Although this started out as a promising show, a better title for what it quickly became would be "Law & Order: Liberal Lecture Hour". Each episode of the show is a transparent allegory or a direct presentation of some liberal crusade in which the dialogue completely focuses on the detectives, lawyers, clerks, victims, and random passers-by reciting some left-wing diatribe. At first they had the decency to at least include a cardboard cut-out of a figure to respond to these arguments. Now they don't even bother with that; it's a straight lecture, complete with occasional raps on the knuckles with a ruler for not caring as much as these fictional characters obviously do.
Many times the stories won't even involve 'special victims'. The writer might throw in some crime that at first appears to be under their jurisdiction, but this will quickly be discovered to be false. Yet the detectives just care so much (and so should you!) about the tenuously tangential political/social issue that they are compelled to make it their crusade. And laughably they are always able to secure some meaningless, fictional victory over it by the end of the show.
If that's not enough to drive you away, there's one other major problem with this series: the completely overbearing and ridiculous way the show worships Mariska Hargitay. Not only is her character completely preposterous - she has, in turn, been a cop, a detective, a computer crimes investigator/hacker, an undercover agent with the FBI (while making sure not to insult the hippies she's spying on, and making a point about police brutality), and so on - but also has an overbearing, sanctimonious back story and has to be told she's "beautiful" every third show. It becomes really preposterous when she decides to take one of her many vacations; while she's gone the show does nothing but mourn her absence, complete with shoulders-up close-up static scenes of her randomly inserted into stories so we won't go into deep withdrawal.
Chris Meloni doesn't fare very well in a role that has been almost entirely phased out. He was originally the 'muscle', but left-wingers don't like muscle, so now he's morphed into kind of a touchy-feely, whiny crybaby who pines for his cardboard cut-out of a wife and family and apparently feels bad for being the necessary tough guy. His role is unintentionally hilarious because the makers of the show have no idea what to do with him. They want a tough guy so people who like cop shows will watch (because enforcing the law requires tough guys), but if they make him too tough they'll lose the left-wing audience who likes the sermons and thinks violence is icky. So one show he'll punch a guy, and the next show he's in therapy for it. There's an episode where he takes down a combative perp using a choke hold - the only action sequence in the show - and is then castigated for the rest of the episode for 'excessive force'. On the ridiculous 'Abu Ghraib' episode they had him utter the completely laughable lie that he had "used force" to compel a confession, but "9 times out of 10 is was counterproductive". Makes one long for the halcyon days of Andy Sipowicz.
The rest of the cast are increasingly irrelevant, pencil-sketch background characters. Though there have been abortive attempts to flesh some of them out, they're almost entirely ignored except to occasionally throw in a line representing their one dimension of characterization. Is there a pimp in this story? Bring in Ice-T! Does anybody use the word 'conspiracy' in this one? Bring in Belzer! And there's usually not much courtroom drama in an episode - the cops generally browbeat the audience for at least 45 minutes, minus the occasional chase scene - so we generally only see the pretty ADA give her speech. Which always reflects the lecture we've been given all episode and comes to the obvious conclusion: everybody who doesn't agree with the left-wing point of view on the issue is evil and should be in prison. But not executed! They're against that.
So basically if you want to worship at the temple of Hargitay, believe everything sent to you in an email by MoveOn.org and love the Daily Show, and think the best entertainment is to hear your own opinion regurgitated to you based upon the latest opinion poll, this is your show. If you think Hargitay looks a little mannish, actually want to see a good cops/lawyers show, or find trite presentations of important issues tiresome, there's better to be found.
Many times the stories won't even involve 'special victims'. The writer might throw in some crime that at first appears to be under their jurisdiction, but this will quickly be discovered to be false. Yet the detectives just care so much (and so should you!) about the tenuously tangential political/social issue that they are compelled to make it their crusade. And laughably they are always able to secure some meaningless, fictional victory over it by the end of the show.
If that's not enough to drive you away, there's one other major problem with this series: the completely overbearing and ridiculous way the show worships Mariska Hargitay. Not only is her character completely preposterous - she has, in turn, been a cop, a detective, a computer crimes investigator/hacker, an undercover agent with the FBI (while making sure not to insult the hippies she's spying on, and making a point about police brutality), and so on - but also has an overbearing, sanctimonious back story and has to be told she's "beautiful" every third show. It becomes really preposterous when she decides to take one of her many vacations; while she's gone the show does nothing but mourn her absence, complete with shoulders-up close-up static scenes of her randomly inserted into stories so we won't go into deep withdrawal.
Chris Meloni doesn't fare very well in a role that has been almost entirely phased out. He was originally the 'muscle', but left-wingers don't like muscle, so now he's morphed into kind of a touchy-feely, whiny crybaby who pines for his cardboard cut-out of a wife and family and apparently feels bad for being the necessary tough guy. His role is unintentionally hilarious because the makers of the show have no idea what to do with him. They want a tough guy so people who like cop shows will watch (because enforcing the law requires tough guys), but if they make him too tough they'll lose the left-wing audience who likes the sermons and thinks violence is icky. So one show he'll punch a guy, and the next show he's in therapy for it. There's an episode where he takes down a combative perp using a choke hold - the only action sequence in the show - and is then castigated for the rest of the episode for 'excessive force'. On the ridiculous 'Abu Ghraib' episode they had him utter the completely laughable lie that he had "used force" to compel a confession, but "9 times out of 10 is was counterproductive". Makes one long for the halcyon days of Andy Sipowicz.
The rest of the cast are increasingly irrelevant, pencil-sketch background characters. Though there have been abortive attempts to flesh some of them out, they're almost entirely ignored except to occasionally throw in a line representing their one dimension of characterization. Is there a pimp in this story? Bring in Ice-T! Does anybody use the word 'conspiracy' in this one? Bring in Belzer! And there's usually not much courtroom drama in an episode - the cops generally browbeat the audience for at least 45 minutes, minus the occasional chase scene - so we generally only see the pretty ADA give her speech. Which always reflects the lecture we've been given all episode and comes to the obvious conclusion: everybody who doesn't agree with the left-wing point of view on the issue is evil and should be in prison. But not executed! They're against that.
So basically if you want to worship at the temple of Hargitay, believe everything sent to you in an email by MoveOn.org and love the Daily Show, and think the best entertainment is to hear your own opinion regurgitated to you based upon the latest opinion poll, this is your show. If you think Hargitay looks a little mannish, actually want to see a good cops/lawyers show, or find trite presentations of important issues tiresome, there's better to be found.