User Reviews

A pretty boring episode for a title like "Stocks and Bondage".

The worlds of high finance and sado-masochism blend in this SVU rpisode where the squad investigates the death of a woman who both worked on Wall Street as a financialanalyst and was intobondage as a submissive.

Medical Examiner Leslie Hendrix is leaving it as death undetermined so the SVU squad determines that at the same time an arrest was made.

The victim had half a million dollars in diamonds in the handle of her bondage whip and it's worth watching Richard Belzer complete with sinister accent posing as a diamond dealer from Johannesburg.

We also have Geoffrey Nauffts and V. Craig Heidenreich as a couple of good old boys from Tennessee who get some strange kicks.

Worth atching for Richard Belzer.

On the most part, the previous Season 1 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' episodes were of very high quality which is pretty amazing for so early on. My favourites being "Payback" (the first episode, but it sure didn't feel like one), "Uncivilised" and especially "Stalked". The only disappointment for me was "Wanderlust", Olivia's behaviour in that episode just frustrated me and the story had me mixed.

Season 1 unfortunately is back to disappointment with "Stocks and Bondage". After two superb episodes, it was so disappointing to have an episode that saw quality go backwards rather than going forwards in the right direction. Loved the team interaction, which is one component that is getting stronger and stronger with each episode, but the story could have been much better executed and one of the few cases of the first season that didn't do an awful lot for me. Am saying this with a heavy heart.

Will start with what "Stocks and Bondage" does right, and there are quite a number of things that it does right and really quite excellently. It looks suitably slick and doesn't look too drab, suiting the gritty tone more than convincingly. The taut and intelligent dialogue is allowed to do all the talking and is not drowned out by constant and over-obvious music, which is used sparingly and generally low-key apart from in major revelations. The main theme is not hard to forget.

Dialogue is taut and thought-provoking, including some funny moments (like the tattoo exchange) with particularly Munch. Who is a joy in this episode, anybody else who is a fan of his dry wit will be in heaven. Elliot and Olivia's chemistry is getting stronger all the time and sees some entertaining moments between them, ones where one can see different viewpoints and ones where one can see that they care for each other. "Stocks and Bondage" is a big example of an episode where the team interaction and the character moments are better and more gripping than the case itself. The acting is very good from the leads/regular cast with no exceptions.

However, found myself not caring all that much for the case which was reason enough to drag the episode down significantly. It didn't grip me and is far less suspenseful and surprising than the previous episodes, which also got going quicker and didn't confuse too early. Some of it got over-complicated too so it was not always easy to follow, found myself indifferent to when one finds out the truth (who did it and why) due to losing interest and focus too early.

The supporting cast are competent enough and do their best, but nobody really stands out as such and the characters are not particularly interesting and more of those just there sort. The pacing could have been tighter.

All in all, some great things make it a decent episode but it is very hard to give something a high score when one finds major faults with the story. 6/10