Hollywood Q&A

Q: It seems like none of the stations show the old seasons of “Law & Order” — they only show Season 13 and on. What’s going on?

A: It seems that the rights owners (there are more of them than you’d think) are only selling the reruns in packages, and the only ones for sale right now are for seasons 13 to 20 (the latter being the final season).

It’s not just the traditional TV stations that are in this boat; it’s also true for those streaming the classic NBC procedural show online. The reason seems to be, basically, that “Law & Order” is a victim of its own success — there’s just too much to buy all at once.

Even Peacock, the digital streaming service created specifically by NBCUniversal to make NBC shows available online, only has Season 13 onward. That seems particularly hard to understand, until you realize that NBC’s not just negotiating with itself to get the rights.

Dick Wolf, who created “Law & Order,” its many spinoffs and about a million other procedural shows, retains a stake in the show, and so he’s at the table when these decisions are made. So, even NBC has to pay up when it wants to air an episode of “Law & Order” — and there are a lot of episodes.

“The series has so many episodes that the show would be pretty expensive to license in its entirety,” an anonymous insider told Vulture.com.

Q: Wayne Brady has an amazing voice when he sings on “Let’s Make a Deal” and “Whose Line Is It Anyway.” Has he ever released an actual album?

A: The multi-talented Wayne Brady has released two actual albums, depending on your definition of “actual.”

The undisputed one is 2008’s “A Long Time Coming,” a collection of R&B originals and standards that includes his Grammy-nominated rendition of “A Change is Gonna Come.” After that came a children’s album in 2011, and then a single in 2019 that was supposed to herald a new album, though it never came. The children’s album, “Radio Wayne,” is the controversial item here. It’s an album in the sense that it’s a collection of songs that you can purchase as a package, but it’s not mentioned on Brady’s own website (WayneBradyWorld.com), nor was it mentioned in any of the fawning articles that followed the release of his 2019 single, “Flirtin’ With Forever.”

It is, of course, understandable that Brady himself might like to keep the kids’ album separate. A record with song titles like “Reading Can Be Fun” (Track 9 on “Radio Wayne”) would be a bit of a mood-killer in a serious R&B artist’s catalogue.

“Flirtin’ With Forever” is also a bit of a confusing case. It was released in December 2019, immediately after Brady won that season of “The Masked Singer,” and thus had some momentum behind him. It got a fair bit of media coverage, all of which said that it would appear on his new album, coming out the following month. But it never came.

It’s possible, like many pandemic-era productions, it was just delayed and will release eventually — Brady, now a fully established entertainment-biz fixture, certainly isn’t going anywhere.

Q: I just finished watching “Godzilla vs. Kong,” and now I’m wondering who came first, Godzilla or King Kong?

A: Despite their billing order in the film’s title, King Kong is actually older.

“Godzilla vs. Kong,” released this year, delivers exactly what it says on the label: a clash between the two classic movie monsters. It makes sense to not beat around the bush with the title — both characters have been mainstays of science-fiction cinema since its earliest days, and so have excellent name recognition.

It started with the great 1933 film “King Kong,” in which the oversized ape carries Fay Wray to the top of the Empire State Building.

Godzilla took another 21 years to arrive on the scene, making his debut in 1954’s also-cleverly titled “Godzilla,” a film that did a lot for the global profile of Japanese cinema.

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