Review: Law and Order SVU: Unorthodox (US, 2008)

I’m surprised I didn’t hear about complaints from Jewish communities about this episode of Law and Order SVU, as it basically uses the religion as one massive wrong-footing swerve for the audience as to who attacked and raped a five year old boy, for at least half the episode as they hunt their prime suspects or liaise with more orthodox sections of the community with their own police force.

Once the “overall villain” label moves from any Jewish man in a hat, the writer then takes a shot at working single parents whose kids are left alone and in this story, are exposed to porn. According to this episode that means they will automatically act out what they see and abuse other children, with the parent, in this case a single father, not wishing to take retrospective responsibility. It’s a complete dive in subtlety and intelligence compared to the usual standard of SVU.
The episode is one long preaching session and crosses over with the parent show in becoming more about the hunt before the trial whilst making its moralistic points with a sledgehammer. The saving grace for the rubbish start is the detached performance of the child offender in the trial scenes and the varying degrees of sensitivity used when interviewing the other victims aside from the boy.

Sadly that start, and the preaching, damages what could have been a classic episode despite the realistic conclusion that doesn’t give a magic happy ending and the quality of the acting. The show would be better off leaving any religious aspect aside and sticking to the bread and butter child abuse issues alone, or concentrating solely on the religion rather than a halfway house of an episode.

– CBG