MovieChat Forums > Law & Order (1990) Discussion > Should have been more of an expanded set...

Should have been more of an expanded setting


I think something really intriguing with this show is if it explored the law and the order of many different areas of the country besides just New York City, meaning each episode should have been set in a different city or town with different cops and lawyers. Over the seasons we could have had some areas revisited. I only say this because the show is set in Manhattan and as small as the area is, we hardly ever see the same characters and areas revisited as much as one would expect, which makes it odd to even remain having the show set in just this area. Having it set in other areas makes it more believable to not need to revisit the same things over and over again and have it be an issue. This became more of a problem when you had various spinoffs set in the same borough too because you never saw THOSE characters or places again. The only consistent thing in Manhattan that seemed to follow on most of the shows was Hudson University.

But what do you guys think if the show followed its format but in different cities and towns across the country each episode. Its fresh and an angle never done before and since the show is never really about the personal lives of the main characters, I think it could have worked.

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Yeah, that sounds like it would be an okay show, but it wasn't "Law & Order".

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I just think limiting it to just New York City was a mistake. This should have been an all over the country thing, maybe even taking it to other countries in later seasons if we really wanted to broaden things. And given how real court cases are that are handled in a much slower and timely fashion, that could also be handled more accurately. Doing it the way we know it, I've always had issues with this because we get 20+ episodes a year with different stories and you're telling me all these trials are happening so swiftly at once? And in real life, trials don't even happen all like that because it's a huge expensive thing to do. So my idea would work better for something like this that's to go on for 20+ episodes a season.

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