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I have a bunch of seasons of Law&Order: Special Victims Unit in my Netflix instant stream. And I recently saw an episode from season 7 that I had never seen before. And now I wish I was still ignorant of it because it was one of the most horrible things I had ever seen on television.
For those of you who don’t know, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (“SVU” for short) is a show about a bunch of detectives who specialize in sex crimes and child/elder abuse cases. And anyone who is a fan of SVU knows that the show has taken a turn for the weird in its later seasons. It used to be a fairly straight forward crime drama about a team of badass detectives who solve sex crimes and put perverts in jail. But the latest seasons have employed wacky, twisty-turney plots and have an annoying tendency to throw realism out the window. One recent stinker had the sex crime detectives retrieve smuggled exotic monkeys from hallowed out basketballs at the airport. No, seriously! And the monkeys weren’t rape victims or anything; the detectives just felt like rescuing them!
But fans of this show accept that kind of madness because, at the end of the day, the main appeal of this show is watching two smoking hot detectives (Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson) track down rapists and child molesters and, occasionally, beat the living snot out of them. And a good, cathartic time is had by all. But this season 7 episode (delicately entitled “Fat”) was so appallingly bad I just had to rant about it. Stabler acts horribly out of character. The writing is shit. And, worst of all, the plot resolution actually excuses the actions of a pair of sadistic rapists with the most stupid and insulting reasoning I have EVER seen! I still can’t believe something this horrible and insulting to rape survivors made it to air!
Needless to say, this review has spoilers galore and a huge TRIGGER WARNING.
( Review under the cut... )
For those of you who don’t know, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (“SVU” for short) is a show about a bunch of detectives who specialize in sex crimes and child/elder abuse cases. And anyone who is a fan of SVU knows that the show has taken a turn for the weird in its later seasons. It used to be a fairly straight forward crime drama about a team of badass detectives who solve sex crimes and put perverts in jail. But the latest seasons have employed wacky, twisty-turney plots and have an annoying tendency to throw realism out the window. One recent stinker had the sex crime detectives retrieve smuggled exotic monkeys from hallowed out basketballs at the airport. No, seriously! And the monkeys weren’t rape victims or anything; the detectives just felt like rescuing them!
But fans of this show accept that kind of madness because, at the end of the day, the main appeal of this show is watching two smoking hot detectives (Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson) track down rapists and child molesters and, occasionally, beat the living snot out of them. And a good, cathartic time is had by all. But this season 7 episode (delicately entitled “Fat”) was so appallingly bad I just had to rant about it. Stabler acts horribly out of character. The writing is shit. And, worst of all, the plot resolution actually excuses the actions of a pair of sadistic rapists with the most stupid and insulting reasoning I have EVER seen! I still can’t believe something this horrible and insulting to rape survivors made it to air!
Needless to say, this review has spoilers galore and a huge TRIGGER WARNING.
( Review under the cut... )
