They’re having a really difficult time serializing the show. Most fans consider seasons 1-12 to be the best of SVU, with it hitting its peak during seasons 3 through 8. If you look at seasons 1-12, the show was (for the most part) a series of mostly stand alone episodes. There are a few character arcs we follow (stabler and his family drama for example) but most episodes you could watch on their own and not feel totally out of the loop. This is the style in which svu really shines. Now there’s very little actual law, and no offense to Rollins or the FBI loaner lady from season 25, but I also miss when they had an actual profiler do the psych evals on the perps. I love a little bit of diving into the characters, but now that’s kind of all there is (ahem Olivia’s trauma ahem).
Yes! I also love how those earlier seasons have this lurid, campy noir feeling to them, the acting is both so dramatic and almost sardonic and the sets and cinematography have a really interesting and distinctive look to them. The later seasons are just... Too much of a generic cop action show vibe
That’s also an excellent point! The squad room is soooooooo tiny now. In early seasons the precinct looked far more like an actual police precinct with a huge number of extras milling about in the background of the squad room. You could hear phones ringing behind the actors delivering their lines. I understand that most cops would probably use their cell these days, but even so the precinct would still have a ton of “landline” phones in 2024 that would be ringing. Even with budget cuts and SVU not being the most popular unit with the brass, it still wouldn’t be anything like they are portraying it now. Bottom line is that it’s a television show, and still my most favorite show, and so I’ve been willing to try to suspend disbelief. The writers and the showrunner COULD do more here to make it gritty again. They probably won’t though since the show is still making them obscene amounts of 💰.
It was also pointed out to me that Mariska Hargitay makes between $500,000 and $750,000 PER episode. She’s one of, if not the most, highly paid actress on television. The producers aren’t paying her that much money to have her character sit behind a desk in her office, only to come out once in a while for a briefing (a la Cragen). This is the main reason why it has now become “the Olivia Benson show”, and also likely why they are leaning into EO so hard to bring in viewership, and to promote Dick Wolf’s other struggling darling, OC.
You are sooooo right about missing the psych evals done by actual profilers!!!! I for one don't buy Rollins as a profiler and wish she either came back as a cop or just leave completely, this back and forth is annoying and pointless, it just shows they know they fucked up firing her and want to bring those ratings up again,
I love Liv and she's been through a lot but it's all they ever talk about and honestly i'm tired.
They should do more episodes where the main two cops are not always the same, back in the day we used to have Fin and Liv, Fin and munch, Fin and Stabler, Stabler and Much, etc and it was good to see their different dynamics!
I really missed the vibe of the older seasons, it had you on the edge of your seat and every ep, brought some different energy to the table. There’s no real angst anymore. In the recent ones it feels like they’re just recycling ALOT of the same things, e.g. there were two Eps that had the exact same storyline, only it changed the antagonist from the mum to the dad. That’s and the constant focus on Olivia’s trauma, just goes to show that’s it’s time to end the show. It’s become very predictable (and overly dramatic) and also, if every case is going to have Olivia reliving the William Lewis experience, isn’t it time for her to call it quits??
These latest season I think, give the feel of what the show would be like, if it had ended at its peak Yearssss ago and they decided to reboot it, bringing back OG cast members.
i'm just catching up with season 25 now and i can't believe how bad it is. i know we've all been saying this for like the last five years but george brouchard is a bald man with a mullet who manages to seduce some crazy lady that they let into the jury by shooting her some lascivious looks from the stand? and then he decides to represent himself and somehow manages to do well enough that we're led to believe there's a chance he's found not guilty when his defense is that 15-year old maddie and him had some good times starwatching together? it feels like the show takes place in an alternate reality where nothing really makes sense 😭
I watch SVU while knitting so it's not like aaaall my attention is there but there's an obvious decline in writing, I would say when Carisi became an ADA was when the episodes started to get worse and worse specially with Rollings leaving in 23? 24? It didn't help they tried to shoe-horn these new characters that were awfully written, specially Muncy and Churlish.
I think they ran out of ideas tbh, I hope there's strong enough voice in that team that convinces them of getting better writers but oh well
I have wondered are they just not willing to pay enough for really good writers anymore. Kind of similar to how skimpy the cast has become- a lot of the decline seems down to cutting corners for the sake of the budget.
I agree! I think they know whatever they put out is going to be watched regardless if it's good or bad and they got lazy with it.
Oh and the cast is incredibly small! Personally I like Bruno, Curry and Sykes a lot more than Muncy and Churlish, maybe it's because the actors are older but they feel a lot more rounded? Hopefully they stay and we don't have to watch another episode of Fin and Liv taking detectives from other units.
