christopher meloni

Lead actors Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni have both agreed to stick around on Law & Order: SVU for two more seasons. It seems that money did the talking. Variety is reporting that both actors received about a $6.5 million raise for each year season. The publication says Hargitay is going to receive approximately $300,000-$340,000 per episode, pushing her up among the highest-paid female actors on television. Looks like baby August gets to go to private school!

Both actors had a hell of a lot of bargaining power in their contract negotiations. That show delivers consistently strong ratings for NBC and it absolutely would not be the same without Dets. Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler (Think: The X-Files without Mulder and Scully). Let's hope the network gives an incentive to keep Richard Belzer around, too.

SVU is currently in season 8, which means we're guaranteed seasons 9 and 10, which is exactly how long the sexual tension will last.

Richard Belzer doesn't seem to be getting much face time on SVU lately, so he's apparently finding other things to do. And thank goodness! He has his own 'channel', called Belzervizion, over at this new video website called Super Deluxe (same place where the Lost writers parody came from).

Belzervizion is quite funny-- for those of you who don't know, Richard Belzer is a comedian. He just happens to have played a cop on television for years. In the first episode, Belzer talks about how he helps co-star Ice-T with his rap music and Ice-T gives his own take on Belzer's musical skills (try not looking at Ice-T's wife's gigantic knockers- it's impossible!). It also includes a spoof on House, in which SVU co-star Diane Neal plays a role. Episode #2 spoofs 24 and has cameos from Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni. Everything seems to be shot on the SVU sets when they're not in use. Let's hope we can look forward to more Belzervizion!

Episode one of Belzervizion is after the jump (here's a link to episode #2):

(S08E11) Boy howdy, things sure are tense between Dets. Benson and Stabler. I thought their issues were in the past, but they never really can be, can they? Stabler immediately pushed Benson's buttons in this episode when he suggested that a man who is addicted to drugs and alcohol isn't technically abusive. Of course, Benson grew up with an alcoholic mother and she knows that abuse comes in many forms. Stabler knows that too, dammit, but he feels an obligation to side with the man in a nasty divorce case because his own divorce isn't going too well.

Now to the story: A woman, Valerie (Michael Michele), accuses her soon-to-be ex-husband of raping her. But it all seems fishy because she and her husband, Miles (Blair Underwood), are going through a nasty, nasty divorce. Their daughter, Tessa (Tiffany Evans), is in the middle of it.

(S08E10) This episode was all about Elliot's concern about growing apart from his daughters. The beginning of the episode shows Elliot in church with his fractured family and his middle child hating him very much. He is tipped off to an investigation from his priest, who heard the confession of a man dying of lung cancer. He won't tell Elliot what the confession was, but he suggests Elliot visits the man, named Judson Tierney (played by Brian Dennehy).

I had so much fun making this list last year that I decided to update it for 2006. Here's how it goes: I choose the five television characters I'd like to meet the mistletoe, if you get my drift. Several fellas have fallen off the list since last year, while new ones have been added. I learned a lot about myself while making this list: I basically go for guys who are emotionally injured or bad asses-- but only slightly bad ass, like Sawyer on Lost and not totally wacko like Tommy on Rescue Me.

Once again, my list is limited to male characters who are currently on television shows. So, for example, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson) cannot be included. Leave your own list in comments!

5. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) Law & Order SVU How huggably soft is Elliot this season? He ended last season by practically falling head-over-heels in love with his partner, Olivia. When things started to get weird, she disappeared and he was left with a broken heart. Then, Dani came in and gave him hope. The barely got to make out before she left, too. Now he's nursing a broken heart and Olivia is back and everything is weird again. This guy definitely needs a little snuggle time under the mistletoe-- plus, did you notice his smokin' hot body in "Confrontation" earlier this season? Yowza.

(S08E09) I can't decide what I liked better about this episode-- Bob Saget or the return of Mariska Hargitay. Det. Olivia Benson comfortably slipped back in to being Det. Elliot Stabler's partner without much fanfare. No fanfare, really. She barely got a "Welcome Back" from Elliot. Casey was cold toward her, even though Olivia came back in time to help her get a conviction on a rape case. I think Det. Munch gave her the warmest reception. All these police types: bottling up their emotions! Sheesh!

(S01E08) Well, you guys were right about the way Connie Nielsen's character was going to exit the show. Det. Dani Beck has been getting increasingly upset over the victims of SVU cases and this week's case was just too much for her to handle. Pity. I was actually starting to enjoy her character, who started out as a reckless cop with bad judgment but ended as an emotional wreck with bad judgment.

NBC has announced a whole list of special guests for one upcoming episode of Law & Order: SVU. Bob Saget, Chris Sarandon, Catherine Bell and Bernadette Peters will all appear in the November 28th episode of SVU, called "Choreographed".

