Law & Order: SVU season 19: A greater cause for long-term confidence
Why is that? Well, it has to do with the producers getting a chance to craft more stories this time around! Season 19 has a whole 24 episodes, and that makes this the first time since the fifteenth season of the show that we’ve seen the series get this sort of hefty episode order. Seasons 16 and 17 had 23 episodes — meanwhile, season 18 had 22 episodes that were filmed, though only 21 of them aired after the controversial “Unstoppable” episode was scrapped after the election.
Obviously, getting 24 episodes this season matters just by virtue of getting to see more stories featuring Mariska Hargitay and the rest of the cast — there are only a handful of series out there that consistently get 24 episodes a season and the majority of them are some of the biggest hits on all of TV. We’re speaking here along the lines of NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, Hawaii Five-0, and a few other procedural shows. This is a really huge show of confidence for SVU to be able to get back to this order. This is a sign that NBC has faith in the show now, and also that it has some faith in its future.
For a while now, we’ve been saying that the odds of a season 20 for SVU are through the roof and we’re certainly not backing down from that now. The network certainly knows that if they can give the show one more season, it ties both the original Law & Order and Gunsmoke. It wants it to get there and personally, we’d love to see it go beyond that and shatter some records. It’s got the ratings for it; so long as the cast is interested and NBC stays as committed as we’ve seen them so far, we could see the SVU stick around for a rather long time still.
What do you think: Does SVU getting more episodes for season 19 signal more success for the series long-term? Share right now in the comments!
(Photo: NBC.)