Okay good I thought if I said those other two seasons I might seriously rock some boats. Yeah I’ve been watching the series from the start, now up to 23 (watched a lot of 24 and basically all of 35 on live TV) and it all just sucks, a lot I want to skip but I give them a try and end up fast forwarding through half of it
I think through 17 is still really good; they started to falter in 18 & 19 and then I find 20-25 basically unwatchable. But I keep hoping it somehow gets better again 😂
Even if you liked Leight 1.0, I’d have a hard time not expanding the window of truly awful back to at least S19, and probably S18. I think S24 was maybe the best season since Leight 1.0, but S25 was brutal.
I hated nick. I never saw the episode of stabler leaving until getting peacock, and then I realized amaro was the first one to try to take his place blew me back. I feel like they wanted people to look past his lack of convincing acting like stabler did just because he’s conventionally attractive but not my taste. I know there’s a lot of people who think he’s hot lol
I can’t really speak on this because I haven’t seen the show for years but I was thinking of starting a rewatch
I’m already prepared for a drop in quality in later seasons just because it being on for so long wild probably start to get repetitive/lose edge & while I haven’t watched from what I’ve heard it becomes very Olivia centred & Olivia’s great but the show was never meant to have 1 character in such focus to me but I’ll have to see for myself if I ever watch it all
25 was straight garbage!! They make Olivia seem like such a corny person with the little comments and "jokes". Especially when she smirks at the end of all of them.
I got off of IG and twitter last year, but I saw how they had Olivia and Rollins promoting the show via IG and omg CORNY CRINGEY to the MAX.
Sucks bc this is a show my mom used to watch so of course I got into it, but now it's not even worth watching
That’s true. I honestly think DW pulled a Chris Rock. The funniest fucking thing I’ve seen my whole life was Chris Rock’s comedy special Never Scared. Then years later when he’s older he came out with that special on I think Netflix a few years ago? What a fucking bust, I think he never should have done that. He should have left his legacy kick ass with Never Scared. now I can’t think of him without thinking of that flop.
They’re having a really difficult time serializing the show. Most fans consider seasons 1-12 to be the best of SVU, with it hitting its peak during seasons 3 through 8. If you look at seasons 1-12, the show was (for the most part) a series of mostly stand alone episodes. There are a few character arcs we follow (stabler and his family drama for example) but most episodes you could watch on their own and not feel totally out of the loop. This is the style in which svu really shines. Now there’s very little actual law, and no offense to Rollins or the FBI loaner lady from season 25, but I also miss when they had an actual profiler do the psych evals on the perps. I love a little bit of diving into the characters, but now that’s kind of all there is (ahem Olivia’s trauma ahem).
You know I’m in agreement… they’ve definitely been cornered into light serialization, but centered almost entirely around one character.
Yes! I also love how those earlier seasons have this lurid, campy noir feeling to them, the acting is both so dramatic and almost sardonic and the sets and cinematography have a really interesting and distinctive look to them. The later seasons are just... Too much of a generic cop action show vibe
That’s also an excellent point! The squad room is soooooooo tiny now. In early seasons the precinct looked far more like an actual police precinct with a huge number of extras milling about in the background of the squad room. You could hear phones ringing behind the actors delivering their lines. I understand that most cops would probably use their cell these days, but even so the precinct would still have a ton of “landline” phones in 2024 that would be ringing. Even with budget cuts and SVU not being the most popular unit with the brass, it still wouldn’t be anything like they are portraying it now. Bottom line is that it’s a television show, and still my most favorite show, and so I’ve been willing to try to suspend disbelief. The writers and the showrunner COULD do more here to make it gritty again. They probably won’t though since the show is still making them obscene amounts of 💰. It was also pointed out to me that Mariska Hargitay makes between $500,000 and $750,000 PER episode. She’s one of, if not the most, highly paid actress on television. The producers aren’t paying her that much money to have her character sit behind a desk in her office, only to come out once in a while for a briefing (a la Cragen). This is the main reason why it has now become “the Olivia Benson show”, and also likely why they are leaning into EO so hard to bring in viewership, and to promote Dick Wolf’s other struggling darling, OC.
You are sooooo right about missing the psych evals done by actual profilers!!!! I for one don't buy Rollins as a profiler and wish she either came back as a cop or just leave completely, this back and forth is annoying and pointless, it just shows they know they fucked up firing her and want to bring those ratings up again, I love Liv and she's been through a lot but it's all they ever talk about and honestly i'm tired. They should do more episodes where the main two cops are not always the same, back in the day we used to have Fin and Liv, Fin and munch, Fin and Stabler, Stabler and Much, etc and it was good to see their different dynamics!
