‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 16, episode 8 review: Chad Coleman, Meagan Good shine in tough hour

There are going to be many who find Wednesday night’s “Law & Order: SVU” episode to be controversial. As a matter of fact, we almost expect that there will be some who question whether or not this episode exploited stories like Ray Rice’s and Adrian Peterson’s.

Of course, our response to that would be that if you don’t want your life to be “ripped from the headlines” and fictionalized, then you really should reevaluate everything in your life.

This episode tackled some very difficult issues, with one of the biggest one being whether or not a woman (Meagan Good) should be allowed to live her life and protect her significant other (Chad Coleman) after he was seen in camera footage assaulting her. Instead of pressing charges, the two went on a media tour, and eventually even married to go along with it.

As you would expect, this presented many consequences for Benson and company, and the nature of their involvement even divided some members of the SVU as Rollins at one point goaded Amaro into making him enraged, just so that she could press her point.

The real stars of the hour, though, were Coleman and Good, who made these two characters feel so real. Neither one of them made us particularly comfortable to watch, but that was entirely the point. We understood the importance of their case through their performances, and despite claims that he was a good father and a good husband, Barba managed to do enough to have him locked away.

We’ll be remembering this episode of “Law & Order: SVU” for a while. It did rely heavily on headlines, but it also told an important story that some victims of domestic violence need to hear. Grade: B+.

(Photo: NBC.)