Posts with tag svu
Posted May 23rd 2008 3:01PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Programming, Law and Order, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
Just when you think it's over, they pull it back in! Actually, I think this is great news and nothing to bemoan.
USA Network has ordered 16 new episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. The third spin-off from NBC's venerable -- 18 seasons strong --
Law and Order, CI moved to USA -- part of the NBCU family -- last year after six years on NBC. What's the difference between the shows on NBC and the shows on USA? Absolutely nothing. The quality of the show and the talent in front and behind the camera has remained the same, so I'm really happy that there'll be new
L&O: CI in the future. I prefer scripted drama to more reality TV.
Continue reading USA orders 16 new episodes of L&O: Criminal Intent
Posted Mar 18th 2008 8:43PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Law and Order, Celebrities, Casting
It feels like a sweeps moment -- a big name star guesting on a long-running show. But it's not set for sweeps. It is, however, a special occasion and a reason to do something festive. So, on April 29,
Robin Williams will make a guest appearance on Law & Order: SVU in part to celebrate the 200th episode of the intense NBC crime drama.
The Oscar-winning actor (for
Good Will Hunting) is no stranger to television, as we all know. Till the day he dies, he'll be Mork. Na-noo, na-noo. As an alien from the planet Ork, Robin Williams was catapulted from obscure comic actor to overnight sensation thanks to the Garry Marshall sitcom
Mork & Mindy. It was the beginning of a stellar career.
Continue reading Robin Williams to guest on SVU
Posted Oct 16th 2007 5:41PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Ratings
Here are the weekly TV ratings, by number of viewers.
1. CSI (CBS)
2. Dancing with the Stars - Mon (ABC)
3. Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
4. Desperate Housewives (ABC)
5. House (FOX)
6. 60 Minutes (CBS)
7. Dancing with the Stars - Tues (ABC)
8. NCIS (CBS)
9. Criminal Minds (CBS)
10. CSI: Miami (CBS)
11. Survivor (CBS)
12. Cold Case (CBS)
13. Without A Trace (CBS)
14. CSI: NY (CBS)
15. Two and a Half Men (CBS)
16. Deal Or No Deal - Weds (NBC)
17. Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
18. Private Practice (ABC)
19. Law and Order: SVU (NBC)
20. Extreme Makeover (ABC)
Posted May 23rd 2007 12:31PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: OpEd, Law and Order, Episode Reviews
(
S08E22) Was it me, or was there just too much happening in this episode? "Screwed" was a culmination of not just this entire season, but of the entire series. And we're left, once again, to wonder whether the SVU squad is going to be disseminated.
The episode starred Ludacris, reprising his role as Det. Tutuola's stepson, Darius, from a
March 2006 episode. But, despite the stellar acting job from Ludacris, it wasn't about him at all. In fact, his alleged crime wasn't even the center of the story (I stopped trying to remember the Ludacris episode when I realized that it didn't matter). Instead, Ludacris was the tool the writers used to pick apart all the mistakes the SVU detectives have made over the years and leave us hanging about their fate. The detectives were the ones on trial.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Screwed (season finale)
Posted May 16th 2007 11:37AM by Anna Johns
Filed under: OpEd, Law and Order, Episode Reviews
(
S08E21) I hate it when the promos ruin an episode. It's hard to tell whether this episode of
SVU was a good one because I knew from the promos that the girlfriend was a "black widow". It took a really, really long time for the story to unfold and I felt impatient because I wanted to see the evil side of this girl.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Pretend
Posted May 9th 2007 1:14PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: OpEd, Law and Order, Episode Reviews
(
S08E20) Usually I would say that if Elliot Stabler gets naked, it's gonna be a great episode. I wouldn't call it "great", but it was "good". It's surprising, really, because the topic was incredibly emotional. A man killed his wife and children because his lies were getting out of hand. It's a believable premise because we've seen it played out too many times in the news media (even though L&O didn't promote this one as "ripped from the headlines").
The episode was Elliot-centric, which usually means his family is somehow involved. It was. He saw a man who was bored with his life in Staten Island, so he started making up a new life for himself complete with a fiance who thought he was a CIA agent. Of course, it imploded and, as Dr. Wong said, family killers are so narcissistic that they can't live with the shame of being caught in their lies.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Annihilated
Posted May 2nd 2007 12:04PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Law and Order, Episode Reviews
(
S08E19) This was the best episode this season, hands down. Det. Olivia Benson's entire world came crashing down around her. Her entire motivation for being an SVU detective was brought into question. There was an awful lot revealed in this episode about Benson's past.
The writers and Mariska Hargitay did a spectacular job convincing me that she had completely lost her mind. Det. Benson appeared to be blindly helping her brother evade the law because she couldn't believe that he was a rapist, just like their father. After the last episode with Simon, I fully believed that he was guilty and I thought she did too.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Florida
Posted Apr 19th 2007 2:45PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Law and Order, Watercooler Talk
There are all sorts of
media reports swirling around lately that NBC is considering canceling
Law & Order and
Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Both series are suffering from consistently low ratings and it wasn't a good sign earlier this year when NBC moved the original
Law & Order to
Siberia Friday nights. NBC reportedly met with
L&O creator Dick Wolf earlier this week to discuss the series' futures, and both are considered "on the bubble", though
Criminal Intent is more likely to see a renewal than the original
Law & Order. A decision isn't expected until early next month. (
SVU is safe, by the way, with its stars earning
mega bucks next season)
This is the original
Law & Order's 17th season and, even though it has reached legendary status as far as television series go, it is time for it to go. I think the
Chevy Chase episode proved that. It feels tired and stale. There are way too many "ripped from the headlines" episodes and can anyone even keep track of who the main detectives are anymore? The series has gone through so many stars that it's getting hard to keep up. Plus, I think it became about "sexy" detectives and lawyers, rather than the original, more gritty characters played by Chris Noth, Paul Sorvino, Michael Moriarty, and Jerry Orbach.
