This was more like it. Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 2 revolved around a compelling story involving an incest case from 20 years ago.
The victim had grown up to become an alcoholic who didn’t fully remember what had happened to her. The accused was a powerful and respected judge, and the family all took his side.
This was close to a classic SVU episode, although it missed a few beats that would have made it even stronger.
Cold cases often make great stories for SVU, even though they also tend to rely on tired TV tropes such as lack of hard evidence and fighting with the court about whether the case can be brought to trial at this late date.
This one was solid, checking off all the boxes for the kind of cold case that works well on SVU.
Maggie was an unreliable witness in Carisi’s eyes because she was an alcoholic who had lots of problems and didn’t fully remember the abuse, making him reluctant to prosecute.
Surprisingly, the cops were able to get forensic evidence more than two decades later, which gave them enough to arrest her stepfather, a powerful judge who intended to fight the charges, and his whole family stood behind him, accusing Maggie of making stories up for attention.
For a while, it didn’t seem possible that Carisi would win this case, and Maggie’s mental health was getting worse and worse the more she worried she was going to lose.
These elements were strong and compelling, making the story feel more like an episode from an earlier era of SVU, even though there was a bigger courtroom component than there was an investigative one.
Maggie was a complicated character who had a lot of issues because of the trauma she’d suffered.
Her childhood bedwetting, her adult difficulties with relationships and with alcohol abuse, and her inability to fully remember what happened to her were perfect depictions of how this type of trauma works.
I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that SVU didn’t more fully explore the difficulties related to reporting so many years later.
This police procedural usually rips stories from the headlines and uses them to advocate for survivors. Unless I blinked and missed it, there was no discussion of the New York law that allowed Maggie to file criminal charges rather than having to depend on a civil lawsuit.
It didn’t make much difference to the story, but it would have been a nice PSA to include so that real-life survivors would know they have options, at least in New York, if they were unable to report childhood abuse until well into adulthood.
I also was hoping for more of the story of how deciding to report so many years later affects survivors.
Maggie: What about the diary?
Benson: They will paint that as a work of fiction.
Maggie: I’m beginning to think my whole childhood was.
We got a little bit. Maggie paced Benson’s office, afraid she would lose and feeling like her whole life had been a lie.
However, there was little to no question in Maggie’s mind that she wanted to report the crime and wanted justice.
Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 2 didn’t delve too deeply into the pain of reliving the trauma versus the satisfaction of getting justice.
Reporting isn’t the right choice for every survivor. For some, it can be more traumatic to deal with the court system than to let go of the idea of justice.
I expected SVU to make that point more clear than it did, though there wasn’t a lot of room to do so because it had to get through the trial and the plot twist of the judge’s wife being a horrible person in her own right who accidentally became his downfall.
I expected a lot more trouble from the judge accused of the crime than we got.
From the promo and the description of the premise, it seemed he would be more like Bryan Cranston’s character on Your Honor, who abused his power to sweep his son’s crime under the table.
Judge Andrews shut down any questioning when Maggie was in the hospital and hired attorneys, but the only other thing he did to try to save himself was name-drop Nicholas Baxter.
After that didn’t work, he undermined his lawyer’s plea for lower bail by demanding ahead of time to be treated like any defendant, made an absurd claim that he was writing a novel about raping his eight-year-old daughter, and used his wife to back up his ridiculous story.
Judge Andrews: If you have any more questions, you can call my attorneys.
Fin: Attorneys, plural.
Bruno: The man is an ex-judge; he’s not going down without a fight.
That was all gross, but none of it lived up to Bruno and Fin’s belief that the judge would stop at nothing to get himself out of trouble.
I would have preferred a story about a judge abusing his power and Benson and her team fighting hard during the first half of the episode to get this case to court anyway.
As it was, the cop part of things was so unmemorable that I barely remember what happened during it, while the thing that made the biggest impression was the case’s resolution.
SVU has had several episodes that involve Benson fighting powerful people to ensure a survivor’s voice is heard. It never gets old because it’s part of SVU’s social justice advocacy.
This one had a perfect setup that missed the mark. The judge simply didn’t abuse his power enough, instead going for a ridiculous defense that the jury should have seen through even without corroborating evidence.
Over to you, SVU fanatics!
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Law & Order: SVU airs on NBC on Thursdays at 9/8c and on Peacock on Fridays.
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