Review of She Paints for Vengeance

For me, another top-line SVU episode. It has all the required elements, with a deeply unlikable, entitled villain, sitting smirking in court. We so want to see him taken down. It gives us sympathetic frustration with the victim as she sees her complaint brushed off by the rapist and buried by the police because of the Old Boys Network and "who'd believe a stripper anyway?" I feel the consequential rage driving Benson and Rollins. Finally it gives us a well deserved Guilty verdict, wiping the smirk off his face. Additionally, it gives us character development for Sonny Carisi, as he takes his first full trial in court and stands up successfully to Judge Barth for the defence. I have to say that I dislike the producers' policy of taking judges off the bench to defend clear villains. I'm OK where they're defending the innocent, to achieve justice, but to have someone who sat up there on the bench, supposedly dispensing impartial justice, come down and do what they can to distort the truth on behalf of a guilty client just doesn't feel right. I suppose, though, that this may happen in the US "system of justice" where judges may be elected and thrown out on their ear: they then have to make another course in life.