Law and Order: Canada Rules

Well this is getting down right interesting; it could become a pop culture parlour game for Canadian television fans. Count the number of references to Canada during a season of all of the Law and Orders.

As we mentioned last week Dick Wolf’s trilogy of televised law enforcement seems unduly fascinated with Canada these days. Last week it was references to a Canadian theme on both Criminal Intent and SVU. This week it’s once again back to Canada for the hard working investigators at Criminal Intent.

The show opens with a young girl’s cel phone playing a familiar tune, as Oh Canada rings through over and over again as someone tries to hook up with the young gal. The next thing we know our telephone carrying nationalist is dead and the prime suspect becomes her Canadian lover, a married man (to Brooke Shields of all people) who has moved to the Big City from Toronto. Brooke shows some serious temper and tosses her cheating Canadian beau out of the house and the detectives begin to try and work the case. Jason comes across as a rather large jerk but one who's cut loose. The Canadian aspect ends after the Canadian cad comes up with an alibi, our moment in the spotlight over by the twenty minute mark of this week’s program. At this rate our Ambassador to Washington, Michael Wilson will have to try and improve our image on fictional crime shows.

Rene Balcer continues his game of name the homeland with his scripts and for now we’ll have to make do with characters that don’t particularly show our best side of humanity.

This sudden fascination with Canada from Law and Order has me thinking it might be time to keep track of all our cultural asides, so until they stop or I get bored I’ll list them all with A Whiff of Back bacon, which you can find on the right hand links section under Podunkian diversions, play along if you wish, and should other shows highlight their neighbour to the north just leave us a message in the comments section and we’ll add to the list!