While dinosaurs are still reasonably important to us, there was a time in our youth when they were the most fascinating things in the world. Director Steven Spielberg is looking to recapture a little of that excitement with his new TV series, Terra Nova, about a family from the future who time-travels back to the distant past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. While that sounds awesome to us -- we've been digging the British dino-series Primeval, which will return to TV in 2011 -- we're worried that it won't catch on with today's video-game-obsessed youth. So here's some advice we've plucked from the time stream of some Mesozoic Era TV shows that might ensure Terra Nova doesn't face extinction.

In news that comes as bitter irony for the cast of Southland, which was cancelled by NBC last year, the network has greenlit a new L.A.-based police drama series: Law & Order: Los Angeles. Yes, the L&O franchise will have four shows on the air again, with both SVU and Original Recipe returning this fall, and Criminal Intent hanging in there on USA. But what's to keep this new show from going the way of so many other Law & Order spin-offs over the years, as well as Dick Wolf's other law-enforcement dramas? They've already made a smart move by keeping the "L&O" prefix, but here are some other things they can learn from previous Wolf failures.

At this year's Academy Awards, the Iraq War action-drama The Hurt Locker swept most categories, winning six out of nine nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Unfortunately, it didn't win Best Actor, the category in which Jeremy Renner was nominated for his portrayal of an utterly fearless, possibly traumatized bomb technician. His performance was at the center of much of the praise of the film, and while it wasn't enough to beat Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, it remains a key element of the film's success. Now, if only that movie had come out before Renner's cop dramedy The Unusuals aired, the show might have had a chance, but the series was cancelled after only ten episodes, and the last one aired nine days before The Hurt Locker came out in theaters.