Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV Series) Quickie (2010) User Reviews

The appearance of a 50's star makes the episode!

[garrard · 7/10 · 6 January 2010]

For baby boomers, the name "Jack Larson" brings back memories of "Look...up into the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" Larson is the actor that played the gung-ho Jimmy Olsen on "The Adventures of Superman", the iconic show featuring the late George Reeves in the title.

Larson guest stars as the grandfather of a young AIDS-carrier, played by Brian Geraghty, who has coldly infected several women in the city. Detectives Stabler (Chris Meloni) and Benson (Mariska Hargitay) discover the young man's infecting ways as they investigate the murder of a young woman found dead in a park.

Both Larson and Geraghty are excellent in their respective roles though the story itself seems a tad derivative of older and better SVU installments.

With that said, it's really thrilling to see the elder actor on the small screen,showing that there's still some "spunk" left at age 81 in the "kid reporter".

Unexpectedly great episode!

[jeanpierrexxiii · 9/10 · 10 July 2022]

Strong performances from the guests. Story is kind of split but not a crazy stretch of imagination. Ends in atypical fashion for SVU.

I give it a 9 for its nuanced take on a serious matter. I often watch SVU to go to bed, and this was one I never seemed to finish. Glad I finally gave it a shot during non-sleepy hours.

Thrown for a curve ball

[javiermarquez-50180 · 7/10 · 12 January 2023]

So I loved the episode. I loved the message and the story behind it but as most SVU episodes go there are a lot of twists and rabbit holes that happened in this episode. The twists and the rabbit holes went so far that they totally ignored solving the original murder. Now I've seen a lot of SVU episodes and they usually connect everything together in the end. I don't think I've ever seen an episode of SVU where the story veered so far from the beginning that they forgot to solve the original crime. Has anyone else seen an episode where this has happened? Please let me know as this is a first for me.

The walking epidemic

[yazguloner · 10/10 · 3 July 2021]

Jack Larson is superb as Dewey Butler

It is ironic to understand how dangerous the HIV virus is in the pandemic.

Carrier

[TheLittleSongbird · 5/10 · 11 May 2022]

It does not give me pleasure giving "Quickie" a below average rating and review. The topic is well worth addressing and is a tough and relevant one. 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' has many times tackled challenging and important subjects and executed them harrowingly and movingly, including ones similar to this or worse. It was unoriginal in story, but the franchise did many times have basic, unoriginal stories and managed to make a story that was compelling.

"Quickie" doesn't do this. It is better than the very disappointing previous episode "Anchor", which represented everything that is bad about the franchise when it took on too much of a political slant. It just felt very flat and uninvolving somehow, and it is a subject that has been tackled before on both 'Special Victims Unit' and the original 'Law and Order' and much better with much more tact. "Quickie" is not a terrible episode, it just did very little for me.

While there are more interesting episodes visually, the photography is slick enough and doesn't seem too static or gimmicky while not being inspired. The music doesn't get too melodramatic or over-used. Did like Stabler's reaction to the stockbroker line and it was great to see more of Warner.

Stephanie March is a strong presence, making it clear that Cabot is not one to mess with, but this is a case of the supporting cast making a much bigger impression. Jack Larson and Brian Geraghty hit hard with their interpretations, the former moving and the latter chilling to the bone. Mattie Hawkinson harrowingly plays a character that performs an uncondable action but one still roots for justice.

Uncharacteristically however, the regular cast seem to be going through the motions and the complete waste of Fin to the point of pointlessness is unforgivable. The script lacks tautness and can feel ham-handed, Cabot's grilling of Rebecca on the stand was pure melodrama to the max. The story didn't make me angry, not like "Anchor" did, but it felt very derivative (it is a subject that the franchise has done before and one can tell), lacks suspense, is very predictable (the perpetrator's guilt is not in question due to the obvious way they are written) and just felt flat.

Furthermore, "Quickie" also tries to do too much, with too many elements that are not developed enough. The policing is quite routine and the legal portion needed a lot more tension and didn't come over as plausible with questionable legalities. Especially regarding the advertising and the randomly introduced and "doesn't ring true for a second" change of heart. Only the character writing for Larson's character rings true, the character that one feels the most for. Cabot comes over as too aggressive and pushy, she surely can't expect someone to remember everything months after the event under that amount of pressure.

Overall, "Quickie" was watchable but rather flat. 5/10.

As easy as possible

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 6 September 2013]

A young party girl gets herself murdered and her boyfriend Brady Corbet is eventually arrested for the crime by Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni. But before she died she had anonymous sex with young and spoiled Brian Geraghty and he turns out to be a carrier of the AIDS virus. And he's spreading it quite indiscriminately and knowingly.

Here's where Medical Examiner Tamara Tunie and her office come into play. She's found Geraghty and his disease in any number of other people and even with anonymous testing it's enough for him to be charged with serial rape. Attempted murder is far more difficult to prove, but Geraghty with his attitude is trying to make it as easy as possible.

Jack Larson whom I so well remember from my youth as Jimmy Olson on the Superman series plays Geraghty's grandfather. A truly broken man who for all his wealth is about to really lose all that he really cares about.

AIDS stories have been done on SVU before and this one seems to be braking no new ground. Still the episode is well directed and acted.