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The Secret Vice of Power Women

By Michael KinsleyUpdated Thursday, Nov. 14, 2002, at 1:45 PM ET

(Note: In the marital relations system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the wives who watch Law & Order obsessively, and the husbands who don't. This is their story. Ka-chunk.)

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Recently I got married, fairly late in life for that sort of thing, and have made astonishing discoveries. Most of these revelations turn out to be common knowledge. But one, I believe, has not been widely aired.

People's Exhibit A (my wife), Your Honor, is a formidable, intelligent woman with an important and challenging job and a full private life. (Also undeniable loveliness and charm, which are not strictly relevant to the present case.) She doesn't squander her time. And yet she spends many hours a week watching reruns of Law & Order—often back-to-back (the shows, that is).

It would be misleading to call her a fan. Law & Order, the long-running crime drama, is not just one of her favorite TV shows, or even her very favorite. Other than reruns of Law & Order, she has almost no interest in television at all. Specifically, she has no interest in any of the (to me) barely distinguishable Law & Order spinoffs and rip-offs (such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Double-Entry Bookkeeping, CSI, CSI: Miami, Mayberry R.F.D. and so on.) She's not even interested in new episodes of Law & Order itself. She couldn't tell you what night it's on and has no view about what this country is coming to when a man like Fred Thompson can be plucked from the obscurity of the United States Senate and entrusted with the responsibility of running the prosecutor's office on Law & Order.

Nor does she care—or even, possibly, notice—whether it is Michael Moriarty or Sam Waterston who is being unvarnished in any episode she may be watching. Don't ask her whether the female assistant district attorney is the blonde or one of the brunettes. Don't attempt to amuse her by predicting what demographic category the judge will be from. ("They've had four black women in a row, so I'm thinking white man. No, I know, that's ridiculous, so I'll go with white woman—but in a wheelchair. Whaddya think, Honey? Honey?? Ouch, that hurt. OK, never mind.")

Exhibit A and I assumed that this was our little secret. Perhaps it had to do with our weather here in Seattle, which affects some people oddly. Or too much coffee. But then we had a visitor from the East Coast who announced that his wife was about to become the TV critic of a major newspaper. "And the amazing thing," he added, "is that she never watches TV except for reruns of Law & Order."

Good grief. I began making discreet inquiries. My closest chum in Washington is a political columnist and TV pundit. I thought I knew her pretty well. Turns out that for years, on all those evenings when I assumed she was at parties to which I wasn't invited, she was at home watching reruns of Law & Order. The dean of a major business school poured out a similar confession, as did a senior editor at a newsmagazine. The girlfriend of one of my Slate colleagues. Half the women at the University of Texas (according to another Slate colleague, who may be exaggerating). Another Washingtonian, this one a teacher, though her husband says she is "drifting back to C-SPAN." Always women. Always high-powered. Always Law & Order. Always reruns. What on earth is going on?

It is not a cult, because a cult is communal. Sex and the City has a cult following: Women, especially, watch it together and/or discuss it the next day at work. New episodes are considered, on balance, a good thing. The obsession with Law & Order is something different. Far from discussing it with one another, women seem to watch it alone and may be unaware that anyone else shares the habit.

Exhibit A may be an extreme case. In a rare glimpse into this secret world, Molly Haskell wrote an essay last April for a local section of the New York Times in which she frankly and courageously labeled herself a Law & Order addict. But she claimed to discuss the show freely with other addicts. She also described her addiction as an essentially New York phenomenon, which suggests that even Haskell does not appreciate the full extent of the situation.

This would all be merely curious except for one ominous recent development. Law & Order reruns used to be scattered across the cable schedule like wildflowers. (Or weeds.) To catch them all, you needed to be able to play the remote control like Paderewski. More important, you had to control the remote control. Under these circumstances, only the smarter and more high-powered women were able to indulge this temptation. Now, though, TNT cable has exclusive rights to Law & Order reruns and, near as I can tell, runs them more or less all the time. That means Law & Order addiction is now available to all women with access to even basic cable.

