I have a terrible cold, and I’m sitting at home watching TV. Law and Order SVU is on, and in the first episode I saw (about a young boy who’s been raped and where the initial suspect is from the Hasidic comunity), a male detective basically taunts the suspect (who turns out to have nothing to do with it), asking him if that’s what gets him off.
In the next episode, about embryos that are stolen from a cryogenic lab, a couple with a daughter with a developmental disorder (she’s eight but will never develop past newborn stage) mentions having surgery on the girl to keep her from developing more so they can care for her easily…at which point the female detective (Olivia?) chews them out.
OK, granted, cops are in real life often insensitive…but aren’t they supposed to be, you know, the good guys? The special elite force, etc.? Are the viewers supposed to like these people? Maybe I took too much NyQuil.
I find them over-the-top judgmental and occasionally preachy, plus Olivia always looks like she’s just tasted something nasty. I refuse to watch the show any more.
Glad it’s not just me. I’ve never seen this iteration of L&O before. Not a huge fan or anything, but I’ve seen a few of the original L&O, with Sam Waterston and Jerry Orbach, and I found those enjoyable. This, though…I just feel like smacking them.
The writers want to show that the characters have not become jaded and hardened and that they retain the ability to be outraged (so instead now they are at a pressurized boil about to blow up any moment…); and they want at least one of them in each story to be a proxy for the audience who wants to hate the scumbags, yet show how s/he can still overcome the anger to handle the case properly (oh, wow, doing your job, what a hero!). It’s “Yeah, Law and Order must be maintained… but, but… it’s pedophiles and rapists!!” You may yet catch the one where the detective guy browbeats a priest about how he *should *break the confessional seal if it means catching a pedophile.
(Also, the writers may be cranking up the hate so as to not be accused of wallowing in the whole sexcrime theme… a “doth protest too much” thing)
That spinoff is partly about getting people riled up. That’s why it’s mainly about sex.
Having one of the characters boorishly offer his opinion accomplishes the goal of getting people emotionally involved and riled up whether the viewer agrees or disagrees with the character.
So, it’s a version of Law & Order with a little Jerry Springer sprinkled on.
Yeah, they go as self-indulgent as they can…like the pedophile putting pictures of kids on the Internet (but not molesting them) who just so happened to grab a photo of one of Stabler’s daughters as a young girl. Cue rage!
Oh, the faux-witty repartee…this could be a seriously good drinking game when I’m off the NyQuil!
One thing I enjoyed about L&O and its spinoffs was the cringe inducing puns at the end of the intro. The one that sticks to my mind was a L&O SVU episode where a guy put a camera in a women’s toilet (not restroom, the toilet itself) and one of the characters talked about looking at different people’s computers to see if they found footage. To which one of the detectives replied something along the lines of: “It’ll be easy to find him. It’ll be whoever downloaded the most crap.”
It’s like the writers were having contests between themselves to see who could come up with the most horrible puns.
Your username confirms that you can do better. We’ll chalk this one up to Nyquil.
It’s easy to view the original L&O (and other spin-offs) as a murder mystery–dead person at the beginning (so no intimate attachment with the viewer), lots of evidence and suspects, and then a legal thriller at the end. Sure, sometimes it’s topical or deals with ethical issues, but it still was primarily a straight-forward (if literate and fairly intelligent) procedural.
But SVU deals with lots of victims, lots of raw emotions, lots of rape-rape-rape (with some molestation thrown in) and that just becomes overkill. There’s no way to deal with this subject matter week after week without either making it exploitative or just exhausting. And while I like the supporting cast, I don’t nearly well enough to subject myself to this kind of material.
Of course, this is catnip for female actors (there have been 15 Emmy nominations for “Guest Actress” over the course of the series, along with 8 for Hargitay herself) but as much as I admire the craft and the stars they’re able to corral, I still can’t do it.
Lenny Briscoe was the king of the pre-credit one-liner; not usually a pun though. Although the best line in the history of the franchise came from Dr. Rodgers.
These days it’s more pointing out the deficiencies in the case so that Benson can admonish, "But it’s still rape! Like no one in the Sex Crimes unit knows that.
What’s the Rodgers line? She was the highlight of the show.
Sad but telling that this should be the last survivor of the L&O franchise. The original show and L&O:Criminal Intent were both classics of their kind, with interesting stories and quality actors such as Michael Moriarty, Sam Waterston and Vincent D’Onofrio. The captains and the kings have long departed; now we’re left with the clowns.
[QUOTE=John Mulaney]
[Ice T] has been on SVU for like mmm… 11 years now, but he still treats every case like it’s his first in terms of total confusion.
[/QUOTE]
Stabler is kind of a dick. He loses his temper too much. If you’re a cop who can’t keep a handle on yourself because of the nature of your subject matter, I might suggest you try another unit.
I’m also getting a little weirded out by all the “You like to rape people, huh? Well, you’re going to see a lot of that where you’re going…PRISON” talk. I know, prison rape happens, and obviously if you witness the kinds of heinous attacks that these detectives do, you want the perps to suffer…but it’s a little ridiculous.
Stereotyped in the sense of following a formula for its stories and of having characters which have a set of functions and personality traits which serve well defined purposes. E.g.: In the clip Weasel linked to, Ice T is there to play dumb so that other characters can give him (and the audience) the required exposition/explanation. One of Stabler’s functions within the show is to be brash and react strongly.
