63: Law and Order: SVU

"In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories."

It doesn't quite have the same ring as the title sequence for the original Law & Order - it's clearly SVU's attempt to make it sound as similar as possible while mentioning sexually based offenses. And yeah, I know the original's been on the whole decade also, but I think of it as more of a '90s show, and SVU is close enough to cover for both of them. And while I like original recipe better, I've watched plenty of SVU in my day as well, and it's one of the few shows here (I could count, but there's only one other offhand I can think of) that's been on the entire decade, so it has that going for it.

Law & Order has its own place in the canon of procedurals for its focus on stories over characterization, and its relative lack of ridiculous amounts of empathy on the part of every detective towards every single case, though this is far less in SVU than in the original, particularly with Elliot Stabler, Chris Meloni's character who goes through the show constantly angry and enraged at every criminal who prays on woman, yelling his way towards justice. Far more restrained are Richard Belzer's John Munch (who holds some sort of record for appearing as the same character played by the same actor in eight different TV shows) and Ice T's Fin Tutuola. Stadler's partner Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) is somewhere in the middle, and B.D. Wong is generally cool and collected as one would expect as the squad's psychiatrist who often gives reports of what's mentally wrong with the perps, and Dann Florek as Captain Cragen, the unit's captain, who is relatively boring and who served for the first three years on the original Law & Order before S. Epatha Merkerson started her never ending reign.

As I wrote when talking about Without a Trace, I normally find procedurals tolerable but not incredibly enjoyable. Law & Orders, however are different (at least original and SVU - I still haven't really gotten into CI - maybe when I'm done with the others I'll make another attempt). The genius technique used on USA and TNT when showing episodes in a row in syndication (I'm sure this is used on other shows as well but it doesn't work on me) is that one episode will smoothly blend into the next without a commercial in between, and with only about ten seconds of credits to turn it off before the classic L&O cold open where a random couple of people are talking about something totally irrelevant and run into a body or a rape victim, and it's too late - I need to know what happened. Perhaps it is not so coincidentally then, that SVU draws huge ratings in syndication.

Someone told me once of a comedy routine they saw with the comedian making fun of all the stock characters in Law & Order (I haven't seen the routine and don't know the name of the comedian - I wish I could credit the comedian for a great idea) and it's really true and part of the reason to watch, rather than something that turns me off - the deadpan medical examiner - the scummy witness unloading his truck who doesn't have time to stop while answering the detectives' questions - the rookie beat cop at the scene of the crime who says something stupid which earns him a harsh response from the detectives - the judge who snarls at both attorneys and makes a witty comment as he suppresses the use of evidence - and many more. And of course I can't wait to see whether the case has been "ripped from the headlines" as the commercials love to say - what real life incident the episode is based on, as well as what crazy celebrity (or non-celebrity niche TV actors) will show up as defendants or lawyers or witnesses. It should get tired, but it never does, no show has been able to master the set up as well as Law & Order yet.