Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 2)
| Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 2) | |
|---|---|
Season 2 U.S. DVD cover
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| Starring | |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 21 |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Original release | October 20, 2000 – May 11, 2001 |
| Season chronology | |
The second season of the television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered October 20, 2000 and ended May 11, 2001 on NBC. The show remained in its time slot, Friday nights at 10pm/9c. As Neal Baer's first year producing the show, the second season was accompanied by drastic changes in tone. Additionally, the series began to increase its focus on trial scenes with the addition of an Assistant District Attorney for sex crimes to the cast.
David J. Burke and Neal Baer served as chief executive producers to replace Robert Palm. Baer took over in the season finale. Neal Baer, a former pediatrician, left ER to work for Dick Wolf's first Law & Order spin-off. When explaining how he first became interested in the show, Neal Baer said he was "drawn to it by Mariska" who appeared in ER. Mariska Hargitay felt that Baer gave the show the direction it previously lacked and explained "There was no consistency. Dick wasn't really here. We had no leader, we had no vision." Jonathan Greene also credited Baer with improving the quality of the show, saying "He literally took this, not just to the next level, but up five or six levels above that." In a video interview, Richard Belzer said "The show's better this year, so I think it's directly attributable to him being at the helm."
The second episode of the season "Honor", was based on a script that Jonathan Greene had written previously. In it, the squad is exposed to misogynistic "honor killings" used to punish women for adultery. As one reviewer puts it, "Airing one full year before the 9/11 terror attacks, this episode examines Taliban rules and plays differently today than it did when NBC first aired it." In the episode "Taken", Olivia Benson's mother dies after falling down a flight of stairs. The character's backstory, as established in the first episode, is that she was raped by a stranger, causing her to become pregnant with Olivia. The writers briefly considered changing this. Deleted scenes that accompany "Taken" on the DVD show a funeral for Serena Benson, during which it is revealed that she had consensual sex to conceive Olivia. Many episodes in later seasons reaffirm the fact that Benson is the product of a rape, meaning that the deleted scenes for "Taken" are not canon.
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