I need Law & Order to break a bad habit in season 24. The long-running police procedural started out as the natural successor to Dragnet, focusing on the cops and prosecutors doing their jobs rather than on personal storylines. Its 2021 continuation has attempted to modernize the show by giving the police and prosecutors backstories that sometimes affect cases. However, it still sticks to the same basic formula that made it a success in the 1990s, and that has resonated with viewers enough that Law & Order has been confirmed for season 24.

The series works because of that formula. Every episode begins with the discovery of a crime and moves through the police investigation to the trial of the accused. I’ve been critical of the second half of many episodes in the past because ADA Nolan Price seemed to be guaranteed to win even when he should lose. Recent episodes, especially those after Sam Waterson left Law & Order, have solved that problem. However, there is another bad habit that Law & Order has yet to address. Hopefully, the series will make another change during season 24.

Law & Order Season 24 Should Bring Back Short Cold Opens

The Longer Openings Make It Harder To Stay Interested

The cold opens have been an iconic part of Law & Order for as long as the series has been on. I loved the way the show handled them when Lenny Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) was the lead detective. A random person would find a body, the police would be called, and Briscoe would make a sarcastic comment. Every episode opened like this, allowing the audience to know what to expect, and some of Briscoe’s comments injected a much-needed dose of humor into an otherwise grim scenario. These cold opens worked well because they plunged the audience quickly into the story.

Modern episodes still include a cop making a sarcastic comment, but the cold opens are completely different. Often, the audience is privy to five to ten minutes of the victim’s life before jumping to the scene of the cops looking at the body. These longer cold opens are tedious, seemingly taking forever before getting to the point. Law & Order needs to ditch this bad habit and get back to introducing the crime right away so that it doesn’t risk losing the audience’s attention before the story begins.

Current Law & Order Cold Opens Take Too Much Time To Get To The Point

It’s Hard Not To Get Bored When They Tell So Much of The Victim’s Story

I understand what the Law & Order writers are trying to do. They’re providing a glimpse into the victim’s life so that audiences will empathize with them. However, this is a significant departure from the way the series used to handle cold opens, and that is part of the reason why it does not work well. Long cold opens don’t help create empathy; instead, they confuse and bore the audience by spending long periods of time with characters they haven’t met before.

Law & Order is a police procedural, so it isn’t difficult to figure out that the strangers seen at the beginning of an episode are soon going to meet a grisly fate, and long cold opens merely delay the reveal of who gets killed. I get frustrated with these dragged-out openings, especially when there is a better way to create empathy for victims. The cops could learn about the victim’s life through the investigation, which would be a more natural way to increase empathy and help the audience become more invested in whether the victim gets justice.

Shortening The Cold Opens Would Improve Law & Order’s Pacing

Long Cold Opens Contribute To The Lack of Dramatic Tension

When I compare the best Law & Order episodes from the past with current stories, it is unquestionable that the pacing is different. The newer stories often lack the tension that made this series so addictive in the past. Part of the problem is that it is often easy to predict the ending of episodes, which makes it harder to invest in them. However, the pacing is also off, and the long cold opens are partially to blame.

It’s hard to get excited about an hour-long episode of Law & Order when the opening is so slow. Returning to the shorter cold opens of the past would go a long way toward fixing the pacing problem. This practice would allow the audience to learn about the victim along with the detectives, which would make for more interesting, tenser storylines. The long-running procedural has many opportunities for interesting stories in season 24, so this would be the perfect time to ditch the long cold openings.