http://www.tvguidemagazine.com/matt-roush-daily-review/svu-an-nbc-victim-2890.html


SVU an NBC Victim
By Matt Roush October 20, 2009 11:40 PM EST


Don’t be surprised if Rosie Perez earns an Emmy nomination for her agonized performance as the mother of a sexually abused child in Wednesday's unflinching (if perhaps overstuffed) episode of NBC’s long-running Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The show has a track record of giving guest actors big moments that reap rewards, and sometimes awards—last season, Ellen Burstyn (as Stabler’s senile mother) became the fourth actress to win a guest-actor Emmy on the show. Perez makes the most of her opportunity, coming out swinging—first target: a prep-school mom accusing Perez’s son of molesting her own boy—and never letting up as the plot takes a number of twists while never losing sight of her anguish and rage.

At a pivotal moment, when Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) tells her how she can go about rebuilding her life, Perez has a wonderfully unguarded moment as she takes the detective’s measure: “Damn, girl, you got a little gangsta in you, huh?” More than a little. Same for her partner Elliott (Christopher Meloni), who can’t even look at the child molesters he encounters without steam coming out of his ears.

Now in its 11th season, SVU can still deliver some powerful stories, and this is one of the best in a while. Added bonus: Stephanie March's welcome return as prosecutor Alexandra Cabot, who only reluctantly lets the SVU cops rope Perez and son into a sting operation against a ***** ring’s leader, played with blood-curdling smugness by the ubiquitous Garret Dillahunt (seen just this Monday holding Tim Roth hostage on Fox’s underappreciated Lie to Me).

This episode should be a triumph for SVU, but in all likelihood, too few viewers will watch it in its unfortunate new time period on Wednesday at 9/8c. The show has taken a body blow to the ratings (not unlike what happens to Stabler in the first reel of this story) since NBC shifted it from its longtime perch of Tuesdays at 10/9c, one of the most odious side effects of stripping The Jay Leno Show across the schedule, Monday through Friday, including on nights that didn’t need to be “fixed.”

I could make the argument that a story this grim is better suited for the later hour SVU used to occupy, but look at this week’s storyline being touted by its inexplicably higher-rated competition on CBS, Criminal Minds, which also airs at 9/8c: “The team hunts a suspect who impregnates young women and has them give birth before murdering them.” Pardon me while I take a shower.

Leaving aside arguments of relative quality or audience appeal, NBC’s decision to program SVU against the well-established Minds is criminally negligent. The same can be said as well for abandoning the rejuvenated original Law & Order, now in its 20th year and enjoying a creative resurgence, to an unfriendly new night and time: Fridays at 8/7c. The franchise mothership, not so coincidentally, is on its own roll right now. Last Friday’s episode about the murderous excesses of reality-TV wannabes could not have been more timely. This Friday’s episode, confronting the ever-divisive issue of abortion after a late-term abortion doctor is murdered while in his pew at church, is Law & Order at its most topical and trenchant.

Way to treat your only significant adult dramas, NBC. (Can’t count the jilted Southland for obvious reasons, and the less said the better about dreadful rookies like Trauma and the laughable Mercy.) The real victim in all of this is SVU.