‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 17, episode 11 video: See Benson in crisis

While tonight is going to be a relatively quiet one for broadcast TV thanks to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, there will be plenty of television to watch on Wednesday … including one of the darker episodes of “Law & Order: SVU” you’ve seen in some time.

Is “Townhouse Incident” the most harrowing story for Olivia Benson since the William Lewis saga? The sneak peek below certainly makes us think so. Benson is captured and held hostage within a building, and it all seems to happen to her as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She tries to negotiate with the captors and talk them down, but this only leads to her getting brutally attacked.

The captors already seem to be using Noah to their advantage, at least from the vantage point that they now know for certain that Benson has someone to live for. This puts her in a perilous position where she has to avoid making too many heroic moves; it’s a different place than she has been in during some past crises on the show.

We’re obviously hopeful that in one way or another Mariska Hargitay’s character will be able to get out of this situation alive (the show is ultimately about her), but that doesn’t mean that there will be no drama in the episode. How will the show use this incident as a driving force in the future? Will it impact the way in which Benson goes out into the field for work? Time will tell.

(Photo: NBC.)