L&O: SVU

[timepiececlock]

I love L&O: SVU. I thik SVU doesn't get enough appreciation on my journal, so here you go:

Until this year (1st year at dorm), I never watched Law & Order very often. It held no interest. But since coming to live here, I tend to have procrastination time during the same hours that USA network shows SVU reruns.

I've taken to watching them. Out of order, usually, and with no sense of continuity. I think I've pinned down the reason I like this show: Benson and Stabler. And their chief/boss-person. I like these characters. A lot. And I feel like we know more about them, especially Stabler, than you know about the characters of regular L&O. It has the same sort of appeal that Homicide: Life On The Street had, though with less visually gritty camera work.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, you rock. Nail those evil bastards and look good doing it.

EDIT: Admittedly, I don't watch it every week. It is kind of disturing for that, as far as the crimes go. In fact, I've never even watched a new episode in its first airing.

EDIT2: most of the time, I don't like cop shows. They just don't work for me. I've never like NYPDblue, and L&O and The Shield don't appeal to me, and I don't like hospital/cop shows like Third Watch or ER. I've watched two episodes of Numb3rs for the hot Santa's elf, but even that show I'm not really into. But these are the cop or cop-like shows that have appealed to me:

The X Files
Homicide: LOTS
Rescue Me
L&O: SVU

I know I loved XF for the sci-fi factor, not the cop factor. So that explains that. But what about the other three? Why do I like them, and not other cop/hospital shows? What sets them apart?

And...am I the only person watching VM who looks at Jake Kane and thinks "He couldn't be a killer, cause before he owned a software company and married an evil woman and had kids he was a noble, sweet, decent-hearted detective!" ?

Comments

[poisonapple73.livejournal.com]

SVU has a way of sucking you in. I didn't think I'd be able to stomach the sex crimes aspect of it at all, but the bizarreness of the plots, the characters, and the fact that USA reruns it constantly got me hooked. When people talk about it and how it's made a name for itself as more than just a spin-off, it's definitely more than just hype. Because you're right, somehow they're managed to become a lot more character driven than the original.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I think what makes it seem like there's more character analysis is that

1) they seem to have more purely personal character stuff appear in the episodes in general, in little ways.

2) (my theory) the sex crimes are disturbing to hear about, so in order to consume them the audience has to see that the characters find them as disturbing we so. We have to watch the characters struggle with the nature of the crimes because you can't have them brush it off the way they can brush off robberies and gangs and stuff from their conscience. And if they want us to feel for the characters, we have to know more about them, which leads to #1. Also, these guys really rely on each other emotionally partners and fellow officers because the stuff they look at every day is just so horrible.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

Being a huge, no, not huge - a MASSIVE MEGA FAN of Homicide, I followed Richard Belzer to SVU. I gave the series a full season to convince me to stick around. The woman irritated me and the nature of the crimes were just too disturbing to handle on a week to week basis. Not that the writing was bad or the acting, no. It was just too much. I wanted to be able to stick around for it. Munch was one of my favorite H LOTS characters.

[octopedingenue]

I read somewhere that Belzer's Munch holds the record as the character to appear on the most TV shows (same character, same actor): Homicide, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, a guest appearance on the very short-lived The Beat, and a guest appearance on The X-Files ("Unusual Suspects").

I am a total SVU addict as well, Rashaka.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I loved the XF ep for being a Homicide crossover, though I wasn't yet that familiar with Homicide at the time. I loved the Lone Gunmen though (didn't everyone?), and if anyone on XF was going to be in a crossover, they were just the right geeks for it.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

I really need to get the XF ep he was in.

Oddly, the one story I wrote with H LOTS characters was a crossover with X-Files. Had an amusing scene where Mulder walks into the Waterfront, has a chat about government conspiracies with Munch (who's bartending), then Munch says, "Do I know you? You look really familiar to me?" Mulder, recognizing Munch, replies, "Uh ... no. I just have one of those ... faces." and leaves. Or something along those lines. Mulder was such a secondary character in that story, it focused more on Scully helping Lewis and Kellerman with a case of their own.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Do you also look at Jake Kane on Veroncia Mars and think "He couldn't be a killer, cause before he owned a software company and married an evil woman and had kids he was a noble, sweet, decent-hearted detective!" ?

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

Having watched only one episode of VM, I had to look up whom you were talking about. Kyle Secor played a character on there?! Wow.

It always weirds me out when I see the H LOTS gang in other roles. Like when Reed Diamond (Kellerman) played a "crooked" cop on the first two episodes of The Shield. The funniest was his cameo in S.W.A.T., which Clark Johnson (Lewis) directed and had his own minor cameo in as well.

Another good one was Jon Seda on OZ. "Whoo hoo! They flambayed Falsone!" I hated Falsone. And Laura Ballard, too. They ruined that series in the sixth season. Gah. I shouldn't go off on a rant here, because that's what it'll turn into.

It's odd, but I don't have that reaction whenever I see Andre Braugher (Pembleton) in anything else. Probably because he's such a destinctive actor. Not that the rest of them aren't, they're all great, it just doesn't happen in relation to him.

[herongale]

SVU rocks hard. I sometimes regret giving up my cable (which I did about a year ago now), just because I miss my Law and Order reruns.

[octopedingenue]

Yeah, you can download episodes, but it's just not the same as catching reruns at random on USA. :D

[scarlettfish.livejournal.com]

I love SVU. Everyone on that show is just fabulous - Bensen, Stabler, Munch, whtatever Ice-T's detective name is, Stephanie March as Alex (when she was on...I miss her!), and B.D. Wong. It's just the best of the L&O type shows. It completely sucks you in, despite the ickiness.

[octopedingenue]

It's probably wrong for me to revel in the icky bad wrong horror of the sex crimes, but I find them fascinating. The character interactions are what keep me watching, though.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I find them weirdly fascinating too. And the more I watch and know the characters, the easier I find it to look at them and not as much at the ick factor. The cahracter interactions are everything for this show.

I might be a Benson/Stabler shippper if I weren't so desiring that Stabler keeps his family that he relies upon so heavily as his moral center and drive. Much like how I'm a Hughes/Gracia shipper.

I added some stuff to my main psot.