I always get excited...
... no matter how many times I'm disappointed.
Last week Law and Order: Special Victims Unit introduced a new recurring assistent district attorney character. Jillian Hardwick (played by Melissa Sagemiller) is a hot shot rising star from the Brocklyn DA's office who was poached by the Manhatten DA's office to come work with Special Victims. This is a recast of the recurring DA's role already introduced this year when actress Paula Patton was introduced two weeks ago as a new ADA just moved to the city from Chicago. Unlike a few years ago when an actress playing the ADA character was fired because of an industry faux pas, in Patton's case the show let her out of her contract when she was cast in the new Mission Impossible movie.
Putting aside the rather annoying aspect that they have replaced a woman of color with another blond white woman, I couldn't help but be excited. I've always had a soft spot for the SVU ADA characters. Unlike the mothership, or the new spinoff Law and Order: Los Angeles, the female ADA on SVU has always been a larger character. Yes, it's always a beautiful woman in her twenties, but as Dick Wolf reminded us during the failed show Conviction, the average age of a NY ADA is 29 years old.
The first season of SVU featured a rotating mix of ADA characters including Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon from Law and Order), and the always amazing Reiko Aylesworth. It wasn't until the second season that we were introduced to our first permenant ADA character in the form of Alexandra Cabot (played by Stephanie March). Cabot was introduced as a politically ambitious young prosecutor who was well connected and wanted to use sex crimes as a stepping stone, but over the years we saw her become more and more passionate abotu the cases she was dealing with. She left the show and than returned several years later picking up the character as if she had never left.
As much as I loved Cabot, I will always have a soft spot for Casey Novak (played by Diane Neal), mostly because she was brash and passionate and reminded me of so many New Yorkers I've known. She was always a little more realistic than the ice queen persona of March's character. Even when it became evident that either Casey couldn't dress herself, or the wardrobe department didn't know how to dress her. We shall not speak of the idiotic way they wrote her character off.
Last year we got two recurring big named guess stars Christine Lahti and Sharon Stone, neither of which I much took to, sandwiching a return stint of Stephanie March's character. And now we have another new recurring prosecutor and I can't help but be excited by the possiblities. She miss handled the first case (but so did Novak and Cabot), and really showed how hard it can be to be working with these kinds of crimes. No matter how much trouble the show has had in the last few years replacing March and Neal, I still can't help but be excited by the possiblities.
Last week Law and Order: Special Victims Unit introduced a new recurring assistent district attorney character. Jillian Hardwick (played by Melissa Sagemiller) is a hot shot rising star from the Brocklyn DA's office who was poached by the Manhatten DA's office to come work with Special Victims. This is a recast of the recurring DA's role already introduced this year when actress Paula Patton was introduced two weeks ago as a new ADA just moved to the city from Chicago. Unlike a few years ago when an actress playing the ADA character was fired because of an industry faux pas, in Patton's case the show let her out of her contract when she was cast in the new Mission Impossible movie.
Putting aside the rather annoying aspect that they have replaced a woman of color with another blond white woman, I couldn't help but be excited. I've always had a soft spot for the SVU ADA characters. Unlike the mothership, or the new spinoff Law and Order: Los Angeles, the female ADA on SVU has always been a larger character. Yes, it's always a beautiful woman in her twenties, but as Dick Wolf reminded us during the failed show Conviction, the average age of a NY ADA is 29 years old.
The first season of SVU featured a rotating mix of ADA characters including Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon from Law and Order), and the always amazing Reiko Aylesworth. It wasn't until the second season that we were introduced to our first permenant ADA character in the form of Alexandra Cabot (played by Stephanie March). Cabot was introduced as a politically ambitious young prosecutor who was well connected and wanted to use sex crimes as a stepping stone, but over the years we saw her become more and more passionate abotu the cases she was dealing with. She left the show and than returned several years later picking up the character as if she had never left.
As much as I loved Cabot, I will always have a soft spot for Casey Novak (played by Diane Neal), mostly because she was brash and passionate and reminded me of so many New Yorkers I've known. She was always a little more realistic than the ice queen persona of March's character. Even when it became evident that either Casey couldn't dress herself, or the wardrobe department didn't know how to dress her. We shall not speak of the idiotic way they wrote her character off.
Last year we got two recurring big named guess stars Christine Lahti and Sharon Stone, neither of which I much took to, sandwiching a return stint of Stephanie March's character. And now we have another new recurring prosecutor and I can't help but be excited by the possiblities. She miss handled the first case (but so did Novak and Cabot), and really showed how hard it can be to be working with these kinds of crimes. No matter how much trouble the show has had in the last few years replacing March and Neal, I still can't help but be excited by the possiblities.