By: Alana Dale

     Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is onto their astonishing seventeenth season. The first episode aired on September 20, 1999. This show has been going on for 16 years now since their newest season just started on September 23, 2015. The show has amazing ratings and you can tell that it is a well liked show by how many seasons have been produced.

     The show has a police background to it, shows all parts of the court system, and depicts real-life events that are rarely explored in TV. This show touches on all the points of the sad, real world. Often times we forget that there are people all around us that are suffering from sexual abuse, drug abuse, physical and verbal abuse. Law and Order SVU can show audiences what is always masked in today’s society.

     An anonymous quote from imdb.com stated: “The thing that makes SVU stand out so much in opinion, is that the stories depicted are very realistic and heart felt. I personally appreciate it very much, that there are no cheap attempts to make you cry by extending dramatic scenes or underscoring them with sad music. Mostly the sad parts happen quite suddenly and are relatively short. Maybe that’s just another ‘trick’ to get you to cry without being as obvious as many soap opera’s.”

     This show is a very real show, although each episode is not based on a true story or people, they all follow things that have happened, could be happening or will happen. Some shows, especially crime shows never really show any emotion and just seem like the actors have to do it, while the characters on Law and Order SVU really show that people really care about others, especially police officers and detectives. In today’s society, police have a really bad name, and this show can really just change your opinion on it.
     Law and Order: Special Victims Unit do have a lot of explicit content and you just have to keep that in mind while watching it, they do censor some things but not everything is censored like it is in the real world. I feel like this is a really great show to watch and learn from, it shows a lot of points of life that we miss out on everyday that are hidden from us.