Do you think Law & Order's time is up?Posted Apr 4th 2007 10:19AM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Law and Order, Episode Reviews
(S08E18) Okay, I loved the dog owners in this episode. Their priorities were completely skewed. They found a dead teen-ager in their bed, but they were more disturbed by the fact that their dog hadn't been walked while they were on vacation.
This episode was about a subject they love over at
SVU: drunk, rich kids. This time, though, the kids aren't the worst of the worst. The real bad guy is a young mother who wants teen-age boys to think she's hot and for her daughter to be popular with her classmates. She buys the kids alcohol and medicates her daughter's problems with alcohol.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Responsible
Posted Mar 28th 2007 6:39PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, OpEd, Law and Order
(S08E17) The writers of this episode were out to stick it to the right-wing Evangelicals, weren't they? They wrote an emotional script about the subject that gets so many people riled up: homosexuality!
Tim Daly seemed a little detached from his central role in this episode, playing Jeb Curtis, a reverend at New Souls Church in Long Island. I think his character was based on real-life Evangelical minister Ted Haggard, who admitted to doing meth and having affairs with men. Of course, Haggard never killed anyone to cover up his sins (at least not that we know of).
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Sin
Posted Feb 28th 2007 7:28PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, OpEd, Law and Order
(S08E16) For the most part, I really enjoyed this episode. I liked how the two storylines intertwined- with Liv's search for her brother having an impact on her ability to do her job. What I didn't like was the third storyline of Olivia and Elliot being "too close" and the threat of splitting them up. That's a tired story. They already broke up last season when Mariska Hargitay's pregnancy became too obvious to hide, so Olivia ditched Elliot for after she realized they were too close.
I spent most of this episode being pissed off at Olivia for allowing Elliot to drag himself into her mess. She was way over the line in doing kinship DNA testing in the police database and in stalking her half-brother. Liv had to keep telling lies to cover for her screw ups and Elliot backed her up. Obviously they are "too close" because they're now supporting each other's extra curricular activities.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Philadelphia
Posted Feb 21st 2007 3:09PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, OpEd, Law and Order
(
S08E15) Even though the disclaimer at the beginning of this episode said "The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event", we all know who L&O writers are taking a shot at here. It's Nancy "Everyone is Always Guilty" Grace of CNN. A few months back, she
verbally attacked a mother on air and suggested the mother was the reason her child was missing. The mother committed suicide the next day.
In this episode, the baby disappeared from his crib as the mother (Laura) and boyfriend were playing charades with their friends. The mother immediately blamed her ex-husband, a gambler and alcoholic... and apparently a drug dealer. Stabler chases the ex-husband to the (Hudson?) river where the guy tosses a bag into the water. Stabler goes after it, assuming the baby is inside. But there's cocaine in it and the guy doesn't have a clue where his baby is.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Haystack
Posted Feb 14th 2007 1:49PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, OpEd, Law and Order
(
S08E14) Just like last week, this episode took a complete turn a little more than halfway through. I felt pretty unhappy with the ending because, once again, it seemed rushed. An entire murder investigation was wrapped up extremely quickly and then another storyline was opened with Elliot and his wife- all in the last 25 minutes of the show.
The episode started out like any other. A father (Cary Elwes) and his son arrive at his estranged wife's house to find someone inside. The mother is dead, the father gets whacked on the head with a vase and the boy runs for his life. It turns out the family may have the mob after them, but that lead dries up quickly. Then the father remembers seeing his daughter in the house and the investigation quickly turns to her. She was on drugs that made her violent and she had a violent relationship with her mother. The case pretty much seems wrapped up until tests come back to reveal that the urine in the toilet that proved the daughter was high on drugs, did not belong to her. It was a man's - probably her boyfriend.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Dependent
Posted Feb 7th 2007 1:38PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, OpEd, Law and Order
(
S01E13) How about that opening sequence? Before the credits, the entire cast gets to take a shot at a
locomotive big guy on PCP. He throws Elliot through a window, knocks out a kid getting off the elevator and even takes a taser shot to the gut from Olivia before Fin takes him out with a chair to the back of the head. Anyway, the entire action sequence was a pretty elaborate way to write Christopher Meloni out of this week's script.
And, how unusual was this episode? The first 40 minutes had us thinking the detectives were investigating their usual child porn case, but then suddenly Olivia passes out?!? That's when the episode takes a turn from child porn to a much headier subject of chemical companies testing their products on humans. Wha? It took me a little while to catch up with the detectives as they spouted out their theories on why people in a low-income apartment building were being gassed. For a while there, I thought the theory was hair-brained and another of Det. Munch's theories. But it just kept going.
Continue reading Law & Order SVU: Loophole
Posted Jan 25th 2007 1:24PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, Law and Order, Pickups and Renewals
Lead actors Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni have both agreed to stick around on
Law & Order: SVU for two more seasons. It seems that money did the talking.
Variety is reporting that both actors received about a $6.5 million raise for each
year season. The publication says Hargitay is going to receive approximately $300,000-$340,000 per episode, pushing her up among the highest-paid female actors on television. Looks like baby August gets to go to private school!
Both actors had a hell of a lot of bargaining power in their contract negotiations. That show delivers consistently strong ratings for NBC and it absolutely would not be the same without Dets. Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler (Think:
The X-Files without Mulder and Scully). Let's hope the network gives an incentive to keep Richard Belzer around, too.
SVU is currently in season 8, which means we're guaranteed seasons 9 and 10, which is exactly how long the sexual tension will last.
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