Even on first watch years back, "Demons" left me with very mixed feelings. Loved the performances of Christopher Meloni and Robert Patrick and found their dynamic fascinating and the ending did stick in the head for a while, while also not getting that much out of the case and being frustrated by the way Stabler is written. 'Law and Order: Special Victims' had a good track record with the previous season premieres, especially "Chameleon" (Season 4) and "Birthright" (Season 6).
That good track record is lost sadly for me here with "Demons". My feelings on it now overtime are almost exactly the same as on first watch, except that the ending has gone down in my estimations. The good things are even stronger, but so are the flaws sadly. Not a particularly good start to Season 7, also not feeling that much like a season premiere, and doesn't make one hopeful about how the rest of the season would fare (thankfully it did get a lot better).
"Demons" does have things that work very well indeed. Meloni gives a fiercely intense and hard-boiled performance and Patrick superbly makes one feel uneasy while also not being sure of whether he's innocent or guilty. High-voltage absolutely perfectly sums up the chemistry between the two of them. All the cast are very good, though those two have the biggest roles and the only ones to have much meaty material.
Furthermore, the production values are slick and have a subtle grit, with an intimacy to the photography without being too claustrophobic. The music isn't used too much and doesn't get too melodramatic. There is some nice and taut scripting in the earlier stretches and the whole surveillance and entrapment concept was promising and was interesting to begin with.
Sadly, too much of the story didn't grab me. The idea was already quite a well worn one, here it feels tired and it felt like there was not enough story content. It could have done with more tension, or certainly more consistent tension, and some of the writing later on did come over as melodramatic. The ending should have been hair raising and answered questions, instead it was to me quite contrived, bordering on idiocy and left the questions that needed to be answered left hanging in the air. Keeping the truth about the opening crime ambiguous, the further the truth gets is heavy implication, was pretty much practically neglecting it and anything that was fascinating about Patrick's character goes.
He was an interesting character for a while and then from the ending onwards it was like the writers didn't know what to do with him and made him very vaguely written with inconsistent behaviour (namely not being clear on whether his manner throughout the episode was genuine or whether it was a facade, so the change in him was so abruptly introduced and hard to swallow). Did not like the underuse of the rest of the team, especially Munch, and to me Stabler's character writing was overdone. He was already showing a darker, more angsty side in Season 6 and was always defiant when it came to authority, but not many previous episodes had the "Stabler going too far to the point of being completely out of control" feeling to this extent. Even for his difficult situation it was overkill here.
All in all, a disappointment but watchable. 5/10
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