This is America, so when a blond tourist is apparently beaten and raped, SVU springs into action. And to emphasize this, Benson goes off on the Indian American hotel owner while using his computer. Having watched the Law and Order franchise since the start, it's pretty easy to track how deferential the police are to "their own kind" and rough and uncourteous to "the foreigners." But at least this episode is before the series goes full woke. Benson isn't quite as pontificating and nauseatingly social justice-y as she will be in just a few short years.
This episode starts out strong at a party and then seems to drag for a good half hour before starting to focus a bit more on the actual mystery. In the meantime, SVU is doing extra special do-gooding because the victim is a blond. Oh, and Canadian, though I'm not sure that's as important as her being a blond. The blond meantime has some secrets of her own that, of course, she gets away with because as a blond, nobody would ever suspect her of doing anything wrong (and if she was, would ignore them).
There's the usual schtick. Amaro looks irritated, Rollins looks dorkily confused, Cragen -- his voice getting hoarse -- continues to float toward retirement, and Ice-T does his usual roll off the couch and give 10 minutes of dialogue.
This is not a topnotch episode, in part because while it seems to center on technology -- the Web and podcasts and so on -- it doesn't really do anything with them. The case really comes down to some rather ordinary jealousy, subterfuge, and control situations.
This episode starts out strong at a party and then seems to drag for a good half hour before starting to focus a bit more on the actual mystery. In the meantime, SVU is doing extra special do-gooding because the victim is a blond. Oh, and Canadian, though I'm not sure that's as important as her being a blond. The blond meantime has some secrets of her own that, of course, she gets away with because as a blond, nobody would ever suspect her of doing anything wrong (and if she was, would ignore them).
There's the usual schtick. Amaro looks irritated, Rollins looks dorkily confused, Cragen -- his voice getting hoarse -- continues to float toward retirement, and Ice-T does his usual roll off the couch and give 10 minutes of dialogue.
This is not a topnotch episode, in part because while it seems to center on technology -- the Web and podcasts and so on -- it doesn't really do anything with them. The case really comes down to some rather ordinary jealousy, subterfuge, and control situations.