TV Recap: Law & Order: SVU, ‘Dissonant Voices’

Oh man, where do I begin?

This week’s episode of Law and Order: SVU was … interesting, and not in a good way. There was so much going on in this episode and it didn’t help that the quality of the storyline was poor. Frankly, this episode all around was pretty bad, which even post-Meloni, is very uncharacteristic for SVU.

But before I go into what didn’t work, let’s just bring out the big elephant in the room that I’m sure has been on the minds of every single viewer since the first five minutes of last night’s episode. Excuse me, I’m sorry, the three big elephants in the room: Ashanti, Clay Aiken, and Taylor Hicks.

First of all, whose brilliant idea was it to bring these guys back from the proverbial dead? What possessed them to think that two ex-American Idol contestants (one of which, didn’t even win!) that have not produced a single successful record since they were on the show and an R&B artist who also has not produced a hit in quite sometime would make good judges for a fictional singing competition? The history of these three alone made the opening scenes totally unrealistic, though I’m willing to bet that it would have worked somehow if these three actually had acting talent.

My favorite part of the opening scene and honestly, the best part of the whole episode was the part where Taylor Hicks whispers to Ashanti something along the lines of “She’s singing really low, this is not going to be good” in reference to the 14 year old contestant. I was almost on the floor laughing. So cheesy.

Anyway, now that I got that out of the way, here’s what else didn’t work at all this week:

*The Circling: I kind of felt like we weren’t getting anywhere for a good amount of time this episode. I understand the SVU team needed to verify the facts but the majority of the episode was the team verifying the statements of each party or questioning the sexual orientation of the accused pedophile. There was nothing here that really spiced things up and made the story interesting (minus the teenager’s revenge plan, but even that was pretty lame.) I kind of feel like there should have been of what was essentially the same characters having the same conversation and more tying loose ends up in a little bow.

*No Trial: What I really loved about the episode that aired two weeks ago was that Barbara was more involved in the case, which lead to viewers learning more about his character. This week he had one line which was “The teenagers got probation.” One of the reason why Barbara is so loved is because of his character’s personality. Having him say one line in a post-Meloni world does not to the show any justice.

*Liv’s Recovery: This is something that I’ve been complaining about since the premiere aired. This is one of those “this is not so great but it can be” scenarios. I mean, first Liv is fine to work, then she’s not and needs more time. Then, she seems fine even though everyone else says she’s not fine. It’s just very up and down. Given the nature of her assault, I would say that she still should be in recovery at this point, but it really doesn’t seem like this is going to be a realistic scenario at all this season.

Adding pop culture in the mix(American Idol/America’s Got Talent): I feel the same way about the addition of faux pop culture references as I do the “Ripped from the Headlines” episodes (NBC’s nickname, not mine) that have been occurring lately: tacky, lame, and almost always never good. End of story.

Next week’s episode looks like another “Ripped from the Headlines” episode and I’m not looking forward to it. When are we going to have the amazing visually and conceptually good SVU episodes of last season? I want that back.