Someone made the comparison to Lifetime TV movies, and that's apt. They're nearly all the same plot, and they feature simplistic types (the "good girl," the "bad boy," "small town America" even though they're mostly made in Canada, absolutely no minorities except sometimes a close friend to show they're not racist, etc.). They're cardboard, with formulaic scripts and cardboard characters played by soap opera types with little depth or nuance.
That's this point in the arc of SVU's evolution from a semi-police procedural for years to tripe and melodrama. This episode is a good example. We get the struggling artist who moonlights as a stripper (or is it the other way around?), with her doofus-y skateboarder-type boyfriend. She's sexually assaulted by a hulking, arrogant professional athlete (oh, and he's Black and she's White). Of course, when she goes to report it, she's met by a blue wall of toxic masculine disdain, until she was must "Three Billboards" style take matters into her own hands and get the attention of the crusading SVU.
SVU is no longer an investigatory unit. You know, that goes in, does interviews and collects facts, and then makes arrests if warranted. They're an advocacy group. The victim is always right. False accusations never happen. No one is ever drunk, mentally ill, or suffering from faulty memories or confusion. It's crystal clear who the perpetrator is, and apparently, SVU's challenge is not in sorting through the many sometimes changing stories and questionable witnesses to find the truth but fighting an establishment determined to keep the victims -- invariably pretty women -- down. That they're part of that establishment seems to escape them, as does any hint they could ever do wrong. It's the stuff of comic books or Lifetime movies.
By the way, you can tell how maudlin and formulaic an episode will be if it starts with a semi-folksy pop music montage by a female vocalist.
