I’ve been watching your show on the TV, Law and Order, for something like seven or eight years now. And I have to admit, I’ve been a fan of the show for a long time. Lately, though, I’ve been…unfulfilled. I feel like I need something more. Something different.

When we started out, it was heavenly…a new, exciting relationship; constantly changing locations, witty dialog. There was a crackle in the air. Your stories seduced me with their complexity; you told them with verve and urban grit. When you took off your police badge and put on your shiny lawyer’s suit, you sweet-talked me into a guilty verdict, every time. And I switched off the TV at ten, happy and complete.

Something happened along the way, though—you began to change. OK, I really didn’t care much for Paul Sorvino. He was a nice guy, but I didn’t really care to follow him around New York City all night. You had that Ken dude, who was cool, and of course Jerry Orbach, in the top five of Guys I’d Most Like To Catch A Drink With Sometime; There was that first DA dude with the buggy eyes that got booted off the show for Sam Waterston with the raspy throat and bouncy head thing. And, of course, the DA Babes—Jill Hennessey, now in that atrocious CSI ripoff show; Angie Harmon, who left to marry some football player and who hasn’t been seen since; the J. Crew model chick who married Richard Gere (Richard frickin’ Gere), and now the blonde.

The revolving door aside, the people all really sit secondary to the storylines, which, while being Ripped From The Headlines, are mostly a blur to me these days. I crack a beer at ten, and by the time I’ve hit the 3/4 mark, Sam and the DA Babe have the case and have been handed the first big plot twist. Jerry and Jesse are nowhere to be seen, and I gotta say, they are the reason I watch the show.

The point is, those exotic urban locales are looking all the same to me. The storylines blur into each other. Even though you’ve robbed pretty much every real-life true crime story for a plot, they all blend together by about the second commercial break. And don’t even get me started on the fact that you have an old episode of the show running on every major cable channel at every hour of the day.

You’re clever, though. You knew I was getting bored, so you put a new, shiny show in front of me—SVU. And I have to give you props—you didn’t create a drastically inferior spinoff with an unwatchable star. That Oz guy is cool, but his eyes are a little too psycho for me, and that Mariska chick is trying too hard to be a hardass. You did get me with the inspired pairing of Ice-T and The Belz together; if you want a great show, put them together in their own gritty cop drama. But this show is much the same in pacing and layout, with a lot more sermonizing thrown in. I almost feel like I’m at the tail end of the last M.A.S.H. season where Alan Alda got waaaay too preachy.

You then figured it would be cool to throw me another bone—you got the Criminal Intent on Sunday night going with that spooky D’Onofrio guy, and heck, I thought, I watched him blow his head off on the toilet. This might be good. But as I watched it, I realized, This guy plays an intelligent, but strangely creepy detective. And I can’t shake the fact that I think he’s intelligent and strangely creepy in real life. And that kind of spooked me out. His partner is cool, though—that’s the first woman you’ve cast who I actually believe could whup my ass. Courtney B. Vance could smooth-talk a tiger out of its stripes, which is why he makes a great lawyer and why I don’t ever believe he’d be a D.A.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m looking for alternatives to your shows these days. Wednesday is no longer a lock, although I have absolutely no idea what goes up against L&O; SVU is for when we’re home on a Friday and don’t give a shit, and Criminal Intent is at least mildly interesting while being a little creepy before bedtime. So thanks for the memories, John Dick; maybe we’ll see each other again, on Court TV, or Lifetime, or TNT, or…