It’s a new decade, I just got back from studying and enjoying abroad, we’re on the brink of landmark healthcare reform, and terrorists want to ruin Christmas by blowing themselves up in planes, nuts first. There’s lot of important and topical stuff to talk about, but the only thing on my mind is “Law and Order” as an indispensable guide to our country.

I’m a proud American (totally earnest about that), so I was eager to reintroduce myself to the land of freedom and plenty after living la dolce vita for a few months, and who better to usher me into the myth of our great land than Sam Waterston and Jerry Orbach? The show originally airs on NBC (free) and reruns are eternally available on TNT, TBS, Bravo and about 35 other channels (plenty), and each character fulfills some strange quality of Americans that I find totally endearing.

Half the time, Sam Waterston’s rumple-faced Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy — but now full DA because he got promoted while I was abroad! — is a detached ideologue and civil rights crusader, and the other half of the time he is a ruthless revenge-seeker. Through this inexplicably bipolar character, I reacquainted myself with the finicky American body politic. The late Jerry Orbach was wisecracking Detective Lennie Briscoe, who may have had some of the most wonderfully corny one-liners during each opening scene. In an unscientific experiment during my travels abroad this semester, I learned that laughing at the line, “I guess he should have quit while he was ahead,” at a decapitation scene indicates a uniquely American sense of morbid punny-ness. The really old “L&Os” reminded me that Chris Noth, of the archetypically brooding American eyes and broad American shoulders, is dead sexy … and that his weird pre-Rodney King brutality would totally not fly today.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of “Law and Order” episodes and spin-offs in my day, but I still can’t figure out what on earth is executive producer Dick Wolfe’s deal with women. Mariska Hargitay’s detective on “SVU” is probably the biggest badass on TV today, but she’s just about the only woman to remain on cast for more than about four seasons. Sour middle-aged women can land long stints as medical examiners, but they’re really just there to provide the show’s few strands of evidence-based legitimacy. Why the rotating cast of absurdly beautiful and abruptly departing ADAs to work with Sam Waterston? My only guesses are that either Waterston is an intolerable jerk, or a female lawyer once wronged Mr. Wolfe, and he’s working out that psychological wound on national and syndicated television. On behalf of all females, I’m sorry. Now please stop being so weird about us ladies.

After I’d watched enough “L&O” marathons to start seeing secluded locations in the real world as potentially great places to stash a body or being surprised when a tiff between spouses in the grocery store parking lot doesn’t devolve into a murder, it was time to come back to school. Now that I’m in the midst of my sorority’s recruitment process, I’m fighting the urge to apply Vincent D’Onofrio’s crazy interrogation tactics in “Criminal Intent” during a round. This weird compulsion aside, I’m back in prime American form — cracking wise, seeking revenge, being a badass and toiling for truth and justice — all thanks to those constant reruns.

—Claire Costantino is a junior in the College of Arts and Science. She can be reached at claire.v.costantino@vanderbilt.edu.