The dude from Prison Break sucks it up on Law & Order: SVU’s premiere

No wonder Prison Break got the axe … too harsh? (Just kidding, folks!) Sorry, but Wentworth Miller — as Detective Nate Kendal — was really terrible on last night’s premiere of Law & Order: SVU. I’ve never seen Prison Break, so I have no idea, but he was definitely not good here.

I’m generally not wild about the guest detectives SVU utilizes. I understand that after this long, and the repetitive nature of their cases, they need to mix it up, but the visiting cops usually need to come in with some convoluted, tortured-soul back-story, which, in the short time allotted them, just seems overcooked. Plus many of them just don’t click on the show (see Miller). His bad turn wasn’t helped any by a terrible new ADA, Sonny Paxton (Christine Lahti), who thankfully is not long for the season.

Paxton’s there to “clean house” within the SVU, a mission whose need is solidified by the discovery that Elliot (Christopher Meloni) put an innocent man behind bars ten years ago for a rape he didn’t commit. Forensic connections are made to a current case that literally ran across Kendal’s radar, and now Elliot and Liv (Mariska Hargitay) feel the weight of not only the current victim, but also the previous ones, and a new one in the innocent man in jail.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that the spate of recent real life wrongful conviction overturnings makes me sick. I think it’s unfair to completely blame an overburdened justice system for this, as I’d like to believe that the system did everything that it could to get these right, but now what for these men and women? You can’t give them restitution. No matter how much money the state gives them, they’ve lost one, five, ten, sometimes twenty plus-years of their lives. And now that they’re out things still won’t be back to normal. Sure, their names are cleared; but their innocence is lost, as are their friends, family, jobs, homes…. How do we, as a society, approach trying to make that right?

Worse still? Elliot brought the news to the man in prison, before the process had taken place. When Kendal threw Mark Foster (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) through a window, any hope of getting the guy out of prison went with Foster’s flailing body. Good for Elliot for losing it with Paxton, but let me pose the following question to the writers: Elliot vowed to hire lawyers himself, if he had to, in order to get his collar out. Will he do it?

Are we about to see a long-term arc on SVU? Because if we are.… What’s the harm in something serious occupying a little of these characters’ time every once and a while? I didn’t enjoy the plot (obviously), but Liv relived her attempted rape while undercover for a season or two; there must be things that don’t end with the closing credits sometimes in a person’s life. Take advantage of the opportunity!

Alas, I don’t see it happening. SVU likes to move forward without any baggage or hang-ups. At best, this thing will pop up once down the road, and be resolved either with the guy committing suicide, or with Elliot getting him out. But it will be short, and not sweet.

Done right? Elliot could be on his way to a hearing about him one week when he gets a call on a new case, or he could form a mutated relationship with this guy, going to see him semi-regularly as he works to get him sprung. Or whatever, but the point is it would be ever-present. Who knows … here’s a chance for SVU to prove me wrong. It would be really cool to see them do it.

And, hey, where was Munch (Richard Belzer) this week? Tutuola (Ice-T) seemed lonely, and without his partner, he’s usually relegated to doing background work, or hooking up with Elliot, and they’re always awkward together. He’s a lot more fun front and center with Munch.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Sep 24, 2009 @ 11:30 EST5EDT