One Particular Dialogue Exchange on the 2006 Season Premiere of Law & Order

Let's forget for just a moment that last Friday's premiere episode of Law and Order revolved around a fictional celebrity dullard ("J-Train") who, in every important respect, was a precise genetic clone of actual celebrity dullard Kevin Federline.

That commentary basically writes — and has, in fact written — itself.

Here's one particular florid sample, via the fountain of populist wisdom known as Technorati:

they should of gotten britney and kev to play themself bc the people who are playing them are ugly. i just hate when they show shit like this making fun of people are celbs.

When even the learning disabled wing of the blogging community is successfully deconstructing and eviscerating your show's basic premise, you know your writing has failed in a fairly fundamental way.

Even before the Britney/K-Fed opening episode was announced, however, it was clear that the Law & Order franchise had become broken. Jerry Orbach died. The assistant DAs were getting progressively hotter and less interesting. The show's original wellspring of drama — the gray areas of the law, where there were no easy answers, and only tough, nuanced choices to be made — was becoming increasingly supplanted by episodes where the father is prosecuted for the first 50 minutes until duh duh DUHN it turns out the teenage daughter was really the killer.

All of this progressive disintegration has been accelarated by the fact that the franchise is under siege. It's steadily losing ground to the 1,400 different CSI spin-offs, and it's acting like CNN did vis-a-vis Fox News — poorly imitating the new kid on the block and surrendering its original strengths in the process.

One particular bit of dialogue in this year's premiere episode is a perfect microcosm for how low a once-great series has sunk.

It's a confrontation between the snarky Darth Vader of gossip columnists and the plucky new Latina ADA (Alana De La Garza). Seeking to preview a future courtroom confrontation, the writers put their characters in the middle of a heated street scene and stand back in order to let the bon mots drop.

Smarmy gossip reporter: Do you like sangria?

ADA: You know your bowtie? It's really, really stupid.

Let's step back for a moment and let the text breathe.

The writers must have brainstormed about this confrontation for a while. It sets the stage for the conflict between the journalist who won't divulge his source, and the crusading ADA who thinks solving a murder is more important than protecting some scandalmonger's rolodex. So, what do you need? To demonstrate that the journalist is smart and nasty, and that the ADA is tough and just as quick on her feet.

So to really make it sting — and point out what a nasty guy this journalist really is — the writers decide to make him utter a racial epithet.

Fair enough.

But they apparently don't have the cojones for something really venomous, like some sort of nasty biting allusion to ancestors swimming across a body of water in order to perform manual labor for a rate of pay that undercuts the wage base of native-born Americans, while simultaneously producing offspring at a rate that shifts local demographics.

No. They have the gossipmonger inquire as to whether the Latina DA likes sangria. But so what if she does? What does this have to do with anything? It's a Spanish drink that's popular with just about everyone who's ever tried it. In what possible way is this insulting? Is it any more biting or relevant than asking: "Do you like tapas?" Or "Do you enjoy flan?" Or "Have you read Don Quixote?"

Clearly, the best possible response to this is to say: "Sure, I like sangria. I actually prefer white wine sangria... have you had the stuff over at Alta before? It's this great place over on 10th St. in the West Village. The New York Times gave it a great write-up — said it might be the smartest place in Manhattan when it comes to small plates, and I'm inclined to agree. If you haven't gone, you really should."

Where does a hostile interrogator go from there? Maybe: "Fuck Alta! If you think that soulless Yuppie magnet can come within a hundred paces of Cafe Andalucia, you may as well eat at McDonald's!" But in New York City, that passes for flirting.

But instead, she identifies his bowtie — which is actually one of the least ridiculous aspects of the reporter's Tucker Carlson-on-acid getup, which included suspenders, some kind of stupid hat, and one of those clashing collar/shirt things — as "stupid." Which she modifies with "really, really."

A basic rule of comedic conflict: The more work your opponent has done for you in terms of being an idiot, the less work you need to do in order to point it out. A more verbally deft assistant DA might have said:

"Yes, I actually like sangria quite a bit. Say, where do you typically get your clothes? I'm really digging your outfit. It's kind of... well, it's really, really cool. Your stylish bowtie makes me want to drink a lot of sangria and then, after an appropriate interval, put your dick in my mouth. Whaddya say?"

Granted, this might have rattled McCoy, but McCoy needs some rattling.

Christ, Law & Order has fallen on hard times. NBC CEO Jeff Zucker: take it behind the barn. Ask it to think about the rabbits. Pull the trigger.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)