"Law and Order" reboot: Five things it needs to be awesome. Awesomer, even.

I'm gonna watch the 21st season of my favorite all-time show whether or not it gets better. But it can get better.

Hey NBC? You got the righteous eyebrows of justice back in your employ. Do right by them.

Last week’s premiere of the 21st season of “Law and Order,” just a scant (ha) 12 years after the 20th, was personal to me. So personal that many friends and relatives called me excitedly to remind me of it, with the same urgency as if an old boyfriend was moving back to town. “Girl, he down the street and he’s having a party! I’m sure it’s cool if you come!”

Like I wouldn’t be crashing that thing anyway.

I’m the kind of “Seen every episode” fan who has a ready dream line-up of cops and DAs (Van Buren, Briscoe, Green, Carmichael, McCoy, Schiff, since you asked), used to own a T-shirt that read “Chung-Chung” like the opening theme sounds, had the theme as her ringtone several times over the past 20 years, and convinced my editors at the Palm Beach Post to send me to New York to meet the cast and be an extra. (I was mostly cut out of my riveting, wordless background role as a reporter named Candis, sitting in the gallery, but you can see my Afro glowing red vaguely over Sam Waterston’s shoulder.)

So when the show was abruptly canceled in 2010 with no narrative closure, I lived in hopes that the Mothership, as the original series was known among us obsessed, would return. And last week it did and it was…OK. I enjoyed it. But if I’m being honest, it was disappointing - the pacing was off, trying to shove too much of the old magic into an ill-fitting bag. New characters were like faint fax versions of old ones, without much to fill in the blanks. Sam Waterston, as Jack McCoy, hot rebel ADA turned cranky godfather of jurisprudence, was completely wasted. Now I’m cranky.

All of the elements are there, but they aren’t gelling yet. There is no Jell-O. Where is the Jell-O? Fortunately, I am obsessed and really want this thing to go well. Not like I’m not gonna watch it anyway. But here are some things I think Dick Wolf and them gotta do for it to work. Again…I’m still gonna watch it.

1. Lean on your veterans: It was amazing to see Waterston, as McCoy, and Anthony Anderson as late-series Det. Kevin Bernard, back in the fold. But the premiere seemed like a bait-and-switch - they teased some reliable faces and then hid them. We came back for our old friends. Let us visit longer.

2. Speaking of old friends….more cameos, please!: The appearance of ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell) in a pivotal role in the premiere was perfect, not only because it was nice to see her but because this new, older, frustrated Jamie was so familiar, still putting the law ahead of everything and trying to do the right thing. And her familiarity filled in the gaps that Bernard and McCoy’s writing hasn’t yet flowed into. Let’s see more of the old gang we’ve been missing - Dr. Emil Skoda? ME Elizabeth Rodgers? Attorney Shambala Green? (THE ANSWER IS SHAMBALA GREEN.)

3. Give the cast chemistry a chance: Part of the beauty of the original was the way that the characters related to each other, even if it took a while for them to get there. It was a workplace drama, after all, and each new partner that, say, Lennie Briscoe had took some time to get used to. Even though he was, say, more of a bemused peer for Mike Logan, he was a father figure for Rey Curtis and a confidante for Ed Greene. And the thing was that each relationship started off unsure, and the writing was patient enough to let it evolve. Last week’s introduction of Det. Frank Burn Notice (not his real name but what I’ll be calling him) was so heavy on the stereotypes to contrast him with more mellow and measured Bernard - He’s old-school! He hates wokeness! These kids these days don’t respect authority! Won’t someone think of the old White dudes? OK, we get it. It’s not subtle. The good part is that Jeffrey Donovan is a good enough actor to play in the margins. But he shouldn’t have to.

4. Remind us who Bernard was again: Anthony Anderson is acting his butt off as an anchor, but the show needs to reestablish Bernard, who only showed up toward the end of the series and was the calm center to Jeremy Sisto’s annoyingly reckless Det. Lupo. (When he slept with the obviously guilty witness and was like “Whoopsie!” I wanted to ghost of Lennie Briscoe to put tacks under the tires of his squad car.) Frank is obviously brash, but I’m still not super sure who Bernard is, other than a line about his inability to have long relationships (a line that actually recalls Lennie’s farewell to boss Lt. Van Buren, who he said was his longest relationship with a woman). In the previous seasons, we knew he had a son he’d never acknowledged and a strong sense of justice. What else? We need more grounding for him if he’s going to contrast with Frank.

5. Make the new ADA more interesting: I didn’t watch “Hannibal” but I know that Hugh Dancy has a huge following. I’ve seen him on other shows and in movies like “Ella Enchanted” and he’s super charming. But I have no clue who ADA Nolan Price is, other than the next blandly handsome White guy who also has the senior ADA chair on this show (a mistake in 2022, BTW. Why can’t the senior ADA be a woman with a man trying to catch up?). His fellow ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) has the thankless role of “Law and Order” women who have to draw on their own trauma to make a big closing, but even she’s more settled as a character than Price. I know he’s a hotshot that McCoy expects more of. But is he self-assured and cocky like McCoy when he started? A by-the-books sermonizer like Ben Stone? A crazy fun wildcard like the most recent ADA, Michael Cutter (the sublime Linus Roache?) If he’s gonna be the new Jack McCoy, I gotta see it.

   I love this show. I want it to be good. Again, I’m gonna keep watching it and rooting for it. But it might as well be good, right?