Production
Early reports about Stephanie March leaving the cast at the end of Season 4 indicate that the first Season 5 episodes were written if not filmed by May 2003.
The sixth episode "Coerced" shows Elliot Stabler and George Huang at odds with each other about how to get through to a schizophrenic man. Jonathan Greene, who wrote the episode, said that Neal Baer has "instilled in all of us this fascination with how the mind works, and the nexus of where the mind and the law cross." During a 2012 interview for the show Media Mayhem, Neal Baer revealed that the most controversial episode of his career came from the fifth season. About the episode "Home", he said "I never ever dreamed that I would get so much hate mail" and explained "children who go to private or public schools are seen by lots of people and that's a safety net." The nineteenth episode "Sick" was based on the allegations of child molestation against Michael Jackson. The evidence used in the episode included evidence that never made it to trial in the real case. Writer Dawn DeNoon maintains that the jury should have delivered a guilty verdict and said "Justice wasn't done in the real arena, so I kept closer to the true story in this one than in most of them."
During the filming of the fifth season, SVU still did not have its own courtroom set. A 2011 video with Diane Neal reveals that the directors were still using the Law & Order courtroom. She reminisced "my memories of this set are of waking up at the asscrack on a Saturday when they weren't using it and shooting courtroom for twenty-two hours."
Read more about this topic: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 5)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)