Customer Reviews

Law & Order: The Fourth Year

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Well, the advertisement here is a little confusing. It's listed as the 4th year, but also lists Dennis Farina as the star, and Farina didn't come aboard the series until the 15th year, after Jerry Orbach's departure from the series.

The fourth year of Law & Order brought about some major changes to the series, with the departures of Captain Cragen and Paul Robinette from the series, replaced with Lt. Anita Van Buren and Claire Kincaid, bringing the first lead female characters into the series.

There were several great episodes in this season, including one of my favorites where the detectives and lawyers were trying to track down a shooter in Buddy Holly glasses. This story was left somewhat unresolved, which led to a 2-part crossover with Special Victims Unit in its first year, and this show's 10th season. That's just one of many great stories from this season that I'm looking forward to having in my collection!

The season finale also led to the departure of Michael Moriarty from the series as Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone. The following year, his character was replaced with Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy, who has been on the show ever since.

All in all, I am anxious to add this set to my collection, and I hope you'll enjoy it too. After all, with all these reality shows flooding the airways these days, DVD sets are becoming more and more appealing. I prefer to spend my TV time watching something worthwhile like Law & Order, rather than trash like The Bachelor or Temptation Island. Do you prefer quality to trash?

The fourth season of the long running original Law & Order was a landmark season in the show's history. The revolving cast door was stil spinning; this time original stars Dann Florek (Captain Cragen) and Richard Brooks (Assistant DA Robinette) have left, and the cast would now feature it's first ever female leads. Detective's Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Logan (Chris Noth) get a new Lieutenant with Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson), and DA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) would get a new assistant in Claire Kincaid (future Crossing Jordan star Jill Hennessy). The episodes packaged in this season set continue the "ripped from the headlines" style of crimes investigated by the detectives, and then the prsecution of the offenders, and it still manages to work out very well. This would be the last season for original cast member Michael Moriarty, as he would be replaced with long time vet Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy, who is still on the show to this day. All in all, the fourth season of Law & Order saw the innovative crime drama make a landmark in it's history, and this season set is a must own for die hard fans of the show.

The fourth year of the long running series Law & Order is now available on DVD. Universal has released later seasons of the series on DVD and have now started releasing earlier seasons on DVD. Law & Order-The Third Year arrived on DVD this past spring.

The Fourth Year covered the 1993-1994 season. The season began with a riveting case about a talk show host is embroiled in the mystery of a convicted child molester who is killed on the air with millions of people watching. One must remember that during the year 1993 talk shows were reaching their peak. Jenny Jones, Montel Williams, Rikki Lake, Sally Jesse Raphael, Oprah, Donahue, Rolanda, Maury, and Jerry Springer were all on the air during that time period. So for Law & Order to open it's season with a talk show related episode was very appropriate for the show which is known for story lines ripped out of the headlines.

The actors who built the foundation for Law & Order appeared on the show during it's fourth year. Jerry Orbach, Christopher Noth, Steven Hill and Michael Moriarty were all members of the cast. This was also the year that Jill Hennessy and and S. Epatha Merkeson joined the cast.

The set includes 22 episodes and 43 deleted and extended scenes. The episodes are on dual discs (meaning some content on one side, more episodes on the other side). Episode descriptions appear on the individual boxes that hold the DVD's. Special guests during the shows fourth year include Robert Klein, James Earl Jones, Jane Kaczmarek, and Allison Janney from The West Wing among others.

I will admit though that I did have a problem with the dual disc. This is my first time having a problem with a Universal dual disc. Perhaps its because I watched it in my computer but after one viewing the flip disc was scratched.

It was a great season, with Moriarty, Merkeson, Noth, Hennessy, and Jerry Orbach. The writers were at the top of their games and the definition on images is fine.

A problem. One side of one (of three) disks doesn't work. It stutters and stops dead. You wind up missing four episodes. The problem has cropped up on other sets of the series as well.

For this price, you expect the disks to work perfectly, especially in the absence of any worthwhile extras.

I'd love to buy boxed sets from the other years but I'm not going to do it -- not just because I resent paying for poor quality goods but because having an episode flicker and freeze after five minutes is too frustrating an experience to be endured.

Finally The Fourth Season of Law & Order after i bought the third season of Law & Order i was waiting for the Fourth ,which was also a great season when it aired in 1993 - 1994 . Some magor changes become in this season and the show was as great as ever.I am so glad they decided to make all the seasons on DVD , Since Law & Order is one of the best Drama's ever , spanning its 16 year broadcast ! The series is great and deserves much attention , Dont miss the chance too own the Fourth Season on DVD.

I really like this program. I have been watching it for only a short time and I am currently on the fourth season.

The series itself deserves four or five stars. However, the ultra cheap quality of the disks continues. There is little fanfare here. The producers of the DVD series have done their very best to release the disk sets in as an economical manner as possible. The episodes are all on two sided disks - yep, as cheap as it gets! That said, I have had only one defective disk so far.

My DVD collection is rather large, and the material quality of most is quite good. It is unfortunate that these disks are so poorly produced. This is an excellent series.

The fourth year of Law & Order saw the replacement of ADA Paul Robinette and Lieutenant Don Kregan with Jill Hennessy as ADA Claire Kincaid and S. Epatha Merkerson as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren. Both did an excellent job in their respective roles, and the replacements seem to have been done on the virtue of merit and making a good fit with the rest of the cast versus some of the "eye candy" casting decisions that have been made on Law & Order in recent years. The absolute worst of these was the casting of Milena Govich as Detective Nina Cassady to replace Dennis Farina in season 17, a slot that has been reserved for the "old cop" half of the old cop/young cop dynamic since the show's beginning in 1990. Don't get me started. At any rate, the chemistry between all of the cast in the fourth year clicked wonderfully, making this one of the golden years of Law & Order. Not only that, it seems the writing made a real uptick in quality.

