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Alfred Molina joins Law & Order: Los Angeles

Jack Bauer

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Entertainment Weekly

THIS JUST IN: Alfred Molina has just sealed a deal to join Law & Order: Los Angeles as Deputy D.A. Morales. “I am thrilled that Fred is LOLA‘s Deputy DA,” said L&O boss Dick Wolf in a statement. “He joins a remarkable list of some of America’s greatest character actors like Sam Waterston, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeff Goldblum, Steven Hill, Dianne Wiest, and Michael Moriarty as stars of Law & Order-branded series.” Molina is the second major LOLA hire. As I reported earlier this month, Skeet Ulrich has been tapped to play one of the two lead detectives.

Still not sure why they cancelled the original recipe...
 
Wow. They might actually get me to tune in for the premiere.

Just curious, since the job titles are presumably different in LA than they are in NY — would Molina be the lead prosecutor, or the lead prosecutor's boss? I'm guessing the latter.
 
Actually the titles are rather similar -- the County of Los Angeles elects a district attorney every four years (and, according to the County's Web site, the office employs "1,056 deputy district attorneys, 312 investigators, and 888 support personnel" :eek:).

The report says "Deputy D.A.," instead of Vanilla's position of "Executive Assistant D.A.," so it seems that Molina will be playing the Michael Moriarty / Sam Waterston role.

I'd rather have Vanilla still on the air, and I'm really not keen on Skeet Ulrich, but Molina in a starring role is enough to have me watch a few episodes. In any event, I expect we'll hear more casting announcements soon, since the show is set to start filming next Monday to meet its premiere airdate of September 22.
 
You could have said that Molina will be playing the Michael Moriarty/Sam Waterston/Linus Roache role :p

I'll give it a look. The original has been such an icon of television that it'll hard for me to give it a fair shot, but I'll try.
 
Well this isn't series regular casting, but Jim Beaver (Supernatural) is going to be a guest star in the pilot.
 
Molina will be a great addition to the L&O:LA cast. I hope it lasts awhile. Anyone remember him as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof? I wouldn't have seen that in the first place if he hadn't been in it. He OWNED the stage.

And you trivia types can write this one down - he's the first 'repeat offender' in the LA version (he was on a crossover SVU/Trial By Jury storyline a few years ago).

Interesting, though, that L&O:LA has an *assistant* DA, and a *deputy* DA (Molina), but not the actual DA. I wonder why.
 
I've never seen a single L&O but I'll tune in out of curiosity about Molina and Skeet Ulrich.

But I forgot it was about lawyers and not cops! I'm not sure I can envision Skeet in a suit. :rommie:
 
I've never seen a single L&O but I'll tune in out of curiosity about Molina and Skeet Ulrich.

But I forgot it was about lawyers and not cops! I'm not sure I can envision Skeet in a suit. :rommie:

Not one:eek:. The basic L&O, not the special unit shows all follow the same format. In the pre-credit sequence the body is found the detectives arrive and we end the scene with some gallows humor type joke. Roughly the first 30 minutes is used to run down the initial suspect.

In the next 10 minutes the junior DA takes over the arraignment at this point the legal issue the show is looking at comes in. The judge excludes vital evidence and the ADAs meet with the DA to talk politics and a work around is looked for. Or the suspect turns out to be hiding something else and finally breaks down to point the DA towards the real killer. At this point the junior ADA is an investigator.

In the last ten minutes we get trail highlights, the verdict then the epilogue on the court steps as the DAs and sometimes the cops make a remarke about the issue raised by the case. A fast run of credits with a split screen commercial and then on TNT we see another body being found
 
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I've never seen a single CSI, either. If they want me to watch, they better cast Adrian Pasdar, Josh Holloway or Joe Flanigan. I'll be there will bells on! :rommie:

Oh I see how it works, now. Skeet's playing a cop after all! Phew!

· Alfred Molina as ADA Peter Morales
· Skeet Ulrich as Det. Rex Winters
Rex??? I really can't see Skeet as a "Rex"! :rommie:

So this show is about cops and lawyers working together, and we see them in scenes together all the time?
 
Here's how Law and Order starts off:

Person #1: Did you see the game last night?
Person #2: Yes I did. Smith and Jones really work well together.
Person #1: Oh no! What is that?

Cop #1: Impaled by a parking meter?
Cop #2: Looks like the high fees really got to him.

OPENING CREDITS

Cop #1: We're from homicide.
Bartender: Did something happen?
Cop #1: No, homicide is selling cookies for a fundraiser.
Cop #2: Have you seen this person?
Bartender: I believe so. It was really busy last night. Must've been 400-500 people here. But I remember this person specifically. He was here between 10:49 p.m. and left at about 11:23 p.m. Ordered six drinks, the first one was a margarita. He was here with three other people. One was a six-foot-four black guy with a shaved head, the other was a blonde lady who wore a green cocktail dress and had black lipstick. They got into a fight about who the better Silver Surfer was.
 
It was originally designed, so I gather, with a pretty sharp divide between the cops in the first half-hour and the lawyers in the second, with the idea that its reruns could be syndicated in a half-hour format. However, over the years, the lines have blurred, so while it's still basically split between cops finding the suspect in the first half and lawyers prosecuting the suspect in the second half, there's more flexibility. Sometimes the deputy ADA is brought in to consult on a legal matter while the cops are investigating, or sometimes it's more back and forth, or whatever. Sometimes the trial part occupies more than half the episode, sometimes less. Sometimes the case doesn't go to trial.

And in the early seasons, I gather, the courtroom procedures were fairly credible, but these days they've totally thrown credibilty out the window.
 
It was originally designed, so I gather, with a pretty sharp divide between the cops in the first half-hour and the lawyers in the second, with the idea that its reruns could be syndicated in a half-hour format. However, over the years, the lines have blurred, so while it's still basically split between cops finding the suspect in the first half and lawyers prosecuting the suspect in the second half, there's more flexibility. Sometimes the deputy ADA is brought in to consult on a legal matter while the cops are investigating, or sometimes it's more back and forth, or whatever. Sometimes the trial part occupies more than half the episode, sometimes less. Sometimes the case doesn't go to trial.

And in the early seasons, I gather, the courtroom procedures were fairly credible, but these days they've totally thrown credibilty out the window.

I found myself only watching the cop part when McCoy replaced Stone
 
Someone named Corey Stoll has been cast as Ulrich's partner.

Terrence Howard has joined the show on the DA side, but it looks like he and Molina will rotate episodes like Goren/Logan on CI rather than being partners.
 
Interesting. Honestly, that's not a bad idea (it reinforces the fact that there are other prosecutors in a District Attorney's office).
 
^Yeah... it always got me on the original show that every single homicide was committed in the same precinct, investigated by the same two detectives (in any given season), and prosecuted by the same ADA.
 
^Yeah... it always got me on the original show that every single homicide was committed in the same precinct, investigated by the same two detectives (in any given season), and prosecuted by the same ADA.

I believe the L&O have commented on that over the years and their answer boiled down to it being down the nature of doing a tv show.
 
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