along. Even the once-lively Television Without Pity forums for the franchise are dull and unsatisfying now; it’s hardly worth the effort to snark. So I guess the whole reason I wrote this post is just to say to Dick Wolf and NBC: don’t think, just because I keep watching your show, that I haven’t noticed the downward slide, and in particular the insulting badness of Milena Govich. Believe me, I’d stop watching if I could.

There is at least one aspect of L&O-viewing that remains pleasurable, and that is spotting stage actors in the credits and/or in their one-scene appearances. I feel so wonkish! But tell me, readers, do you have the same dependency issues? And do you hate Detective SugarTits (as I call her)* as much as I do? I’d feel better knowing I’m not alone…

*In the interest of clarity, I feel compelled to add that I did not make this nickname up; Chevy Chase actually called her "sugartits" in a recent "gosh, what headline could this be ripped from?" episode. I presume he was referring to the way she carries herself -- that is, awkwardly, so as to thrust her cute-but-I've-seen-cuter boobs into every shot.