Apparently, Law & Order: Criminal Intent isn't for the faint of heart.
Small screen dick Vincent D'Onofrio, who plays copper Robert Goren on the show, passed out on the Brooklyn set Wednesday and was taken to an area hospital.
D'Onofrio, 45, was rehearsing a physically challenging scene that involved climbing before he fainted, according to NBC Universal Television Studio which produces the show.
He was not ill prior to his fainting spell and was expected to be released from the hospital quickly, the studio said.
D'Onofrio has been a mainstay of Law & Order: Criminal Intent since it debuted in 2001 as one of the three spinoffs generated by the original Law & Order so far. (The fourth, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, is due to premiere next spring.)
The show has performed consistently well for NBC in its four years on the air, and has attracted an average of 12 million viewers per week this season, despite facing serious Sunday night competition from ABC's runaway hit, Desperate Housewives.
In an effort to keep ratings up, Criminal Intent producers staged an attention-getting feat last month by allowing viewers to vote on the fate of Olivia D'Abo's evil-doing character, Nicole Wallace, aka Elizabeth Hitchens.
Viewers in East Coast time zones were shown an ending in which D'Abo's character survived, while viewers in other time zones saw her killed off. Once the episodes aired, viewers were asked to go to the show's Website to log their votes.
Once votes were tabulated, it was revealed that D'Abo could keep her day job, as 62,074 viewers chose to keep her, while 54,224 wanted her dead.
D'Onofrio told reporters he thought the move was "a pretty cool thing to do." Of course, his job wasn't in the balance.
Meanwhile, D'Onofrio isn't the only television type under the weather this week. Production on The Bernie Mac Show has been delayed for another week, as titular star Bernie Mac struggles to recover from a bout of pneumonia.
The Bernie Mac Show has been on hold since mid-October when the decision was made to give the ailing comedian a month to recover.
Despite the setback, Fox plans to put Bernie Mac back on the air in January as scheduled.