This presumably is just the kind of chic new social problem the Democrats are being advised to rebuild their party around, now that George W. Bush has solved all the old ones. The new Democratic leader in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, is just the kind of dynamic, smart, take-charge person who can …

Uh-oh. Do you suppose …?

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Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Time and the founding editor of Slate.

COMMENTS

Notes From The Fray Editor:

There is much testifying going on here—from powerful women who agree with Kinsley to the non-powerful and non-women who find themselves hopelessly hooked. (The place to declare your favorite episodes is here.) Several are disappointed that Kinsley offered no reason why this secret addiction is so prevalent. Try the thread following Geoff's post below if you are looking for explanations.

Remarks From The Fray:

The more I think about this, the more curious it seems. As I've already mentioned, I'm a male with the exact same "pathology" Michael Kinsley describes. I knew I wasn't alone, but had no idea it was a movement. I was also totally clueless that it was a "girl thang".

But I remember having a conversation back in college... 1998, maybe? with a close male friend of mine about why we were so hooked on the reruns. And we were in firm agreement, that it's refusal to engage in cloying sentimentality was one of it's greatest strengths.

The only characters who's sex lives we know anything about are usually sitting on the witness stand (or lying dead on the pavement at the show's opening). We never meet Sam Waterston's kids or Adam Schiff's wife. We don't care if the junior counsel is going through a messy divorce or a giddy romance.

These stories are narratively gripping, but without indulging the American penchant to psychoanalyze everything. Does Michael Moriarty care about justice because his mother breast-fed him too long? How the hell would we know? Does Chris Noth have abandonment issues? I'm not sure. When we hear about the outside lives of the characters, it's usually only in the same naturalistic way that ordinary people share anecdotes that are germane to the topic at hand (in this case, the trial or investigation taking place).

I would imagine, this also explains the general dissatisfaction for recent episodes and spin-offs. They seem less fastidious about maintaining the Point of View (which seems to be that of an angelic incarnation of Law, watching the case and not especially its actors), and they seem more than willing to wrap their characters down in trite soap operatics.

The episode I saw in which Lenny Briscoe's daughter died made me want to weep. Not because it was sad, but because it meant they'd killed the format that made this show great.

But I can't see anything about this explanation that makes it particularly "feminist". Given what programmers did to the Olympics when they wanted to bring over the "female demographic" (GAWD!), it doesn't seem to fit with stereotype driven marketing (though I won't quibble with reality).

-- Geoff
(To reply, click here.)

Personally, I find that Law & Order is a fascinating show for about 3 episodes. Then the show's arrogance sinks in: The defendant is always either guilty or released when the guilty party is captured. The prosecutor is always motivated by a pure heart. The defense lawyer is always a sleaze.

It's the anti-Perry Mason. It's the ideal TV show for Americans in the Conservative Era. I'll pass. Give me NYPD Blue with its gritty realism, or The West Wing with its too-good-to-be-true President. The only L 'n O show that is watchable is the one with Ice-T... whichever one that is. I can't keep track.

Personally, I'd rather discuss the guilty-pleasure TV show that truly appeals to Gen-X women, particularly career-oriented feminists and left-wing lesbian academics:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

-- Shrieking_Violet
(To reply, click here.)

For Kinsley's article to make any sense, you have to be someone like him (and me) married to a Law and Order junkie, or be such a junkie yourself … My wife claims that I am just as bad, being glued to watching football and baseball scores on ESPN. I'm usually not even watching whatever they're showing - Lithuanian volleyball or whatever - I'm just watching the scores across the bottom. What they really need is a channel that shows Law and Order reruns, with the sports scores on the bottom. Then we'd both be happy.

-- Sam
(To reply, click here.)

Oh...when Sam goes "shrill" it's bad...way bad. His head starts shaking like he's got some sort of palsy, and his muppet-esque eyebrows wiggle like caterpillars on crack! Yikes!

-- Sue

(To reply, click here.)

(11/14)

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