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

Powerful guest performances and the departure of a cast member

[garrard · 8/10 · 27 March 2010]

Guest Saidah Arrika Ekulona is excellent as the witness to a brutal rape. What makes her character so engaging is that she herself was the victim of repeated rapes and other horrors in her native African Congo. When the actress appears on the witness stand close to the episode's end, she delivers an emotional testimony that tears at the viewer's heart, making one think of the inhumanities suffered by women throughout the world.

Diora Baird brings sympathy as the victim who, at first, is thought to be overreacting but succumbs to an infection she received as the result of a cut made during the rape. The character's demise adds charges against the accused rapist, played with seedy relish by Eric Lange.

Stephanie March, who plays ADA Cabot, is equally as good and this installment marks her second departure from the role.

Hopefully, this, like her first "exit" will be short-lived. March will definitely be missed.

In addition to these two women, Academy Award nominee Lindsay Crouse is fine in her fifth appearance as Judge Andrews.

A harrowing but remarkable episode

[lbowdls · 8/10 · 15 September 2019]

This is an episode that I've never forgotten not because of the initial victim who is quite unlikable, but the wittiness in the courtroom. I'm currently viewing this episode fir the first time since the original screening and I'm not sure I can bring myself to relive her harrowing tale of rape and torture. It'd a meaningful episode but one of those that makes you hear brutal details. So hard to take but excellent in acting and writing and getting these issues and stories out there.

Miss Ulah, do you see rape everywhere?

[yazguloner · 10/10 · 3 July 2021]

Nardalee Ulah ... I aplaud

It is a meaningful chapter between societies that use rape as a weapon and individuals who use rape as a force.

Even when it's so hard to listen... Knowing that these things are still happening in the world, despair... terrifying. Where words end

And Cabot

I like when Olivia says "Elex". Barba has a great share in starting fan for Svu. Barba is best. But Alex Cabot is also unforgettable.

Cast is excellent... Everyone who goes or comes in the staff leaves their own beautiful scent. They pick the best players and they're very good at it.

Strong witness

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 12 May 2022]

"Witness" left a big impression on me when younger, it was not an easy watch but was very moving and really made me think about the topic conveyed. 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' covered a lot of very difficult subjects, some familiar and some not so familiar, and in the early seasons it dealt with them extremely well and uncompromisingly. It varied in the mid-later seasons. The subject here was new to me and something not handled before in the show.

Although the episode did laudably with what is shown and it is appropriately harrowing, it could have handled it better at the same time. "Witness" is a good and admirable episode and really appreciated what it tried to do, but it is also a somewhat uneven one. Which is the biggest danger of having more than one story in one episode and trying to cram in a lot, something that Season 11 did a fair bit with variable success. Luckily, "Witness" succeeded more than it failed.

The best aspect is the performance of Saidah Arrika Ekulona, which is absolutely fantastic and so powerful. Her character is one of the most interesting and rootable supporting characters of the show in a long time and one of the witnesses that is immediately impossible to not feel for once it is revealed what she went through (which shocks, disgusts and moves). One of the best scenes of Season 11 is that of her testimony, which is heart-wrenching and one of the few scenes of the season to make me cry my eyes out. Diora Baird plays one of those characters that one is not sure about in regard to whether to believe her but in the end what happens is saddening and anger-inducing, the outcome of her story wrenches the gut too.

Production values are still slick and suitably gritty (without being too heavy in it). The music is not too melodramatic and is not used too much, even not being too manipulative in revelations. The script is taut, not too talky or flowery and makes one think. It has grit too and it doesn't feel trivialised. The script isn't perfect, but is generally thoughtful and not too heavy on the talk or indulgent. The story also isn't perfect, but is tightly paced and both stories are both harrowing and poignant. The acting from the regulars is very good, with Stephanie March being outstanding in the second half and it is sad saying goodbye to her for a second time. The ending resonates, it was good for the teamwork to not be unbalanced and that one doesn't have to worry about unprofessionalism and exaggerated flaws.

For all those great things, "Witness" isn't perfect. Some of the story involving the atrocties in the Congo makes its points too heavily, which made some of the latter stages on the heavy handed and almost sermonising side. The episode does feel like two stories in one and the gear change from one to the other is not as smooth as it could have been (too much of a disjoint), but at least these two stories are actually related rather than being two separate ones.

Didn't buy Olivia being at the victim's side in such close contact, one that was dying from one of the most contagious diseases known to man.

Overall, good but not great. 7/10.

Contrived plot serving as soap box

[gring0 · 2/10 · 3 April 2010]

The episode again made me shake my head at the contrived plot, where an unsympathetic rape victim suddenly falls dead of the flesh-eating disease. Researching the disease itself, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, it does appear that it can spread quickly throughout the body before causing death. Despite the contagious nature of the disease, little precaution seemed to be in place to prevent infection; Olivia in fact held her hand as she lay dying without any protection. I too decided to research the issue of rape in the Congo which is involved in the story; again a witness is presented in SVU who comes from darkest Africa whose past seems tainted by terrorist paramilitary groups. I thought how I would feel as a Congolese to have my country (the largest in Africa after Algeria) reduced to a line about how rape is commonplace. Again, I learned something important. But I fear in doing so, the plots are becoming less than public service announcements and Law and Order being reduced to a soap box. www.tracesofevil.blogspot.com

What sacrifice she was prepared to make

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 15 July 2015]

Normally contrived plots like these are not likely to win my approval. But in this SVU story you cannot but admire the witness and what sacrifice that Saidah Arrika Ekulona was prepared to make.

A rather self centered slut of a woman played by Diora Baird is attacked and raped by a man with a mask on her apartment stairs. His attack was interrupted by a black woman who pulled him off Baird. It was Ekulona but she has good reason for not wanting to come forward. She's rightly afraid of immigration, she's here in the USA illegally.

She came here because rape is a weapon of war in her part of the world. Lest you think it is exclusively from her continent I would remind one of the recent wars in the Balkans with the breakup of Yugoslavia.

A devil's choice faces her, but she is one of the greatest of heroes ever shone on SVU episode. Contrast that with the victim who sadly ends a life as a self centered slut because she contacts a flesh eating bacteria from the crime.

But the perpetrator is his own special kind of low life. Eric Lange who has a telescope and spends time checking out Baird thinks he's going to get away with it because of Baird's character and Ekulona's immigration status. He's got reason to think it to.

In the end Ekulona inspires one cast member to pursue a different line of work. ADA Alexandra Cabot who stands by Ekulona every step of the way leaves the DA's office to go to work for human rights sexual assault victims. As Ekulona tells Detective Benson, "she inspired me".

The story goes off kilter, but I think others might get inspired.

More social awareness!

[fabiogaucho · 7/10 · 27 April 2011]

Defense attorney: "How did you know it was rape? Are you a mind reader?" Witness: "I know rape. I've seen many women get raped" Defense attorney: "Please direct the witness to answer the question" Judge (seriously): "He asked you a question - are you a mind reader?"

Yes, that dialogue is there. I know that shows that focus on trials frequently show situations that are completely against how the law works, but some sense of ridicule must be kept.

Getting that out of the way, the episode starts routinely but interesting, with a rape case that involves a perhaps unreliable witness. Then it suddenly becomes a long report about mass atrocities in West Africa. I mean, if you are not going to be educated about the subject in Law and Order SVU, where else? Oh, of course there is an insinuation that Americans are responsible, because they use lithium in their cell phones. You get the drill.