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“Law & Order: SVU”: Dick Wolf has fatherly advice for Rihanna

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:12:00 +0000

Last night, “Law & Order: SVU” aired a ham-handed, ridiculous-and-then-bleak episode based on the Rihanna and Chris Brown domestic violence saga. "SVU,” like all the “Law & Order” franchises, regularly uses plots “ripped from the headlines.” As with movies based on cartoons, TV shows and other movies, there’s a built-in audience for this kind of thing, for the restaging of a story we’re already familiar with. (I haven’t seen an episode of "SVU" in some years, but I watched this one.) There is also a built-in voyeurism: The show fleshes out a tale we only know from tabloids and social media. It takes a real-life soap opera and turns it into a more regularly formatted one. It dials up the entertainment value on any salacious, disturbing, riveting true-life crime, crimes we don’t much like to discuss in terms of entertainment value, even as they sell magazines and fill endless hours of cable news.

“Law and Order” gets kinky

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:55:00 +0000

What is there to say of the news that "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" is gearing up for a very special, "50 Shades of Grey"-themed episode this season? Because, really, how do you articulate a weary shrug in the face of inevitability?

Television's long-running procedural, which Wednesday evening launched its 14th season, is famed for the "ripped from the headlines" plotlines that make the "L&O" franchise so durable. At any given moment, there is an episode of "SVU" airing somewhere. It's the "I Love Lucy" of rape. Vulture reports that Anna Chlumsky, best remembered as the adorable title character of the '90s film "My Girl," will play the ersatz E.L. James author of a "wildly successful S&M romance novel" called "25 Acts" who's sexually assaulted by a television host played by Roger Bart. Forecast calls for lots of sexy talk about S/M and domination, and some sort of hand-wringing debate over the distinction between submissiveness and abuse. And a SHOCKING TWIST.