The revolving door of Law & Order continues to turn, but it's definitely gotten creaky. Let's be honest, half of you probably didn't even know the original L&O was on the air any more. If it wasn't for the writer's strike, it probably wouldn't be on NBC. (It looked like it might air original programming on TNT before the strike threw everything out of order and it will now air in its old timeslot on Wednesday nights.) But here we are with two new cast members stolen from NBC's tragically canceled 2006 show, Kidnapped - Jeremy Sisto and Linus Roache - taking an 18th stab at entertaining audiences with its mix of crime show and legal drama. Law & Order is the second longest-running drama series in the history of television and was nominated for the Emmy for Best Drama an amazing eleven years in a row, but the show has seen its ratings and accolades plummet in the last few years. Bringing back Rene Balcer as showrunner (the last time he held that position the show won Best Drama), moving L&O back to the original time slot, and adding two very talented new cast members - could there actually be another life in this classic show?

Probably not. Having watched the first two hours, which will air back-to-back this Wednesday night, it feels like Law & Order has not only passed its prime but seems desperate to regain something it can't any more. You know those bands that come out of retirement and try to find a hit again, only to make it clear that rock is for the young? Law & Order, despite good performances from everyone involved, feels bizarrely like a show more at home in the last century of television. For the record, Jeremy Sisto jumps in on the order side as Detective Cyrus Lupo and Linus Roache essentially takes the Sam Waterston part as Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter, who reports to Waterston's Jack McCoy, who has slid into the District Attorney role once occupied by now-Presidential candidate Fred Thompson.

There's not a bad performance on Law & Order, even if Waterston does seem a little tired of doing this and S. Epatha Merkerson still feels wasted (she's a great actress who's never been given quite enough to do on L&O). The problem is in the writing. Law & Order has become so predictably formatted that it feels like a dinosaur in the era of Lost and Heroes. It opens with someone finding a body, there are a few ridiculous twists and turns, and an unbelievable blow-up in a court room. And let's not forget the "Law & Order phone call" - about halfway through every episode, one character will get a random call with the missing piece of evidence, the location of the killer, etc.

There's comfort in predictability, so that alone wouldn't be a deal-breaker for Law & Order, especially with the good cast, but the plots that the writers have chosen to shove into the proven structure in the first two episodes are horribly unbelievable and outside of the scope of a show like this one. Can't anyone just write a good murder mystery any more? The Law & Order shows have made such a splash by "stealing from the headlines" that they feel like they have to do that every single week. So, for the first two weeks we get stories about assisted suicide, complete with a character clearly modeled after Dr. Jack Kevorkian, and then one that plays off energy consumption a la Enron. That's not comfort food and it's not challenging enough material to be more than that. Sisto's a great character actor and Roache has been underused for decades, but even they feel weighed down by scripts that simply don't work and a show that has outlived its relevance. Law & Order was once a great show, but it's time for all of these talented people to move on and find the next L&O instead of trying to keep this one on life support.