We live in Season 9 with a whole host of powerful events where Benson and Stabler take a high school teacher to have sex with one of her students, but the teacher claims the student raped her. On the other hand, the only witness to beating the mother is her mentally handicapped daughter suffering from Williams syndrome. The husband is an early suspect, but he is protected from prosecution because of the Patriot Act.
Given its history, it's likely that Law & Order will recover from the less-than-stellar episodes so far this season, but one wonders whether it will finally run out of cases to dramatize.
