The Law & Order: SVU Pilot Revisited

In honor of Law & Order: SVU's 500th episode, we took a look back at the show's very first installment, titled "Payback." Prepare yourself for baby faces, the old precinct set, Olivia's no-nonsense ponytail and Munch being Munch. If you're a relatively recent SVU acolyte, get ready to meet the original crew. And if you've been around since the beginning, see how much of the inaugural episode you remember.

Moments into the episode, Cragen sends Cassidy to investigate "some guy molesting a dead body" on the IRT. Is it odd that, as New Yorkers, we had a moment of warm nostalgia for the now-defunct subway reference? 

The first time we meet Elliot Stabler (played by Chris Meloni) and Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay), they're showing up at the scene of a car crash in the pouring rain... because the driver was stabbed to death and had his penis hacked off. Of note: The pair identify themselves as working for "sex crimes," not "SVU."

... and Detectives Monique Jeffries (played by Michelle Hurd) and Brian Cassidy (played by Dean Winters). Meanwhile, Richard Belzer brought his Homicide: Life on the Street character Det. John Munch to the show, as well.

When we go to the squad room for the first time, it's a bustling place where we meet Capt. Cragen (played by Dann Florek)...

Ready for some pilot throwback action? DUN DUN!

Very little of this episode takes place in court, but Stabler's time there is used productively. While testifying about a flasher he arrested in the park, we learn that SVU is an all-volunteer unit, and that Elliot "requested the assignment because sexually based crimes are a major law enforcement problem." And when the detective smirks and goads the defendant about his "shortcomings..."

... the guy whips it out in front of the whole room! We're not sure what we enjoyed more: a female lawyer's laughing reaction to what she sees, or the guy's happy dance as everyone runs from his freed willy.

When a diner waitress learns that one of her customers was the man killed in the incident that opened the episode, her response — "This city sucks" — is perfection.

He also feels like a bit of comic relief here, but that changes decidedly by the end of the episode.

In one of the first instances where it's implied that Stabler has been on the job longer than Benson has, he pulls her aside, softens his voice and breaks some bad news: Their victim was a Serbian man wanted for war crimes. 

Meanwhile, Munch refers to his time in Baltimore and waxes paranoic during lunch in the squad room. 

And though Jeffries has pretty much zero to do in this episode, she  gets a good dig in about Munch's sex life. We approve.

Benson (and her no-nonsense ponytail) and Stabler start interviewing suspects, one of whom is at a gallery full of paintings of giant mouths. This look, it says a lot, no?

You've gotta love Angry! Liv! going! off! on! the! man's! lying! (and! pregnant!) widow!

After visiting a woman that the dead man maimed, Olivia quietly vomits on the sidewalk. A sympathetic but firm Elliot warns her that if she asks to be let off the case, she's effectively done at the unit. 

Perhaps to prove herself, perhaps because everything is so terrible, Olivia visits another of the war criminal's victims at the architectural firm where she works. Good Lord, this woman's account of being raped nightly for three weeks is horrifying.

Liv thinks so, too.

Elliot's wife, Kathy (played by Isabel Gillies), makes her first appearance in the episode as the Stablers attend a parent-teacher conference. We think they're talking about Elizabeth when El has to excuse himself to take a work call, one of the zillion times in the next few decades that his job will interfere with their family's life. 

Speaking of family, meet Olivia's mom, Serena (played by Elizabeth Ashley)! The Benson women have dinner together, and that's where we learn that Olivia exists because her mother was raped. 

"I hate him for what he did to you," Liv tells her mom, near tears. "So do I," Serena replies. "And if he hadn't, you would not be here."

And Stabler is all "frowny face can you handle this I'm not sure you can"...

As she will so often in the years to come, Liv's empathy for the victim — even when that victim is also a suspect — pushes her to whisper some probably-not-police-kosher advice to the woman after her arrest. 

... but then his method of dealing with a suspect winds up with the woman stabbing herself to death in the middle of a busy restaurant, so who's to say who's got better police sense? 

Law & Order's Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael (played by Angie Harmon) shows up near the end of the hour, as the living suspect confesses to killing the cabbie in a haze after she realized who he was and what he had done to her. Carmichael later tells the SVU detectives she'll offer a plea deal. 

Two things: We're not sure why Stabler thought this T-shirt was appropriate officewear, and look how chagrined the partners are as Cragen calls them into his office!

As the captain points out the giant holes in the suspect's story — what, she just carries a big knife around for fun? — he makes it clear that they're not always going to get away with these kind of fast-and-loose shenanigans.* "You just used your get out of jail free cardon this case, Olivia," he warns her. "There's only one in the pack."**

* They will often get away with those kind of fast-and-loose shenanigans.

** There are more than one in the pack.

It kind of feels like maybe the show was planning to have Cragen always have food around, like in this scene in his office, when he offers Liv and El red licorice. (He's eating a bunch of times during the premiere.)

Back at the precinct, as the detectives discuss possible motives, Stabler says the situation "reads kinda gay to me" and, when reminded that officers found a red-painted fingernail at the scene, blithely responds, "Could be a he-she." It's not fair to judge a TV show made 23 years ago by today's moral standards, but we can't help it: We cringed.