"Profile" was one of the best episodes ever, and really gave Michael Moriarty a chance to shine as Ben Stone. After a number of neighborhood residents are murdered, the police follow the investigation to a local man who is murdering people he doesn't feel belong in his neighborhood. James Earl Jones guest stars as a black defense attorney defending a white supremacist. Most notable is the performance of a victim shot by the defendant, who gives a spot-on example of how to testify on the stand: "I remember the voice of the first white man to tell me he didn't serve my kind. I remember the voice of the doctor who told me I had a healthy baby boy. And I sure as hell remember the voice of the man who took a shotgun and shot me in the back" - this is his reply when he is asked if he can be sure that the defendant's voice is that of his assailant. The episode also wraps up very poignantly, ending on a note that serendipitously echoes the sentiment that led to the series of murders.

A very strange and ironic case was "Big Bang" in which a woman is killed when she opens a package sent to her in the mail. The bomb ordinarily may not have been big enough to kill her, but it launched her letter opener into her neck. Logan and Briscoe initially focus their investigation on her ex-husband, a highly regarded nuclear physicist, who seems to have a large motive for wanting her dead: she was purposely making their divorce as difficult and expensive as possible. It turns out that the actual murderer was after the nuclear physicist himself. He was angry at the physicist for taking credit for his work, and not knowing about the divorce, assumed this was still the physicist's place of residence. It was just an unintended benefit for the physicist that his legal and alimony troubles were put to rest by his rival. This episode was directed by Dann Florek, who played Captain Kragen during the first three seasons.

"Mayhem" departed from the traditional formula on Law & Order - one crime from start to finish, with the first half being dedicated to police work and the last half the courtroom. Instead, this is a fast-paced and unusually structured episode in which Briscoe and Logan attempt to solve five consecutive murders which take place all over the city. The saddest of these murders, to me, was murder #5. Scotty, a man resembling Roger Ebert, is picked up and held as a suspect in a murder when he refuses to be clear about where he was that evening. It turns out the man is hiding his true sexual orientation and doesn't want to admit he was visiting a male friend. When this becomes clear to the police, Logan and Briscoe go to the jail to get him released. They are too late - Scotty was stabbed by a fellow inmate wielding a sharpened toothbrush. He's dead, and the fifth and final murder of the evening.

The final episode of the season, "Old Friends", is Michael Moriarty's last episode as Ben Stone. In it, a truck hits a pedestrian and the investigation reveals the victim's link to a baby-food company in which a new partner has connections to the Russian mob. The victim's original business partner in the baby food company has seen something that definitively connects the hitman to the mobster who is on trial. When she learns the Russian mob is involved, though, she is reluctant to testify. She changes her story at trial, and says she never saw the hitman before. Stone is furious, and threatens her with felony perjury. Eventually, she accepts Stone's promise that he'll get her into witness protection. She testifies, and the mobster is found guilty of orchestrating the murder. Shortly thereafter, the witness is shot dead. Stone blames himself, since he pressured her so much into testifying. Stone tells Schiff he's resigning. They share a moment. Stone's last words to Schiff are "I'm clear as a bell." He affectionately puts his hand up around Schiff's ear and then exits. The episode's title refers both to the Russian mob's interconnections, and, of course, to Schiff and Stone.

I think besides the chemistry of the cast and the good plots, what I liked most about this particular season is that it seemed less "ripped from the headlines" than usual. There were an inordinant amount of truly original stories with odd twists and very good opportunities for the cast to shine.

The fourth year of Law & Order continued the tradition of cast changes that had become a hallmark of this series. Dan Florek and Richard Brooks were out at the request of NBC, who wanted more females in the cast. Enter S. Epatha Merkerson as Lt. Anita Van Buren, a tough-talking boss who could match snark with the best of them. Also, Jill Hennessy joined the legal side as ADA Claire Kincaid. Fans might have lamented the loss of Brooks and Florek, since their acting and characters were perfectly respectable, but the two new characters were well-written and well-played, so the quality does not suffer with their arrival. However, this would be the final season for Michael Moriarty as DA Ben Stone, who would exit in the season finale, "Old Friends." Many fans, myself included, were sad to see Stone go, though Moriarty's performance does seem tired in comparison to previous years.

The episodes, as usual, are familiar from real events, but they are compelling none the less. Racist serial killers, opportunistic talk show hosts, deadly cult leaders and racially-charged city riots are the basis for just a few of the gripping episodes. Other fine works include, "Discord," "Breeder," "Pride and Joy," and "Censure," One of the best is, "American Dream," in which Stone matches wits with a smart jailhouse lawyer who tries to overturn his own conviction. Also, the series departs from its usual format in, "Mayhem," when the episode is dominated by the police as they solve a series of crimes in the course of one stressful day.

Although this set contains no documentary extras, we are treated to more deleted scenes. Two of them explain the departures of Cragen and Robinette, which is a treat for long-time fans since their character exits went unexplained for years. I do have to knock Universal again for giving us so many previews on disc 1 without the skip option. Also, more chapter breaks would be nice. These nitpicks aside, this year is worth getting, even if you're a new fan.

What can I say. It's everything it's supposed to be for the true Law and Order addict! The only thing missing is the other years. Waiting for years 5 thru........

this is simply a must for all Chris Noth, Jill Hennessy and
Jerry Orbach fans, not to forget the other excellent actors