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 The new "SVU" caused some discord in my house yesterday. As I watched, I involuntarily said, "This writing is so bad." And my husband made me take it back.


Let me clarify. The episode had ideas. The central concern is that the system is broken. When the country is so unfair to women, it makes sense to bend the rules. (It's sort of like civil disobedience.) A nurse suggests to a victim that it's wise to say, "I was *forced* to drink." When it's clear that a misogynistic jury will sympathize with an attacker, Olivia wins leverage by putting the attacker's mother in jail. ("If you want Mom to be freed, you'll need to give me something....")

My problem is the issue of continuity. Olivia Benson has done her job for thirty years. This week's episode suggests a large rupture in Olivia's own system of ethics--but the abruptness is not plausible. The tension between Olivia and Carisi is interesting--but these are not characters I recognize from any one of the several (several!) recent seasons of SVU. Additionally, the spring cliffhanger made us expect a major showdown with the woman who played Hermione in "Harry Potter" on Broadway. She isn't even mentioned this week.

A show like "The Simpsons" regularly throws away continuity--it's understood that this will just happen in an animated series approaching its fortieth birthday. But SVU is not animated, and it's not a zany comedy. The sloppiness of the "world-building" bothered me last night.

OK. I said what I said.
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