A Book or Paper

Someone should write a book or paper on the evolution of Law and Order SVU Unit pre and post 9/11 and how it reflects upon American attitudes. At my job, we've been getting the entire 7 year synidication run of the show. I'm catching up on the early years and they are dramatically different from later years.

The clue is in the opening credit sequence whose final shot is a skyline shot of New York City. In the first season, the the helicopter shot reveals the Brookyln Bridge on the left side of frame and we catch a nice shot of the World Trade Center. Come the fourth season, we are using a different helicopter shot - actually, I speculate it was the back end of the same take, this time, the Brooklyn Bridge is on the right side of frame and the World Trade Center missing.

Dick Wolf's name appears across the credit.

In the first season, we focus a lot more on the private lives of the detectives and how their lives relate to the cases they are following. In "A Single Life," we open up with Olivia purchasing groceries for herself and she happens upon a victim whose been thrown out a window. She gets personally involved with the case because the girl turns out to be a single young professional with no apparent friends or family - not unlike herself. We also get insight into the private lives of the captain and the male detective, going into his home life at times as well. In the end, it turns out the women committed suicide after a long history of abusive relationships starting with her father. In short, there was no murder.

Fast forward to season four. The World Trade Center is gone. So are the personal lives of the detectives. The show is still the same length, but it has become pure procedure. Instead of meandering through victims lives, we are plot twist after plot twist, discovering new and increasingly more perverted things. In the episode titled "Tortured," we find a girl's body left out for display. They discover blood on her boots. They take off the boot. Her foot is missing. This is post-9/11 Law and Order SVU. The crimes are horrific, almost off the chart brutality. It isn't enough to have a rape-murder victim. Now the victims are rape-tortured-mutilated and oftentimes by someone close to them. After all, Law and Order needs to compete with Zarqawi's snuff videos...

How the world has changed.