Law and Order: SVU Season 12 - A Fading Star

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit seems to have lost its footing.  In the beginning of this series the characters were new, and unusual.  It was rare to have a female detective or a male detective who was happily married with children.  The show bucked the usual cop show tradition of testosterone-filled male officers trying to find out which of them was tougher.

Instead the characters were at once heroic and believable and the episodes were centred around heart-wrenching cases and featured superior writing.  In this 12^th season of the long-running, hit show; however, the writers seem to have finally run out of ideas.

The stories that the writers have been telling this season have been convoluted and stagnant. There is no rising action in the plot because the writers have the episodes jumping from one plot point to another with very little to connect them.  They also seem to have left behind any sense of the reality of the penal system.  While all police dramas play with the laws and bend them for the sake of artistic licence, Law and Order: SVU writers seem to have given up even trying to represent reality.

In this 9^th episode of season 12 the story begins with a girl claiming to have been raped by a guy at her University.  The writers spend some time with that story but then quickly and inexplicably abandon it to focus on another girl whom the guy slept with and impregnated.  SVU detectives then charge him with “abortion in the 2^nd degree” because they believe he caused the girl to miscarry the baby by using a lubricant that contained abortive properties.  The storyline is far-fetched and bordering on the ridiculous.

Nearly every episode has the detectives focusing their attention on one “societal ill” or another.  A couple of weeks ago it was cola this week it was the prescription drug called Misoprostal that can cause pregnant women to miscarry.  The scenes in which the detectives all stand around debating this week’s particular talking point feels like wasted lines delivered by actors who are too talented to spout drivel.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unitstill has so much potential.  If the writers would return their characters to the sharp, intelligent people they were and if they would return the storylines to at least a semblance of reality, the show could regain its footing and become the great drama it used to be.