Dick Wolf Hopes USA Changes Its Mind About Cancelling 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent'

[Brian Damage]

Dick Wolf must be feeling a bit of deja vu this spring. Just as a year ago he was lobbying for NBC to pick up the original Law & Order for a 21st season (and thus set a record as TV’s longest-running drama series), the L&Overlord is now hoping that Law & Order: Criminal Intent‘s imminent 10th season won’t be, as announced by USA Network, its last.

“Being the unbridled optimist that I am, I still have hope that this is a ‘victory lap,’ and not a ‘swan song,’” Wolf said during a Thursday conference call. “Based on the work so far, I think the audience is going to be very happy, relieved, and welcoming… and hopefully enough fans will come out so the powers-that-be reconsider their decision.”

Weighing in Criminal Intent‘s favor, of course, is the much anticipated return of two original series leads, Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe (as Detectives Robert Goren and Alexandra Eames) — not that Wolf ever wanted them long gone in the first place.

“It was never a decision to have them disappear into the wilderness,” Wolf says of the duo’s single-season extraction, during which Jeff Goldblum rode solo as Detective Zach Nichols. Looking forward, Wolf says, “I don’t think Vincent and Katie have been any better ever in the series. [Criminal Intent] is back to the power of the first two seasons.”

Of course, there is the none-too-small matter of getting Goren back onto the Major Cases Squad, fired as he asa for insubordination at the start of Season 9. That segue is orchestrated by a new captain, Joseph Hannah (played by Jay O. Sanders), whom Goren knew at the police academy.

There’s also a bit of head-shrinking involved in Goren’s comeback. As Wolf explains, “In getting him back in the good graces of the police department, part of the agreement was for him to go back into psychological counseling.” As such, there will be one scene per episode where Goren meets with a therapist played by Julia Ormond (CSI: NY).

Those scenes, Wolf says, “will answer some questions that have been hanging since the first season, and over the course of [Season 10's] eight episodes you’re going to see something about the redemptive power of psychotherapy. This is an attempt to move [Goren] back to the psychologically complete detective that he was in the first season of the show.”

Whether this run of episodes kicking off Sunday, May 1, at 8/7c, is a “swan song” or “victory lap,” Wolf says, “This has been a great experience…. There is a real power in seeing this show come back at full-octane, with stories that are really interesting.”

http://www.tvline.com/2011/04/dick-w...e/#more-210029

[Stuck In The '70's]

Dick Wolf needs to find a different type of show to create. The L&O franchise is dead. SVU probably has one more year but the rest of the spinoffs are over. You can only run with the same thing so long. It lasted longer than most.

[Brad]

If my math is correct, the whole franchise has aired a combined total of 45 seasons so far. Even if all three current Law & Order series end this year, that's an unprecedented massive success.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by AKA

If my math is correct, the whole franchise has aired a combined total of 45 seasons so far. Even if all three current Law & Order series end this year, that's an unprecedented massive success.

Longer than that if you include everything else:

Law & Order: UK (2009 - present) - 4 Seasons so far
Deadline (2000-2001) This was based off of the L&O newspaper
Conviction (2006) - Stephanie March of "SVU" tried to do her own show.

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...would be enough for anyone. Not for Dick Wolf, though. As what happened to Aaron Spelling in the mid-'80s, he's "running dry" on hits, and, as in the case of Spelling's "exclusive" contract with ABC being terminated back then, he doesn't have the same clout with NBC or its cable channel outlets {like USA} as he used to. "Come on, how about another season of 'CRIMINAL INTENT', huh? I promise it'll be the best one yet! Don't you want to make a little more money off this one? Please? I don't have any new series you could capitalize on right now, but let me keep this going a little while longer, okay? If this goes under right now, a lot of New York actors and production people are gonna be out of work! You don't wanna do that to New York, do you? Please? Okay? Capiche?".

[tmac81s]

so I'm guessing that we won't get a big send-off for CI, some kind of special series finale. If he's hoping for it to get renewed, it will probably be just a regular episode.

[ClassicTVGal]

I hope they do!
It's one of my favorite (if not my favorite) current show!!

[ekkostar]

Getting off topic but I was actually in New York City and observed the crew filming an episode of CI. I believe it aired this weekend, it was the episode inspired by Spider Man: Turn off the Dark. The odd thing was that they didn't use the TOTD theater, they used How To Succeed's stage door exit.

Anyway, it's so odd after having a ton of spinoffs that now they're deciding to start plucking them off one by one, Law & Order is on at least 1/2 of the programming day on several networks either first run or in reruns.