Why do Law & Order: SVU deleted scenes happen?
We like to think that these clips are essential viewing if you are a fan of Mariska Hargitay and Raul Esparza; however, at the same time they were not considered essential in the sense that they didn’t make it into the episode. There was so much footage for “Flight Risk” already and the story made sense without them. Given that they are good for explaining the process, though, why cut them? Why are there so many SVU deleted scenes in general? There are a number of different reasons for that.
For starters, time is at the center of so many deleted scenes. There’s only so long that episodes can run and as a result of that, there is only so much footage that can be included. As for why so many deleted scenes seem to feature Barba, there’s not any sort of conspiracy out there against Raul Esparza. It simply has to do with the fact that some of the court scenes are the ones that have a tendency to run longer, and by the time we make it to the courtroom we tend to understand the case fairly well. Also, viewers these days tend to have a short attention span so the action-heavy scenes are the ones that stick around more often than not.
Also, there is a need in the modern era of SVU to get at least a couple of serialized moments into each episode so that the entire hour isn’t just about the case of the week. On some occasions this season, we’ve had that courtesy of Benson and Noah spending time together; on this past episode, we had that more in the form of Fin challenging Dodds over the memo.
Ultimately, all shows have deleted scenes. We’re just glad that SVU decides to share them publicly for the fans who wanted a little bit more insight into the case and just can’t get enough of the show.
(Photo: NBC.)