What the Hell? How why is "Dick" censored? How do you post things about Cheney et. al? And why does TV.com strip out or replace Unicode characters? Bleh! The proper title of this article, with true quote marks should be

"Limp Dick"

I have a bad feeling that the Law and Order franchise is coming to an end.

Last season, after almost 20 years, NBC pushed Law and Order to mid-season, and they're doing it again this season. Two seasons in a row of being banished to mid-season as a fill-in show. That is not a good sign.

To be fair, the show has not been too good since Orbach died, and they started having a turnstile of turn-over. Too much change, too fast is always bad for shows, and this show has had it in spades. Is there no respect for seniority? Did NBC treat Saturday Night Live like this in its many bad seasons? Is FOX treating Simpsons like this?

Criminal Intent is also going down. It was taken off of NBC altogether a while ago and banished to satellite-land. Foreigners had to hope that a local network would carry it, otherwise they were out of luck; like all Americans who did not have DirecTV. NBC brought it back for a while during the summer but again that was as a fill-in and they're putting it on USA again this season instead of NBC.

Things don't look good for the show with the departure of Noth, and the killing-off of Nicole Wallace-arguably the best parts of the show-it probably won't last much longer either. I know that Goran has his fans (for some reason), but he's been spiraling down recently too, with all kinds of unpleasant, and not universally popular changes to the character.

Special Victims Unit is the best of the franchise. It has always been so exciting and had a wonderful cast. In fact, unlike most shows (it's siblings included), this show not only had a large ensemble cast, it actually continued to grow. Every L&O show's opening credits ends with a shot of the main cast walking. Last season, SVU's cast was so big (nine principals), that they could barely all fit on the screen (even in wide-screen). Of course they couldn't have nine people walking and talking, so they just stand there leaning on a desk and looking serious (in fact that's how it's been for several seasons because they've had a large cast for a while now).

However, even SVU is sinking. While it's been great and has had little turnover compared to its siblings, it's had too much change too quickly recently. Lake got himself into trouble and left after just one season. If that's not bad enough, both Tutuola and Novak have said that they are going. Those are pretty important characters. If they go, the show will be in a fair amount of trouble.

Dick Wolf also had a few other, related shows, but those did pretty bad and ended quickly. Trial By Jury didn't last a whole season, and Conviction ended on a great two-parter, but still ended after a half season. His Dragnet remake made it to nearly two half seasons, but faired no better. He just hasn't had much success in quite a while. His carte blanch may be soiled and his time in the sun could be over unless he can come up with a great, new show, and/or fix up his existing ones.

For what it's worth, he's not the only one. There have been several show-makers who had one or two hits and seemed like everything that they touched turned to gold and thus were given lots of leeway, but then crashed. Look at J.J. Abrams.

I hope it's not the end because if solid, established shows and creators can get axed, then what chance to new ones have? Dick Wolf has done some good shows and it would be a shame if they failed now.