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How every episode of Law and Order ended

The gang at Overthinking It have analyzed the endings of all 456 episodes of Law & Order (guilty, not guilty, plea bargain, etc.).

“Implied win” refers to episodes in which you don’t see a plea bargain or Guilty verdict, but it’s pretty clear that’s the way things are headed. For instance, if the killer’s wife tearfully agrees to testify against him and then the episode ends, it’s an “implied win.” We don’t know the outcome, but we are led to believe it’s going to be some flavor of Justice. (The rare cases where the result was completely unclear went into the Other category.)

Over the entire run of the show, more than a third of all the episodes ended in Guilty verdicts, while another third ended in plea bargains. 80% of episodes ended in solid wins: either Guilty verdicts, plea bargains, or implied victories. That’s not too shabby, considering that the actual NYPD has a homicide clearance rate of about 50%. (Although you have to figure Law & Order isn’t meant to represent every case these detectives investigated; in 20 seasons, I don’t think there was a single murder that didn’t result in an arrest.)

They also looked at all of the red and yellow alerts on Star Trek:TNG.