Last season wasn't an easy one for either "L.A. Law" or one of its main characters, legal secretary Roxanne Melman.
And, as a result, it isn't a year that Susan Ruttan - who plays Roxanne - looks back on with much fondness.The show went through a nearly complete revamping of its writing staff. A new executive producer was hired and later let go. The stories suffered, and so did the ratings.
"Last year was rough. Everything was sort of up in the air. I wasn't happy with my storyline," Ruttan said in a telephone interview. "And I wasn't working as much as I wanted. Roxanne was sort of neglected by the writers."
Ruttan wasn't the only one who didn't like the plot that had her living with her longtime boss, Arnie Becker (Corbin Bernsen).
"People would come up to me and say, `We hate what's happening.' They've watched us for years and they feel an ownership of the show," she said. "And I'd try to tell them, `It's not my fault. I don't write it. I don't like it either.'
"It's hard. You maintain a loyalty to the show and you're constantly defending it, even when things aren't going well."
This season, yet another change was made at the top. John Masius and John Tinker, who used to run the show on "St. Elsewhere," were named executive producers of "L.A. Law."
"When we came back this year, we were all really nervous," Ruttan said. "While they have a great record, we didn't know what they'd do to our show. But they certainly got things started off with a bang."
In this season's first episode, several of the characters were caught in the middle of the Los Angeles riots. And the effects of that are still reverberating through the show's storylines.
And, much to her delight, the new producers have found more for Roxanne to do this season.
"I'm so happy. I think this year is very exciting," Ruttan said. "I have a great story. Roxanne gets involved with somebody in a very delightful way."
As viewers learned last week, middle-aged, divorced Roxanne has decided she wants to have a baby. And she's about to meet the man she wants to father her child.
And in addition to correcting the errors made in Roxanne and Ar-nie's personal lives, they're also putting them back together professionally. Rox is about to give up her job as the office manager at Mackenzie Brackman.
"She's going back to work for Arnie again as his secretary. It's the result of what's happening in the rest of her life," Ruttan said.
As happy as she is on "L.A. Law," there is at least one down-side to working on a successful series.
"I don't have much time to do anything else," Ruttan said.
One thing she did have time to do was the NBC miniseries "Dead-ly Matrimony," which airs Sunday and Monday on Ch. 2.
"I wasn't attracted to it when I first hear about it," she said. "My character wasn't in the main story, and I didn't want to be a loyal at-home wife with nothing to do."
But she agreed to take the part, largely for the opportunity to play opposite Brian Dennehy.
"Brian Dennehy was sort of the real ace for me," Ruttan said. "I was intimidated to be working with him. That sort of challenged me, because he's so strong and powerful on the screen."
In "Deadly Matrimony," Den-ne-hy plays a straight-arrow cop who uncovers far-reaching corruption while investigating the murder of a mob-connected lawyer's wife. Ruttan plays his wife, a woman who's very much a partner in life with her husband.
Toward the end of shooting, Ruttan had a chance to meet the woman on whom her character is based.
"We were nothing alike, and yet she's a very strong woman, which I like to think I am," she said. "She's a teacher, and very involved in her husband's career, which was very much as I had chosen to portray her."
Ruttan said her most difficult scene was one in which she has to pick up a gun and point it at someone's head.
"I don't care for guns to begin with," she said. "It was hard. I made the prop people show me five times that the barrel was blocked. But it was not pleasurable to point a gun at somebody's head.
"And in one of the takes I whacked him in the head with the gun."
But in the end, even though she doesn't have a big part in "Deadly Matrimony," "I think it was some of my best work," Ruttan said. "I'm also exhilarated with the work I'm doing on `L.A. Law. I'm thrilled anytime I can say that."