Law & Order showed why Dick Wolf shows have trouble with character exits

The exit of Camryn Manheim from Law & Order shows once more how the Dick Wolf shows have trouble writing off characters properly!

Caution: This article contains SPOILERS for the Law & Order Season 24 premiere.

Fans of Law & Order are long used to turnover with the question of how characters can be written off. So they were curious as to how the season premiere for the show would handle the exit of Kate Dixon. Camryn Manehim’s character had been part of the show since its relaunch in 2022 and her leaving could have been something notable. 

The episode opened with Shaw and Riley investigating the murder of a prosecutor. They were surprised by the arrival of Lieutenant Jessica Brady (Maura Tierney), who told them she was their new boss. When they asked about Dixon, she simply replied, “I don’t know.”

This dynamic was odd as the detectives went through the case. It was about halfway through the first act that Riley got a text from Dixon explaining her son Patrick got a great job at a school in Miami, and she was going with him. She didn’t want to make a big fuss about it with Riley complaining they missed the typical “Irish goodbye” party for a departing cop.

This seemed a weak way to write out Dixon, especially compared to how Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy got a big fancy exit last season. Sadly, this does follow a pattern for bother Law & Order and other Dick Wolf shows in not giving departing characters a proper farewell.

Why do so many Dick Wolf shows give characters weak exits?

Last season’s Law & Order opened by revealing that Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan) was gone with a throwaway line on how he got “jammed up” and was unclear if he quit or was fired. While some characters on Law & Order and its spinoffs can get big exits, others are just dismissed in a line or two.

It’s not just that franchise, as the FBI shows, likewise have such problems. A few times, a character gets an on-screen farewell like FBI: International’s Jamie Kellett (Heida Reed). However, there’s also FBI: Most Wanted, writing off characters like Ortiz, Crosby, and Gaines in weak ways. Gaines was one of the worst cases, with the implication she’d had an off-screen affair with team leader Remy and then left. 

The One Chicago shows are a bit better giving some good character exits but they can suffer now and then. One of the worst cases was Lisseth Chavez on Chicago PD, as not only was her Vanessa Rojas character written off the show, but characters acted like she was never there at all. 

Sometimes, it’s just the timing as the actor naturally wouldn’t be willing or able to return for some farwell scene. Yet it really seems a weakness of some Dick Wolf shows, in particular, to dismiss a character, even one who’s been there for several seasons, in far too offhand a manner.

Dixon, at least, sounds a bit better than other characters as she’s gotten a fresh start in a new city with her son. It still would have been better for her to announce it and get that farewell party. It just seems insulting to both the characters and actors to barely pay any attention to them leaving and move on quickly. 

It may be an odd trend, but it does seem the Dick Wolf series really have a problem with how they write off characters, and Dixon is just the latest in the long line of badly done exits. 

Law & Order Season 24 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC.