I’ve managed to avoid the topic until now–all of it. And I’ve managed to avoid the episode until now, because I know what happens when I get sucked into SVU–three or more weeks of [Gruff-voiceover] and duhn-duhn.

Well, I guess I failed. Mostly.

I saw a supercut of Intimidation Game. And then I dug into the internet reaction a little bit.

Internet, you disappoint me.

Note that I say ‘Internet’ and not ‘Television writers’, or even ‘SVU writers’. There’s a reason for that.

Both of the latter have a hideously bad track record when it comes to computers, technology, or videogames.

The internet, however, seems to be having a problem where the only things that exist are the new things. Anything that didn’t go viral just didn’t happen.

So, yeah, I’m having a problem with the reaction to this particular episode of SVU.

I’m having a problem because: what the fuck did you people expect? An even-handed and fair treatment of Gamergate? A topic you can’t actually have an even, fair treatment of, because both sides are shit [trolling, doxxing, and calls for a return to the good old days when people were bullied]? Yeah, that’s not happening.

And it’s definitely not happening on Special Victims Unit. Remember their tasteful handling of, for example, the Michael Jackson Pedophile Scandal?

Let’s look at the extended-yet-brief history of SVU’s handling of videogames.

Our first stop is in Season 3, all the way back in 2001. You may remember 2001 for certain major things, but there were also some minor things. Nintendo released the GameCube and the GBA, the PS2 existed, and Microsoft released the XBox. Grand Theft Auto 3 came out.

The episode in question is Episode 9: Care. A game featured heavily in the plot–a generic swords-and-mythology type game. A ‘developmentally disabled’ boy is fixated on this game, and is the prime suspect for the murder. He didn’t do it, though, and they find this out by playing the game.

It’s the most even-handed treatment games get in the world of SVU. It’s so fair that it hardly bears mentioning.

It doesn’t stay fair, though. And, before anyone points it out: yes, I am skipping over their treatment of the internet and social networks, because I’m just focusing on games featuring in episodes.

The next time the subject comes up is in season 6–and I’m honestly surprised the internet has collectively forgotten this episode. ‘Game’ was a ‘ripped from the headlines’, thoroughly mutilated retelling of the whole Grand Theft Auto Made Me Kill/Jack Thompson drama–the role of Jack Thompson, by the way, was filled by Barry Bostwick.

The episode had a thinly-veiled, poorly executed imitation of Grand Theft Auto, called ‘Intensity’ [or maybe N10city, for all I know]. The game gave you points and money for chasing down hookers and beating them up. Of course, a bunch of people detached from reality because of this game and started doing it in real life.

They actually had one of the kids on the stand, talking about it, making little ‘using a controller’ twitches with his hands.

It was bad, and they should feel bad. And we should not forget that this episode happened, even if it happened in 2005, which was largely unremarkable, as far as gaming goes [until the end, when the 360 was released].

Three more seasons pass until we get another game-related plot. Season 9, Episode 2: Avatar.

This time, it’s SecondLife. A girl who is e-famous in their SecondLife clone gets kidnapped. They discover that SecondLife is basically a hive of scum and villainy [okay, fair], and use it to track down her kidnapper, because the kidnapper also locked up her avatar in a scary-accurate reproduction of some part of the world.

The whole episode reeks of ‘well, if she had lived her first life instead, maybe she would’ve only gotten targeted by one of our three billion other varieties of scary-rapey-badguys, because these scary-rapey-NERD-badguys get really obsessed and it’s so much more dangerous shame on you.’

That was 2007. A pretty good time for gaming, since we had a lot of choices across a lot of consoles. More importantly, it was the year Valve reached down from digital heaven to teach us that, while 3 does not exist, Portal most certainly does.

But, back to ‘ew, nerds’. I’m going to divert for a second into season 12, for an episode that only featured a videogame as a momentary prop. Episode 2, Bullseye, where they break down the door of an apartment because they heard a child in distress, and find Those Fat, Disgusting Nerds, in the same house, playing some sort of Console MMORPG. The main feature of that episode was probably the Capgras delusion, but, well, those Fat, Disgusting Nerds are obviously going to have delusions, right?

Which brings us to Intimidation Game. And I don’t even have to talk about how godawful that was, with ‘dark net’ and the fucking FPS Cam, because the internet is all over that. All over it to the point that it’s actually hard to find out anything about any other episode.

Not that it’s particularly easy, since nobody but Hulu has back episodes, and Hulu locked those away behind their fucking ‘pay us to view ads’ wall.

Why did I just write all that? Because it felt like nobody else has. They focused on one episode, and how badly it treated their One Cause, and completely neglected the history that SVU has with videogames.

And, again, I’m disregarding shit like ‘Friending Emily’, wherein Social Networking Goes Bad, because getting into television’s treatment of the internet as some sort of dark-arts Unseen University [full of pure evil magic, wielded by largely incompetent freaks] merged with a half-remembered summary of Neuromancer leads to, well, referencing Pratchett and Gibson, apparently. And to so much more rambling.

I think I mostly wanted to say this: Holy shit, you guys, how did you not notice this before? They have a history of doing this. Look at this history. LOOK AT IT. Yeah, it’s pretty spotty, but, if this were a case in an episode of SVU, those few incidents would be enough to get Stabler to have one of his rage-fits at the suspect, while Munch and Fin banter in the background, and Benson intervenes to save the unstable fucker’s job. Again.

Something something, Cragen, Novak, shut up, the show’s lost most of the good characters.

Got it? Good. Now, let’s all have a chuckle, because ‘Dick Wolf.’