The case is about a woman found dead in Central Park. Sarandon plays her husband, Saget and Bell play the victims' friends, and Peters plays the defense attorney. There is a new episode of SVU tonight, and I believe it is Connie Nielsen's last episode.

(S01E07) First of all, check out the SVU homepage. Doesn't Stabler look freakishly larger than everyone else in the main photo? Second, are you as pissed off as I am about the NBC promos for this episode? They showed the scene where Stabler and Beck kiss and then they showed a shocked Benson. But in reality, those two scenes were far apart. I don't know about you guys, but I didn't pay close attention to the case because I was waiting for Benson to bust Beck and Stabler as they were making out. Never happened.

(S08E06) First of all, let me just say that the "eco-terrorists" have surprisingly good fashion sense. And access to showers. As someone who lives in Oregon, where we have real eco-terrorists, I kept having to chuckle at their portrayal on this episode of SVU. But enough of the nit-picky stuff... Mariska Hargitay is back!

After her maternity leave, Mariska looks amazing. I thought the writers came up with a great storyline to get Det. Olivia Benson out of her undercover gig. She got bored with the squeaky clean environmentalists she had infiltrated so she started investigating the murder of the head of a pharmaceuticals company when her friends are suspected of his death.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of The View, took up some air time yesterday to rant about the name of a character on last week's Law & Order SVU that had a similar name to hers. On SVU, an 'Elizabeth Hassenback' was raped and murdered. Hasselbeck said she didn't see the episode but a friend told her about the similarities with the names and she was disturbed. Hasselbeck called one of the producers for SVU and asked about the names, which the producer said was a coincidence. Hasselbeck also said the producer was defensive and rude with her and essentially hung up on her when she tried to tell him that she didn't appreciate the victim's name because it made her feel unsafe. I admit that I flipped the TiVo back to see the victim's name because I thought it was Elisabeth Hasselbeck. She argues that's it's socially irresponsible to basically portray her as being raped and murdered. She also said she didn't want any more SVU actors on The View, as if she has control over that and they actually had anything to do with it!

So... is Elisabeth Hasselbeck overreacting? Or, is SVU really taking a nasty swipe at her?

(S08E05) Det. Stabler wears tightie whities! Is that what stood out to the rest of you in this episode, too? Maybe it's just a girl thing but he makes those undies look goooood (she says, in a Will Smith/Men in Black sort-of way).

We finally learn exactly what happened when Det. Beck's husband was killed on the job: two 15-year olds stole a car and decided to get stupid when they got caught by 'Mike'. They shot him in the head. I thoroughly enjoyed Dani's iciness when Det. Stabler attempted to talk to her about the crime. He figured out that she went up to the prison, but not to see the shooters. She went to see the dead body of one of the shooters who was killed in a prison brawl. All ice, that woman.

(S08E04) This week we're back to the case and off the personal issues of the detectives. And the case is particularly disturbing. A single mother and her 10-year old daughter are found bound, raped and murdered in their apartment. The initial suspect is a very dirty, mouthbreathing Jerry Lewis.

Lewis really stole the show, didn't he? He was heartbreaking as a man who was so depressed that he became demented. He ended up being Det. John Munch's uncle who came up to NYC from Florida in June to see him but forgot what he was doing and ended up on the streets. He experienced a remarkable change in personality. Basically, he turned from crazy homeless man to, well, Jerry Lewis. And then he changed to crazy Jerry Lewis.

(S08E03) What a waste of a good villain. The crime in this episode was a rape, which led detectives to a serial rapist with what should have been an apalling past. But, since the focus of this episode was really on Detective Beck (Connie Nielsen), the crime fell by the wayside.

Don't get me wrong- Det. Beck is an interesting character. She's definitely a fish out of water in the Special Victims Unit with her intense approach to investigations. She's used to chasing down bad guys who have warrants out for their arrests, not taking time to talk to a victim of a sex crime. She's rude to most of the victims but, predictably, learns a little bit about investigations when she interviews a beautiful, elderly French woman, played by Leslie Caron, at the end. (I think Caron's agonizing performance was most memorable) We also learn that Beck is from Denmark, which explains the real-life accent, and that her husband was a NYPD cop who was murdered.

(S08E02) SVU is doing this funky editing thing this year that is annoying me. The characters will start a conversation in one place and then pick it up again in another place. Totally unrealistic and kind-of jarring because, instead of telling the story, it just tells me how clever some writer and/or editor thinks he/she is. For instance, Det. Tutuola is questioning Conner about Janey. The interview starts in the apartment and suddenly jumps to the interview room. It happened last week when Det. Benson was talking to Star about an FBI case.