Men With a Message: Help Wanted

NY Times | 12.31.09
By Alessandra Stanley

THE decade opened with an alpha male in a psychiatrist’s office and closed with an alpha male committing himself to a psychiatric institution.

From “The Sopranos” to “House", men marked the last 10 years of television less as hellions or healers than as analysands — fragile bullies who recognized they were damaged and sought help. The 21st century was ushered in by a He Decade: 10 years of men gazing at their navels.

Naturally, it’s the women’s fault. All those sitcoms and dramas of the ’80s and ’90s that reflected women’s liberation, self-actualization and consciousness raising paid off by wearing down the opposite sex; even made men buckled under the pressure. Accordingly, many of the most notable series of the last 10 years showcased men who examined their feelings or at least acknowledged their limitations.

...But TV’s romance with the masculine psyche can be found even in the most prosaic network crime shows, including the evolution of “Law & Order” spinoffs. The original, which started on NBC in 1990, was conceived by its creator, Dick Wolf, as an antidote to crime shows like “NYPD Blue,” which fastened onto the psychic distress of antiheroes like Andy Sipowicz. For a while, at least, “Law & Order” kept crime and punishment in the foreground and gave viewers only sketchy details about the private lives of its detectives and prosecutors.

But even Mr. Wolf’s template gave in to the times. In 1999, on the cusp of a new century, came “Law & Order: SVU,” a procedural about sex crimes, but it soon turned out that some of the most lurid moments were found in the romantic and psychological entanglements of its central characters. By 2001 the lead detective on another spinoff, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” was a former altar boy burdened with a schizophrenic mother and a disturbing ability to bond with criminals and the criminally insane. In an episode titled “Untethered,” the detective (Vincent D’Onofrio) implodes and is suspended for psychiatric evaluation.
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