With the original Law and Order now over, SVU is now the top dog of the franchise. If the season premiere of SVU is of any indication, the SVU series is still as good as when it first began. However, that isn’t to say there weren’t some small problems.
The season premiere was a two hour special, with each hour devoted to a new case. And although these cases are somewhat different, they do connect in a way that would be deemed spoilers.
Much like in true SVU fashion, the detectives of the Special Victims Unit are called to solve a series of incidents in where children are being abused, thus sparking a race to find who is responsible.
Both episodes have twist endings with gradual story telling, leaving the audience on the edge of their seats constantly guessing as to what will happen next. Fans of the series undoubtedly expect this from the workings of Dick Wolf.
However, towards the middle and end of the second half of the special, things start to get a little predictable when certain scenes are set up in a way that make it easy to at least guess what happens next. Well, at least to me anyway.
However, my biggest complaint remains with the overall format of the both the show and the Law and Order franchise altogether. I can’t help but feel that the writers of this series have completely missed the point of the whole legal aspect of this “police procedural and legal drama” television series.
Although the season premiere is great, and far better than last year’s, it’s almost completely old fashion detective work with almost no legal drama. Which to some may be all well and good, but the legal drama in coherence with the police procedure is what made Law and Order in the first place.
The series can’t build itself solely on one and not the other; so for what it’s worth, great season premiere but if they continue with this format, they may end up losing their core audience.
