This article contains discussions of violence, sexual assault, and death.
A long-running series likeLaw & Order: Special Victims Unitcan not see every episode hit a home run. The series explores the investigative trails and the legal proceedings of fictional crimes with a sexual component.
SVUis known for ripping high-profile cases from the headlines to create fictional stories. It is also known for disturbing suspects, morally gray complications in the crimes, and twists at the end of the investigations.
ThoughSVUhas become the most popular arm of theLaw & Orderfranchise, and the series on the air the longest, there are a few episodes that are among the worst for fans and the lowest-rated by critics.
7"Info Wars"
Season 19, Episode 12
Though theLaw & Orderfranchise, specificallySVU, is known for its storylines based on real events, “Info Wars” was not one of those episodes that hit well with the audience, though.
It has a 6.3 rating from users on the Internet Movie Database, which is not unspeakably low by primetime television standards. When the top five episodes of the series are all rated 9.0 or higher, however, it does demonstrate a marked difference in how the episodes are perceived.
“Info Wars” sees Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) clash with the sexual assault survivor she is trying to help. They have very different political views, and that causes them to butt heads. While Olivia is committed to helping anyone, no matter her feelings, the survivor is painted as thoroughly unlikable to the audience.
One of the oft-remembered lines forSVUis that “you don’t pick your vic,” but this episode makes that abundantly clear. It alsotries too hard to delve into the polarizing politics of the modern day.
Most audience members and critics are watching television as an escape from the reality they live in, or in this case, to unravel a compelling mystery, so it makes sense for the audience to rate this one lower than usual, but not as low as the absolute worst episodes ofSVU.
6"Part 33"
Season 20, Episode 14
“Part 33” does not use the usual episode format thatSVUemploys. Most episodes of the series start off with a crime committed, follow the detectives as they investigate it, and then end with the legal proceedings - though that does not always mean a trial plays out.
Here, the bulk of the episode surrounds the trial of a woman who shot her husband. A domestic abuse survivor, the woman shot her husband to get out of the relationship. Each of the detectives involved in the case has very different feelings, and they are all called as witnesses at the trial.
With a 6.1 on IMDb, the episode is ranked worse than “Info Wars,” butit does not deserve to be ranked so low. This episode is a divisive one because some fans like the examination of the characters and the break from the norm, but other fans found the character choices to be too extreme.
For some, it’s the kind ofSVUepisode that makes them want to smash their TV, but it does not quite deserve that criticism.
“Part 33” chose to highlight the most black-and-white aspects of the casethrough the detectives instead of allowing them to operate in morally gray areas. It accentuates their personalities in extreme ways, and for some, that makes them appear out of character.
5"Something Happened"
Season 19, Episode 7
Bottle episodes can be hit or miss with fans of procedurals. That’s because audience members want to see action, not a few characters talking on the same set for the entire 42-minute run. “Something Happened” isone ofSVU’sfew bottle episodes, which makes it very divisive.
Bottle episodes have to have enough payoff for the audience to be invested in them, and “Something Happened” simply does not.
Olivia Benson spends most of the episode discussing a potential rape with a woman who comes in, sure that she was raped, but unable to remember exactly what happened. Benson spends the episode talking with her and her sister.
While the acting in the episode is superb all around, the issue here is that the discussion of just what happened to each of the sisters goes in circles. The discussion alsoforces Olivia to reveal personal details about herself, but those details do not add to the story because the audience already knows them.
Bottle episodes have to have enough payoff for the audience to be invested in them, and “Something Happened” simply does not. It makes sense that it is rated among the bottom 50 of the 550+ episodes ofSVUon the Internet Movie Database. It’s also often referenced asa “never rewatch” episode by fans on Reddit.
4"Counselor, It’s Chinatown"
Season 21, Episode 7
“Counselor, It’s Chinatown” does not have a very low rating on sites like IMDb. It was, however, critically lambasted. The episode investigates a human trafficking ring as part of an undercover operation in the titular Chinatown. It also appears to be inspired by the events surrounding a real woman’s death.
In 2017, Yang Song fell four stories to her death when police raided a massage parlor in Queens. Similar events play out in the episode, butSVUputs a very different spin on those events, which is where a lot of the criticism for the episode comes in.
Tiffany Diane Tso wroteabout the episode forHuffington Postafter it aired, noting thatthe series took a very real event and spun it into a “white savior fantasy.”As Tso explains, the episode blatantly turns theSVUsquad into heroes who do not want to persecute the trafficked women, but it does not reflect the reality of the real women.
The reality is that the trafficked women being investigated are often also treated like criminals. Tso even notes that the real-life victim was propositioned by a vice officer to keep her secret, something not addressed in the episode.
This is one case wherethe episode might have done better with critics if it had reflected reality.
3"Guardians And Gladiators"
Season 22, Episode 1
In the early seasons ofSVU, characters would comment on abused kids or missing women who were from minority neighborhoods being overlooked. Racial inequality was often commented on, but it was rarely addressed directly. This episode attempts to tackle some of the racial bias.
