"Something Happened" is a relative change of pace for late 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' though done before a few times brilliantly in earlier seasons. This is an example of an episode that scales things down in locations and in cast members, meaning sticking to sticking to one or two or so locations and having few characters. This has been done before in 'Special Victims Unit', with notable episodes doing this being Season 6's "Rage" and Season 7's "911".
Both those episodes did this particular change of pace brilliantly, thanks to Emmy-worthy performances, a lot of tension, emotional impact and masterstroke character interaction. Somehow though "Something Happened", in the first scaled down episode in years, didn't quite work. There are worse episodes of Season 19, but "Something Happened" was one of the most frustrating ones considering the hype, the brave subject matter and that it was a change of pace. It had all the ingredients for being potentially the best episode of the season but ended up being a very mixed bag.
There are things here done well. It is a slickly made episode, the editing especially having come on quite a bit from when the show first started (never was it a problem but it got more fluid with each episode up to this stage). The music is sparingly used and never seemed melodramatic, the theme tune easy to remember as usual.
Furthermore, the final twist is a shocker. Best of all is the performance of Mariska Hargitay in a contender for her best performance of the season, her acting for me became less consistent in the latter seasons but she did show that she was still capable of brilliance many times and this is one of the examples. The rest of the regulars do very well too with what they had.
However, the story for some reason really didn't grab me. It came over as too thin and draggy, at times uneventful, and the episode is too talky with a lot of ramble and not enough tautness. The dialogue can be on the bland and over-heated side. Only the ending surprises, with everything else being very predictable. Really disappointing was everything with Olivia's past, such a build up in the promos about shocking secrets from Olivia's past but it actually turned out to reiterate what is known about her already.
Didn't find myself particularly impressed by Melora Waters, for my tastes she was too histrionic. Even for a scaled down episode, the rest of the team are severely underused.
Concluding, could have been so much better. 5/10.
