I have been watching Law & Order SVU since its inception. Since Jay Leno began screwing up TV as we know it SVU has suffered since it is now on at 9pm on Wednesdays up against many strong shows. I’ve been tivoing it when it repeats on Saturday nights.
I have been big fan of Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni and love all the supporting case around them. I especially liked Stephanie March as ADA Alexandra Cabot who in my opinion was the best ADA on the show and it that role has never worked since her departure. SVU has always cast a woman as the ADA since all the detectives surrounding Hargitay and Meloni have been male. Good decision. I am always happy to see a strong, smart woman in a role on TV especially one with passion who tries to put nasty people in jail.
So I was excited when I read that Christine Lahti was joining the show for several episodes as the new ADA, Sonya Paxton. I would watch Lahti in basically anything and still remember what a great show Jack & Bobby was from a couple of season ago.
It seems that Lahti finished up her arc last week and I must say that I was extremely disappointed and angry. From the moment Lahti came on screen she was mean and bitchy to everyone in such an extreme way so much that it kind of made me anxious. I dismissed it for one week but then it kept on happening. Why must they make a strong older woman so horrible that she alienates everyone around her? Haven’t we moved beyond that?
But the kicker (and why I am writing this) is that on last week’s episode she gets paid back for her bad behavior in spades. (For those of you who still haven’t watched the episode stop reading now.) Lahti is turns out has a drinking problem and a case with a guy who killed a woman while drunk sets her off too. She completely devolves in court, shows the wrong evidence (maybe inadvertently), gets tanked and shows up the next morning still drunk. They humiliate her by making her take a breathalizer test in the courtrom (is that even constitutional?) and then remove her from the case. The capper is that she is forced to go to rehab. Bye bye Sonya.
I expected way more from SVU. The fact that the whole arc was leading towards the destruction of a woman with a long and solid career protecting victims pisses me off. Why did she have to play a raving bitch from the get go? And were we supposed to feel good that she got her comeuppance? I thought the whole thing was just so sad and illuminated the lack of imagination when writing about strong, comptent women.
They got it right with Alex Cabot. She was strong and passionate but never alienating and mean. Isn’t it just time to bring her back? I know it would make my mom very happy.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I believe you are going to get your wish. You may recall that Stephanie March came back last year midway throuhg the season. She was on hiatus to do that latest movie of hers and that is why they brought in Lahti. From everything I have read, she may even be back in tonight’s episode.
And I agree with you completely about Lahti’s character. She played it to perfection, but it was just a bad role to begin with. This series has been disappointing me since the first episode of the season. Let’s hope it gets back on track.
I really liked what she brought to the otherwise boring show this season. I’m pissed she’s gone.
It was almost as bad as Connie Nielsen’s slumming as Dani — which was incredibly uncomfortable to watch, because she was simultaneously a grieving widow, a vengeful cop, a Parisian princess and a streetwise NYCer. Mercy. This, from a gal who played a middle-class American mom perfectly in ONE HOUR PHOTO? I blame Dick Wolf.
Lahti, more importantly, didn’t have a plot-based reason to be such a bitch to the SVU gang. Since when did McCoy need to crack down on their conviction rates? From what we saw, they nearly are 100 percent. Better to get someone to watch over forensics, since they had that peculiar boy Neal falsify evidence, but I digress. Whatever problem SVU had was never discussed again, and now, with the DA back to normal, will anyone ever think of it? Too bad — it could have been as game changing as the psych investigations were at the end of Season 1.
Against her stated professional goals, Lahti’s character was sloppy — tacky, shiny blouses, messed-up hair and makeup, that only reinforced the point that she was dumped there, instead of coming there to correct matters. If she were Spock in a dress, that would have been interesting. Did anyone hear about what metrics she was using to measure what SVU needed to change? With all that fancy tech, no new procedures like increased reports to COMSTAT, to reinforce accountability to the brass? No. It was only bitchy her and bitchy Wentworth Miller in the premiere, causing all the problems that led to an unjustly-accused man spending the rest of his life in jail. And I’m supposed to root for them? For any supposed addition to the cast that says the existing cast is doing it wrong?
A hard-driving female boss who leaves blood on the walls can be portrayed better than that. Glenn Close did it on FX, for both DAMAGES and THE SHIELD. Sharp as a tack, clean as a whistle, deadly as a rapier under the breastbone. Hell, SVU’s lady defense attorneys do it every season. Why did they fall back on a drunken lush just short of collapse, to disrupt their happy precinct home, but not too much? Are they so tired of their own plot wheels that they thought conflict is simply people we don’t like? For this one, I blame more than Wolf — I blame the writers who wasted Lahti horribly. Shame on them.
She played it to perfection, but it was just a bad role to begin with. This series has been disappointing me since the first episode of the season. Let’s hope it gets back on track.