Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - Signature (Season 9)

Apparently this episode was "too controversial" to show at the normal timeslot for SVU. I had thought it might have something to do with the fact that they had finished showing Medium and were now showing Criminal Intent and so pushed SVU back. But I'm wrong because next week's episode is also too controversial. Imagine that; two too controversial episodes consecutively. Shocking.

This week's episode was really good, though. Despite the fact that three of the detective were missing, it did mean that Mariska Hargitay and Adam Beach got a chance to carry the episode, while B D Wong actually appeared in the episode (although as usual all he did was speak into a dictophone and bitch about other people). Erika Christensen was the most special guest actress for the episode playing a FBI agent who is seeking a serial killer.

Normally I give the top marks to SVU episodes when they actually make you think, but this episode didn't really do that. What sold it for me was the fact that there were a number of twists that I didn't actually see coming. The discovery that the serial killer was actually one of the murder victims discovered in the first few moments was quite, quite clever, but what was handled even better was the discovery that the person who alerted them to the victims was none other than Christensen's character. The discovery was well directed and in spite of Christensen's somewhat subdued performance, she does bring the character alive at the end. After a fashion.

What is perhaps the most interesting thing about this episode, particularly as Channel Ten's broadcast has been out of sync, is that we've seen Casey Novak lose her job because she chose to bypass the criminal justice system to bring someone down. Ironically in this episode we see Casey chastise Benson because Christensen's character did exactly that - and indeed at the end Christensen's character even goes so far as to say that one shouldn't become a monster in order to fight monsters. Ahh...hypocrisy thy name is Casey Novak.

"A"