(About performances rather than language.)
Another note from the Oscars: on J.K. Simmons, who got an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (in Whiplash) I recognized him immediately as a regular on two different tv crime drama: as Dr. Emil Skoda, a police psychiatrist, who has appeared on three of the four incarnations of Law & Order; and as Will Pope, Assistant Chief of the LAPD, in The Closer.
I then reflected on the casting of these shows, and the enormous number of actors they consume — as regulars (playing cops, district attorneys, medical examiners, crime lab staff, defense attorneys, and judges) and in one-shot performances (as victims, suspects, witnesses, family members, etc.).
The one-shots are often well-known actors playing parts that run against their usual roles: recently in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit re-runs, dark roles for Dean Cain (Superman!) and comedienne Carol Burnett.
The regulars are also not infrequently recruited from successful careers of very different natures. To come: a number of tv cops and a couple district attorneys of this sort.
