1x01 Payback

Over the past two weeks I watched a decent amount of SVU while on vacation. (It was practically all the USA channel was airing, and choices were limited.) Had been quite a long time since I'd watched any L&O. The episodes they were airing were kind of random - there were a few earlier ones (which I could tell because Stephanie March was in them) but I didn't see a full episode of those so not exactly sure from when, most were somewhere in the S6-S13 range, but there were also a handful from S19, a couple from S20, and then the S22 season finale. So, a bit of a diverse sample size.
Anyways, the point I'm making here is that the tone of this first episode is so wildly different from what comes later; it surprised me. Way more jokes than expected - like that courtroom scene with Stabler served no purpose other than comedy, which is bizarre with the context of the tone SVU takes later on. Munch and Cragen seem like completely different characters. And the fact that they keep calling it "sex crimes." That term definitely stops getting used eventually.

What a start to the show. It was morally interesting to follow the journey of this case and if it was moral to convinct these women and if so how much time they should get. It was interesting seeing the conflict inside Olivia, and then see her purposefully help the murderers. I don't know whether she was right, that's the morally interesting thing.