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Everybody has heard the old saying that crime does not pay. Eventually crime and breaking the law will catch up with you. This theme is one commonly found in literature, TV and cinema. And, it is one of the messages Law & Order: Special Victims Unit represents. In this NBC television series, the SVU specializes in sexual offense crimes. This is told to viewers in narrative form in the opening sequence of each episode. Through the representation of the vicious and heinous crimes being investigated in each episode, the ideology of this show is that while the criminal justice system may be hard and flawed at times, as a whole it works and is best for American society.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is of the drama and crime/mystery genre and is an episodic series with the same recurring cast of detectives. The series is set in present day New York City. While each episode begins with a crime discovery and then uses a repeated technique of mystery investigation, they are all independent stories. Consequently, viewers do not need to see the shows in order and can watch episodes at random without becoming lost or confused. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit targets a mature audience of all cultures. Its television rating is TV-14 due to violence, drugs, profanity, and sex being a part of nearly all episodes. Another reason SVU targets a mature audience is because it airs every Wednesday at eight o’clock in the evening. It is aired at this time because the television industry thinks the majority of the adult audience is “9 to 5ers” –adults who work during business hours and who are usually off work for the day by that time, and thus, they can view this program. Because the show is set in New York City, SVU features a broad range of c...

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...different techniques to accomplish their goal of solving crimes and getting the perpetrators arrested as quickly as possible.
Even though both episodes are independent and different because episodes do not tie together in this series, they all share the same ideology. If you break the law, it will eventually catch up with you. Class, race, gender, and creed do not matter. The law does not discriminate. These episodes show that the criminal justice system works no matter how hard it may be to solve a crime. Even if it is a fictitious show, Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit presents to viewers how strong the law is. This theme may even serve as a way to deter potential criminals as it makes people realize they are not going to get away with a serious crime. Viewers see week after week that the detectives of the SVU always triumph and that, indeed, crime does not pay.

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