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Law and Order: SVU

 There is a certain kind of SVU story I miss, in which one self-contained mystery fills an hour; you have a closed set of suspects, and you know the celebrity is the killer. (And the celebrity doesn't make a major appearance until Act III, after various obviously innocent suspects have been discarded.)


Did the delivery boy do it? No. Did the mailman do it? No. In fact, the killer was Angela Lansbury!

Did the fashion photographer taint the vodka? No. How about the lighting designer? No. In fact, it was Isabelle Huppert!

I have been half-awake for recent SVU hours, and I missed last night, but my understanding of the BX9 story is this: An evil crime lord rapes women and hangs their underwear in a forest. Then he shows the forest to a young child and says, "If you don't work with me, I'll rape your mom again." (This makes me think of Hutu forces in Rwanda, recruiting children in the Tutsi genocide.)

One victimized child is Albert; he agrees to work with the crime lord and BX9, and his job is to assault Olivia Benson with a machete. When this plan goes awry, Olivia befriends and rescues her own assailant. (Oh my, Olivia!) 

The assailant provides useful information, but it's not enough to save Olivia's colleague and frenemy, Duarte. We see Duarte falling to his death in a machete attack, and the setting is a bodega. (This story clearly comes from real New York City life: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/nyregion/trinitarios-gang-lesandro-guzman.html)

I admire the SVU writers for continuously unearthing new kinds of drama (even if I miss the Angela Lansbury days).

I do think the attention to Olivia's personal life feels half-assed--and I wonder if Stabler's appearances are now mainly a "Dick Wolf" effort to generate interest in Stabler's spin-off show. It's hard for me to believe that Olivia has so quickly moved past Stabler's abrupt exit from her life (from her continent!). The show's failure to address this act of "ghosting" feels lazy and uncomfortable. By contrast, I've been thinking of Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison--clearly a kind of template for the creation of Benson. When someone drops out of Tennison's life, the writers take time to think about motives, consequences, and scars.

I'd like to hear Hargitay on Helen Mirren. I'm cautiously committed to proceeding with this bumpy season, on this intermittently cartoonish show that I (mostly) love.
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  1. Unkie JFebruary 3, 2023 at 12:20 PM

    Agree. It feels like the Hargitay-developed Benson is slowly (or not so slowly) getting out of her creative control. Not a good thing.

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    1. ReaderFebruary 3, 2023 at 12:59 PM

      I did like the writing about Olivia's attacker. Interesting how Oscar intimidates women (I think migrant women?), then preys on the children, and enlists the children for gang work. I don't know the extent to which this is based on the real world. It seems like a plausible way someone would abuse power.

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