Desperate Housewives vs. Law & Order

In a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, I saw an article profiling the different Law and Order shows. One of the points that it made is that maybe the current era of the police/legal drama is winding down, with all the L&O and CSI franchises being beating by light soaps like Desperate Housewives.They didn't take into consideration that these light soaps slip into self-parody and lose their luster after about 4 seasons. Can't keep up the momentum. The original Law & Order is on its 14th season, I think, and if you rolled all the L&O series into a syndicated ball, you'd already have more than 20 seasons of procedural drama. They're not all burning up the ratings anymore, but they are all very solid performers, the workhorses of the NBC schedule. Desperate Housewives is the current darling of primetime, but I doubt very seriously that they'll be able to keep it up more than a couple of years before they either run out of ideas or the backstage politics take precedence over the on-camera performances.