Is ‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 18, episode 5 new tonight? Revised schedule

Tonight, we’re going to have for the first time this fall a week that does not include a new episode of “Law & Order: SVU” — though there is a pretty good reason for it. Due in part to the Presidential Debate, the show is not even on the air tonight, and the same can be said for the vast majority of other network programming that is out there, as well.

So when will the show come back on the air? Think next week (October 26), but there’s certainly been a lot of confusion regarding just what episode it will be. Originally, the plan here was for NBC to air “Unstoppable,” an episode featuring a politician (played by Gary Cole) who has a few things in common with none other than Donald Trump. As a matter of fact, the network even promoted this episode following the last new one that came on the air.

What happened in the interim is that someone decided that the metaphorical juice wasn’t going to be worth the squeeze in terms of putting an episode on the air about a figure this controversial at this particular point in time. Therefore, you’re not going to end up seeing this episode for some time. Instead, next week will be “Rape Interrupted,” an installment that features an “ER” reunion between Mariska Hargitay and Anthony Edwards.

Beyond that, there are two other episodes currently on the schedule in “Bad Rap” and “Great Expectations” for November 2 and November 9, respectively. At some point after that, maybe we’ll finally get a chance to see Cole’s performance. Hopefully NBC doesn’t let election results get in the way of telling whatever story the “SVU” writers came up with here.

(Photo: NBC.)