After the release of Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit ~ The
First Season on DVD, Universal Home Video decided to buck tradition. Instead of
releasing Season Two of SVU, they skipped three seasons and released Season Five,
which aired in the 2003/-04 TV season (the same reasoning was done for the new
DVD releases of the other two Law & Order shows; they released season 14 of Law
& Order, and season 3 of L&O: Criminal Intent, all of which also aired during
the '03/'04 season). While it would have been nice to have concurrent seasons
of SVU, as far as I'm concerned, any new SVU on DVD is welcome (word has it that
Universal will release Season Two soon, anyway). Besides, jumping ahead three
years from the first season like this gives the viewer a unique opportunity to
see how the SVU characters have grown.
Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay are still great, durable leads in
their roles as detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson. Hargitay has been
deservedly singled out for her work as Benson in the fifth season by receiving
an Emmy nomination for Best Actress In A Drama Series. Richard Belzer and Ice-T
are also firmly in place as Detective John Munch and his partner, Detective
Odafin "Fin" Tutuola. And their on-screen chemistry is just as good as that of
Meloni and Hargitay's. Dann Florek rounds out the stationhouse cast as Captain
Donald Cragen, the astute commander of the SVU. And the excellent B.D. Wong is now
a regular cast member as FBI agent/psychiatrist George Huang.
There was a major cast change in the series during the fifth season. Assistant
District Attorney Alex Cabot, played by the alluring Stephanie March, left the
show to pursue other roles. Her character was replaced by a younger ADA named
Casey Novak. Engagingly played by Diane Neal, Novak thankfully lacked the legal
tigress mentality of her predecessor in favor of a greener, and ultimately more
down-to-earth-portrayal of a woman struggling to find her way in the SVU squad.
In her first episode, "Serendipity", Novak even comes off as being a little
arrogant, and in doing so, actually stumbles during her first case with the SVU.
The detectives, particularly Benson and Stabler, don't exactly welcome her with
open arms at first. Eventually, Novak more than makes up for her initial
clumsiness, and by the time the episode "Poison" comes in the latter half of the
season, she's confident enough to take on a reckless judge who has needlessly
cut down one of the SVU's cases in court.
Other notable episodes from the fifth season of Special Victim's Unit include:
"Control", where Benson has a crisis of faith in her own abilities; "Sick",
where the SVU team goes after a toy tycoon who is a pedophile (and who obviously
appears to be a very thinly disguised portrait of a real life celebrity); "Loss",
which deals with the departure of ADA Alex Cabot in an ingenious way; "Escape",
where Benson finds herself partnered up with a U.S. Marshall, who also happens
to be her ex-boyfriend, as they hunt down a fugitive; "Coerced", which shows the
SVU detectives scrambling to locate a kidnapped boy and "Bound", which includes
some great twists and a genuinely chilling and unexpected villain.
The special features are pretty slim. They're basically just interviews with cast
members Dann Florek, Ice-T and B.D. Wong. And while these interviews are
interesting, especially Ice-T's blunt, no-nonsense take on working on a hit TV
show, it would have been nice to have commentaries, or at least a "making-of"
documentary of the fifth season. Other than the three interviews, we are also
given a collection of clips of some of the famous actors who have guest-starred
on SVU over the years. Something else that's new: these DVDs are "flippers". In
other words, the content is on both sides of the DVD, thus reducing the number of
discs needed in the package.
But the fifth season DVD set of Law &
Order: Special Victim's Unit is worth having simply for the splendid collection
of episodes. L&O: Special Victim's Unit is not only just as good as it was when it
first began, it has actually improved with age. It continues to thrive
in telling riveting, intelligent stories about characters that you care
about. --SF
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