Why Did ‘Law and Order’ Cut a Scene Between Its Main Couple on Peacock?

Law & Order decided to do a three-part crossover season premiere event between their three shows: Organized Crime, Special Victims Unit, and original recipe Law & Order, recently revived and now its 22nd season. It was messy, a bit silly, and I can imagine not really satisfying for fans of any of the shows since it didn’t really follow any order if you just wanted to watch one show. When the episodes went up on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, many SVU fans realized a scene was missing.

Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) was shot, in the line of duty, in the abdomen. She was trying to protect a witness being transferred in order to give testimony. When I watched the episode on the Peacock app, I saw Olivia arrive on the scene, ask how Amanda is doing, and confirm to the audience that the mother of two is alive. Olivia then goes to comfort the witness. While I was eating dinner, I did wonder, “Where was Carisi?”

Well, that’s when I saw the report from TV Line that Amanda’s boyfriend, ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi, did have a scene in the episode that was cut.

This isn’t the first time that a scene from SVU with emotional moment was cut, as last May they did something similar with a meet-up scene between Olivia, Elliot Stabler, and Olivia’s son Noah. The reason for that, TV Line speculates with information from their own source, is “that the sequence was trimmed for syndication and streaming to make room for a pre-episode recap (which is required since the episodes will run as standalone hours off-network).”

The idea that, in service of a very long, convoluted recap, we lose an emotional scene, even if it was only 35 seconds, would already be annoying. What makes it infuriating on a certain level is that Giddish will be leaving at the end of this season after over a decade on this show. Right now is the time to keep those scenes between the two because their relationship has a potential ticking clock that runs out. Not to mention, Rollins’ essential replacement, Junior Detective Grace Muncy (Molly Burnett), will be arriving in this next episode—another white, blonde female detective.

(via TV Line, image: NBC)