SVUhas always tried to reflect the way the world is changing through the lens of often disturbing and sensationalized cases.
“Guardians and Gladiators” sees theSVUdetectives respond to a call about an assault in Central Park, but after arriving at the scene, it turns out they arrest the wrong man. When Olivia is confronted with the possibility that inherent racial bias might have caused her to pick the wrong man, she has to consider the possibility of unconscious racism.
ThisSVUepisode combines inspiration from real events, theCentral Park birdwatchingincident andthe murder of George Floydby police officers. While the episode takes its inspiration from them, it does not adapt either incident exactly.
“Guardians and Gladiators"has been criticized for not going in depth enough into the systemic racism that exists in law enforcement.SVUhas always tried to reflect the way the world is changing through the lens of often disturbing and sensationalized cases. It does the same here, and the criticism is not entirely founded.
42 minutes is not a long enough amount of time to thoroughly dissect systemic racism in law enforcement or the possibility of implicit racism.The criticism here should really be that later episodes have not followed up on the questions this episode presentedto its detectives.
“Guardians and Gladiators” might have had some heavy-handed execution of its themes, but it was a step in the right direction for the show.
2"Intimidation Game”
Season 16, Episode 14
SVU’s“Intimidation Game” is one of the worst episodes in the series. Not only has it been picked apart by fans in the past, but it is also one of the overwhelmingly negatively reviewed chapters of the show.
“Intimidation Game” sits at a 4.7 out of 10 on IMDb. It also lands in the bottom 10 episodes ofScreenCrush’sranking of the first 400 episodes ofSVU. About the episode,ScreenCrushwrote:
On one hand this is a suspenseful hour of SVU – there’s a tense rooftop shootout, a kidnapped victim, and Ice-T one-liners. But this is also the Gamergate episode, which did a terrible job of giving insightful, non-sensationalized commentary about this real-life story. You can do better, SVU.
The episode takes on the Gamergate movement with its victims being women who work in the gaming industry and the perpetrators being young men, gamers, who target them. Whilethe episode tries to bring a serious subject to light, it also sensationalizes it a bit too much, relying on an extreme scenario to sell the danger.
The Vergenotedthat the episode “diminishes the pain of real victims” with the story it tells:
By depicting only the worst possible version of harassment, it diminishes the pain that real victims go through, and it gives harassers an easy out — at least I’m not like that!
The Washington Postnotesthat the episode might have benefited from actually going in more depth with the suspects and perpetrators, which is not the route the show usually takes. As it is, it presents shallow caricatures of the men who go after the woman at the center of the story.
Both bits of criticism are valid forSVU. It’s hard to fit the scope of the movement in the real world into a few boiled-down soundbites, like Fin (Ice-T) believing these men did not distinguish the fantasy of their video games from the real world.
1"Truth Embargo"
Season 25, Episode 2
“Truth Embargo” is one of the most maligned episodes ofSVU. When long-time fans of the series discuss the worst episodes of the show, “Truth Embargo” and “Intimidation Game” often land in a tie. On IMDb, this episode is ranked dead last with a 4.4.
In contrast, theSVUepisode “911”, which won Mariska Hargitay an Emmy, is the highest-rated episode on IMDb with a 9.3.
It’s also not just fans who believe the episode is the worst. When it aired, critics tore the episode’s main storyline apart.
“Truth Embargo” sees a young woman hesitate to identify or testify against her rapist because she understands how corrupt the justice system can be. She likens sending her rapist to jail to what she saw happen with a child who ended up in the system after stealing gum when she was a kid herself.
As Benson points out to her, those are not equitable comparisons. The audience and the critics agree - at least with that part of the episode.
“Truth Embargo” pushes hard on the idea that people who do not trust the legal system are always in the wrong. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement and efforts to decrease funding for law enforcement while increasing funding for community social programs, however, that idea falls flat.
The audience trusts the characters they know in shows likeSVU, sure, but that does not mean they trust the institution as a whole. It also means that seeinglong-runningSVUcharacterslike Olivia Benson continuing to evolve is important, instead of simply pushing the narrative that all of the police are heroic and good.
That is part of the problem in the episode’s narrative.AsFangirlishpoints out, when Benson asks the survivor to trust her rather than the system, the audience already does, so it makes the characters read even more poorly:
…the whole thing is just framed as a couple of irrational bleeding hearts making Good Cop Captain Benson feel so very attacked.
Of course, even though “Truth Embargo” pushes too hard on one narrative, it alsosuccessfully explores Benson’s traumaafter the guilt she feels about not recognizing that a little girl was being kidnapped in an earlier episode. That narrative should have been the A-storyline here.
The biggest fault of the lowest-ratedLaw & Order: Special Victims Unitepisodes is that they take big swings in their stories that do not land. It’s hard to fault the writers of the show for that. It’s better that they continue to take those big swings and learn from their mistakes rather than stop altogether.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Cast
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a television series that premiered in 1999. Set in the criminal justice system of New York City, it follows an elite team of detectives who investigate sexually-based offenses, focusing on their efforts to solve complex cases and seek justice for victims.
