In addition to losing the battle against new timeslot rival Dallas, the general tone of season 3 episodes started to become more serious and less lighthearted than in previous seasons. Comedic scenes and subplots became distinctly rare. True to Dick Wolf's "grabbed from the headlines" approach which he later employed in TV series like Law & Order, storylines focused more on the serious human aspect of crime than on glamorizing the tropical lifestyles of drug dealers and other high-profile criminals.