“Some partnerships don’t end.”
It’s a quote Ice-T’s Fin said during the 600th episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” on Thursday night — and one that means so much more than just the partnership between Benson and Stabler.
The same could be said about Mariska Hargitay and Dick Wolf. The pair have been working together since the show debuted in 1999. “People throw around the word ‘family,’” Hargitay says. But for the “SVU” cast and crew, many who have been there from the start, it’s true. “To like them, to love them… I go to work and we hug, and it’s real. It feels like you’re going to a good dinner party when you go to work on Monday.”
After the 600th episode of the Universal Television series wrapped, Wolf gathered the cast and crew for an actual dinner party, including the current cast and crew, Wolf COO Peter Jankowski and Christopher Meloni. Wolf made a speech at the beginning of the night, standing to tell the group, “This has never happened, and it will never happen again.”
In a time when a show hitting 100 episodes is a major accomplishment, Hargitay never saw a world in which the NBC show would reach 600. But Wolf did, she says. And it was part of the speech she gave that night to her “SVU” family.
Dick Wolf and Mariska Hargitay
Andrew H. Walker/Variety
“It really doesn’t feel totally real, which, in a way, is exactly how it should feel, because it’s as if we all get to live in this dream of what you thought might be possible someday. You’ve shown that it’s not only possible, but it’s so much better than anyone could have imagined,” she told Wolf. “If somebody told me that there was a show that’s been on the air for 600 episodes, I would say, ‘Really?’ That’s got to be tired. It’s got to be wheezing along. Must be running on fumes, or they’re catering to some mindless audience that just keeps coming back for some unknown reason. But here we are with a show that is healthy, that’s muscular, that’s fresh, smart, honest, and just so damn important. And yes, people keep coming back, but not for some unknown reason.”
She continued, “They keep coming back because you started something very special that we’ve all had the great privilege of carrying forward for all these years.”
For Hargitay, she can’t help but get emotional thinking about the love and respect the group has for one another, and for the set environment they’ve all created. It’s an environment guest stars thrive in — just look at the roster of them over the last 600 episodes — and always compliment when they arrive and leave the show.
“People are happy to be there. I love making a space that’s conducive to creating, and I love making a space where people feel safe enough to try, to risk, to play, and to hunker down, and know that we’re not playing around here,” she says. “This is someone’s life. This is serious, and these are important stories. I’m so grateful.”
For the milestone episode, written by showrunner Michele Fazekas and directed by Brenna Malloy, jury consultant Gwen Sharpe (J. Smith-Cameron) convinces Benson to take another look at an old case that put a man in prison for a 1998 rape and murder. When Benson revisits it, she realizes that she worked the case with Stabler (Christopher Meloni). Hesitant at first — since he failed to follow up on leads that could have revealed the truth and cut Benson out of the interrogation — Stabler ultimately joins Benson to help.
While they haven’t worked together in years, he’s eager to join her on a road trip to dig deeper and put the right person behind bars. Captain Renee Curry steps in, saying, “With respect, Captain, he’s not your partner anymore. You don’t need his buy-in.” Fin quickly responds, “It doesn’t matter. Some partnerships don’t end, even when they do.”
The storyline stirs up complicated feelings for both Benson and Stabler, as she realizes (and tells him), “I let you shut me out… I have to live with the fact that I didn’t do the right thing because I was new, that I didn’t follow my instinct because I thought you knew better.”
For the first time with him, she really uses her voice with him as she discovers how different they both are from who they used to be when they worked together. And that’s ok — because that partnership is forever.
The episode came in nearly 12 minutes over time, says Hargitay. “This was a big one. We were writing and rewriting and playing, and we had to shoot some scenes before we knew exactly what a scene was going to be, so there were a lot of different ways it could go. But it’s an embarrassment of riches.”