Law & Order wasted no time in the fall 2024 TV schedule before introducing Maura Tierney as Jessica Brady, the new lieutenant replacing Camryn Manheim's Lieutenant Kate Dixon. Season 24 moves on without Dixon, and actor Mehcad Brooks has only had good things to say abut Tierney joining the cast. That said, when he spoke with CinemaBlend, he absolutely raved about working with Reid Scott as his on-screen partner, and I might watch Shaw and Riley's scenes a little differently moving forward.
Shaw and Riley have been partnered on Law & Order ever since Reid Scott was cast to replace Jeffrey Donovan's Detective Frank Cosgrove, and based on what Mehcad Brooks shared, the two actors likely warmed up to each other faster than their characters did. When I noted to Brooks that Season 24 was the first time that Shaw would have a partner lasting more than one season, he was full of praise for building that partnership on the show with Scott:
Reid is my brother from another mother, like we were long lost brothers split up at birth. I don't know what happened, but I've never gotten along so well with somebody so fast, and and he says the same thing. If you talk to him and he doesn't say the same thing, call him a liar. [laughs] Reid and I just have a great time. We have the same sense of humor, both really sarcastic and sardonic. We have a lot of similar interests. We're both Scorpios. We just get along as human beings, and we both work really hard at our jobs.
There aren't a lot of laughs on Law & Order even when accounting for the updates planned for Season 24, but the two detective actors apparently have the right kind of sense of humor to work "so well" with each other. The Supergirl alum went on:
That's also a blessing when you can come to work every day knowing good and well that your partner has done the work and you're going to get there, and you're going to be not only impressed, but sometimes surprised. Then the scene can go a way you didn't think it could go, and somebody's there to actually help that scene evolve.
Reid Scott's first season was abbreviated due to the WGA writers strike that resulted in Law & Order airing fewer episodes than usual earlier this year, but it appears that he and Mehcad Brooks have had enough time together to develop a good rapport to bring out the best in each other. Brooks elaborated:
There's an old saying [that] there's a show or the movie that you write, there's a show or the movie that you shoot, and then there's a show or the movie that you edit. In the middle there, we're the actors who are doing the second version of the show. You can read it, and you can put it on its feet, and it could feel a certain way. But when you have an actor who's overly prepared like Reid, and an actor who's overly prepared like me, and you put those guys together, there's a certain magic that can happen that no one saw coming, including the participants. That feels great. That feels really great to be able to play in that space with him.
Fortunately, Law & Order is expected to run for a full season this time around, which usually means a run of 22 episodes starting in the fall and wrapping with a finale in mid-to-late may. So, we should be able to count on seeing plenty of Shaw and Riley on the job together in Season 24, and I suspect that knowing how hard the two actors work together will make me appreciate their scenes even more. Plus, they have a secret – or formerly secret, anyway – handshake, and what's not to love about that? Take a look:
See Mehcad Brooks and Reid Scott as Detectives Shaw and Riley on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, followed by Law & Order: SVU at 9 p.m. ET and Found at 10 p.m. ET. Found now occupies the time slot formally held by Law & Order: Organized Crime before it was pulled from the network and renewed for Season 5 streaming for fans with a Peacock subscription.
It remains to be seen how well Found works as a replacement on a night of NBC that was previously three straight hours of the Law & Order franchise, but I'm optimistic at this point. For his part, Mehcad Brooks weighed in with his thoughts on Found taking over 10 p.m. ET on Thursday nights.
