Olivia Benson is my spirit animal.
For those who know not of the divine Olivia, let me teach: LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT is a powerful 28-season police procedural that is without question my favorite television show. It is my grail, my fun, my moral compass, the harbor for outrage at every rapist, sex offender, child abuser and degenerate slimeball who has ever lived….at least those on the small screen in front of me during the countless hours I spend watching the show. I have seen each episode several times – except for the ones constantly surprising me at never having been seen before…and there seem to be an endless supply of episodes I’ve missed!
How can that be?
But I do not question, I simply gratefully, hypnotically enjoy.
But back to the Angel Queen of the pop series: DetectiveOlivia Benson….Sgt.Olivia Benson….Lieutenant Olivia Benson….a woman who started out a gorgeous newbie on the crime beat 27 years ago, and whom we have watched accomplish rank after rank, punish criminal after violent criminal, exercise her righteous outrage at the scumbags of the world while holding a heart, and two of the most gorgeous eyes in television, filled with love, compassion, patience and caring for the many victims who stories become hers when they come to her for help….when they are forced to enter the kingdom of NYC’s Special Victims Unit because some one has done something awful to them…..Olivia has all compassion for the “Vic” and no patience whatsoever with the wretches who have victimized…..Olivia is powerful, tender, tearful, steely, strong, vulnerable, brilliant, puzzled and puzzling, willing, scared and fearless….always, at all times…..which makes her not only a great dramatic tv character, but makes her the perfect symbol, the balanced metaphor, the flawed and necessary representation of what law, order and justice must be. Olivia is Athena, Juno, Quan Yin and Wonder Woman rolled into one imperfect female.
She is the court of human justice, while not a vigilante, but rather a deeply flowing river of need….the need to understand evil, the need to heal,the need to make right…and her heart is her compass.
And for hours at a time, she is my moral center as well.
Long live Olivia……the fierce animal of my spirit , yearning for the good guys to win, the bad guys to weep.