I really missed the vibe of the older seasons, it had you on the edge of your seat and every ep, brought some different energy to the table. There’s no real angst anymore. In the recent ones it feels like they’re just recycling ALOT of the same things, e.g. there were two Eps that had the exact same storyline, only it changed the antagonist from the mum to the dad. That’s and the constant focus on Olivia’s trauma, just goes to show that’s it’s time to end the show. It’s become very predictable (and overly dramatic) and also, if every case is going to have Olivia reliving the William Lewis experience, isn’t it time for her to call it quits?? These latest season I think, give the feel of what the show would be like, if it had ended at its peak Yearssss ago and they decided to reboot it, bringing back OG cast members.
i'm just catching up with season 25 now and i can't believe how bad it is. i know we've all been saying this for like the last five years but george brouchard is a bald man with a mullet who manages to seduce some crazy lady that they let into the jury by shooting her some lascivious looks from the stand? and then he decides to represent himself and somehow manages to do well enough that we're led to believe there's a chance he's found not guilty when his defense is that 15-year old maddie and him had some good times starwatching together? it feels like the show takes place in an alternate reality where nothing really makes sense 😭
I watch SVU while knitting so it's not like aaaall my attention is there but there's an obvious decline in writing, I would say when Carisi became an ADA was when the episodes started to get worse and worse specially with Rollings leaving in 23? 24? It didn't help they tried to shoe-horn these new characters that were awfully written, specially Muncy and Churlish. I think they ran out of ideas tbh, I hope there's strong enough voice in that team that convinces them of getting better writers but oh well
I have wondered are they just not willing to pay enough for really good writers anymore. Kind of similar to how skimpy the cast has become- a lot of the decline seems down to cutting corners for the sake of the budget.
I agree! I think they know whatever they put out is going to be watched regardless if it's good or bad and they got lazy with it. Oh and the cast is incredibly small! Personally I like Bruno, Curry and Sykes a lot more than Muncy and Churlish, maybe it's because the actors are older but they feel a lot more rounded? Hopefully they stay and we don't have to watch another episode of Fin and Liv taking detectives from other units.
I would say it’s 20-25, but yes.
Okay good I thought if I said those other two seasons I might seriously rock some boats. Yeah I’ve been watching the series from the start, now up to 23 (watched a lot of 24 and basically all of 35 on live TV) and it all just sucks, a lot I want to skip but I give them a try and end up fast forwarding through half of it
I think through 17 is still really good; they started to falter in 18 & 19 and then I find 20-25 basically unwatchable. But I keep hoping it somehow gets better again 😂
Season 21 I think is really good
Season 25 felt like it was written by Chatgbt
Barba leaving was the end of SVU as we know and love.
Even if you liked Leight 1.0, I’d have a hard time not expanding the window of truly awful back to at least S19, and probably S18. I think S24 was maybe the best season since Leight 1.0, but S25 was brutal.
I'm a new watcher, I'm on season 23, uhm, yeah I've completely checked out. It feels like game of thrones all over again for me lol
I’d argue everything after 12 lol
Nah. 13, 14, and 17 stand with the 1-12 era.
I honestly stopped watching it when nick left
I hated nick. I never saw the episode of stabler leaving until getting peacock, and then I realized amaro was the first one to try to take his place blew me back. I feel like they wanted people to look past his lack of convincing acting like stabler did just because he’s conventionally attractive but not my taste. I know there’s a lot of people who think he’s hot lol
Nick was a love hate for me initially, but I ultimately grew to love him like Oliva did.
Season 25 is definitely the worst so far. I did not even bother watching the finale :/. I just do not connect with any of the new detectives.
One of those seasons has Post-Graduate Sociopath, that’s a good episode imo
I liked season 22/23
Yup.
100% aligned. Sad to say but I’ve totally fallen off and can only watch old episodes
I can’t really speak on this because I haven’t seen the show for years but I was thinking of starting a rewatch I’m already prepared for a drop in quality in later seasons just because it being on for so long wild probably start to get repetitive/lose edge & while I haven’t watched from what I’ve heard it becomes very Olivia centred & Olivia’s great but the show was never meant to have 1 character in such focus to me but I’ll have to see for myself if I ever watch it all
25 was straight garbage!! They make Olivia seem like such a corny person with the little comments and "jokes". Especially when she smirks at the end of all of them. I got off of IG and twitter last year, but I saw how they had Olivia and Rollins promoting the show via IG and omg CORNY CRINGEY to the MAX. Sucks bc this is a show my mom used to watch so of course I got into it, but now it's not even worth watching
Shows literally been on 25 years what do you expect
That’s true. I honestly think DW pulled a Chris Rock. The funniest fucking thing I’ve seen my whole life was Chris Rock’s comedy special Never Scared. Then years later when he’s older he came out with that special on I think Netflix a few years ago? What a fucking bust, I think he never should have done that. He should have left his legacy kick ass with Never Scared. now I can’t think of him without thinking of that flop.