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First Look: Law & Order Takes on Anna Nicole
Law & Order: CI's Chris Noth and Kristy Swanson by Virginia Sherwood/NBC
It was only a matter of time before one of NBC's Law & Orders ripped from the ubiquitous Anna Nicole Smith headlines. In Criminal Intent's May 8 episode, Kristy Swanson uses her new curves to play a voluptuous, ill-fated drug-abusing model/rich guy’s widow/new mom (whose older son is found dead). Best known as the big-screen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Swanson began filming the episode just five weeks after giving birth to her and Skating with Celebrities partner Lloyd Eisler's son, Magnus. Assessing Swanson's embrace of the role, executive producer Warren Leight says, "There's something larger-than-life about Kristy. She has a heightened sexuality. I've never seen anyone as unself-conscious about herself and her endowment. When people would bring a photo over for her to sign, she would say, 'I assume you want me to sign [on] my breasts.'" And she was probably right. — Reporting by Ileane Rudolph
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Apr 2, 2007 4:22 PM
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Didn't L&O do a story on Anna Nicole's son's mysterious death.
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Apr 2, 2007 5:39 PM
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All I can say is thankfully this isn't on the SVU show, the only part of the L&O franchise that I enjoy.
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Apr 2, 2007 5:40 PM
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Didn't L&O do a story on Anna Nicole's son's mysterious death I was thinking the same Hotmama....I know the original L&O did this sl a couple of months ago....but it was dealing with Anna sons Daniel. Ridiculous
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Apr 2, 2007 6:00 PM
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"Law & Order" already did a similar story with Mariel Hemingway playing the mother, which then turned into a story about bone harvesting as the her son died of ovarian cancer.
It's not surprising that there would be another Anna Nicole type story - all three "Law & Order" did take-offs on the Ted Haggard-male prostitute situation. I don't think the writing staffs of the three shows talk to each other.
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Apr 2, 2007 6:57 PM
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Anna Nicole...she's such old news. But I love Criminal Intent so I will watch it with glee. I love to watch stories in the news as they are "not actual events" in tv shows...LOL
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Apr 2, 2007 7:32 PM
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The writers of these Law &Order shows can not come up with anything original can they?
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Apr 2, 2007 8:19 PM
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Well, while L&O deals with Anna Nicole (I think again), one of the CSI shows deal with Britney Spears... and I heard they hired a look-alike actress! Now you tell me which is worst (or entertaining)?
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Apr 2, 2007 11:07 PM
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Sparky - how can her son die of ovarian cancer? I may not be great in anatomy, but I think that's impossible if he really was a son.
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Apr 3, 2007 12:34 AM
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Cindy-As I recall he got the cancer through an infected transplanted organ. I don't remember in what part of his body the cancer maifested itself though.
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Apr 3, 2007 3:48 AM
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L&Os take on the son's death was pretty interesting. They really didn't do a whole lot with the young-widow-of-a-rich-old-guy angle at all - that was pretty much just part of the set up to get you wondering what direction it was going in, but once the story took off, that all was very quickly irrelevant.
As I understood what was happening (and IIRC), the son had sustained a serious fracture to his leg that could have either left him crippled or required amputation (not sure which), but this doctor running a clinic for low-income patients did a bone transplant. The bones, unfortunately, had come from a woman who'd been suffering form ovarian cancer which has metastasized to her bones. Since the bones had the cancer in them, the cancerous cells started spreading throughout HIS body. I don't think there was any specific organ that was attacked the most, it just went from the bones to anywhere it could, which killed him fairly rapidly, IIRC. The tests the doctor did were apparently able to determine that these cancerous cells were the kind that are found in ovarian cancer, which tipped of the cops that something weird was up.
It was a pretty well done episode, and by the time it was halfway through, I'd totally forgotten about the Anna Nicole connection they'd started with. Hopefully, this one for CI will be similar.
As for lacking originality, that seems to be somewhat epidemic in the procedurals lately. I know last year, I saw episodes of CI, L&O (I think), Close to Home, and at least one other that I can't remember right now, that involved a set up where a parent was returning a child to it's home following a slumber party, and when the kid's mother answers the door, she won't let the other mom in, makes some odd signs at her with her hand, the other mom doesn't really pick up that anything wrong, and the child belonging to that home dashes on inside. Sometime thereafter, the whole family, including the kid that had just come home in the morning, is found slaughtered in a home invasion. And at least 2 of these aired in the same week. It really cracked me up. Then this season, we had SVU and Criminal Minds both doing stories about guys who were keeping fertility charts on women he was raping because his goal was to get the woman pregnant. And again, they aired real close together.
It's cool and all to use real-life stories as a springboard, but when everyone's doing that, you get a lot of repetition - sometimes within a franchise and sometimes in shows on different networks. Either way, it can be really annoying.
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Apr 3, 2007 7:04 AM
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Yes, L&O took two ripped from the headlines stories and put them into one ep.
I guess Kristy's pregnancy netted her a baby and a role.
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Apr 3, 2007 10:47 AM
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I didn't even know that Kristy was pregnant.
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Apr 3, 2007 12:02 PM
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Yes, Kristy got pregnant by her Skating With Celebs partner, who was married at the time.
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Apr 3, 2007 12:29 PM
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"The writers of these Law &Order shows can not come up with anything original can they?"
Um, that's why they say "ripped from the headlines" - the whole basis of the show since it started.
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Apr 3, 2007 1:34 PM
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