Was Sharon Stone always a terrible actress?
Did anyone get drunk and watch Sharon Stone’s first episode as the new Assistant District Attorney for Law & Order: SVU last night? Am I the only one raising my hand? Well, I watched it so you don’t have to. You should be happy, because Sharon SUCKED. I mean, her horrible acting was so epic, I sobered up. Not even an appearance by Sam “Jack McCoy 4 Eva” Watterson could save this bitch.
Now, before I get too heavily into bashing Sharon, let me just say that my once beloved SVU is just terrible now. It was going downhill last season, but this season The Awful just keeps coming. You know it was bad when I was like, “I’ll pay Christopher Meloni $100 to shoot Christine Lahti in the face.” The stories have been terrible, and all too often the have nothing to do with “special victims”. I guess it’s come to the point where, yeah, how many serial rapists can there be in New York? But still, I know there’s new material to be found, somebody’s just sleeping on the job.
As for Sharon’s premiere appearance… it was just wrong. Her delivery was wrong, her haughty flirtation with Meloni was wrong, her attitude was weird, and Sharon just seemed like she was two seconds behind everyone. Was she drunk? Oh, and her face: it’s been worked on. Entertainment Weekly had complaints too:
Sharon Stone began her four-episode guest-star turn on Law & Order: SVU in an episode filled with such clunky dialogue and improbable details that by the end, she seemed like a “special victim” herself.
Stone played ADA Jo Marlowe, and how unlikely is it that, with all the time Christopher Meloni’s Stabler and Mariska Hargitay’s Benson have spent together, he never mentioned that his old partner Jo wasn’t a “Joe”? Looking great even when doffing her heels for rubbery firefighter boots while investigating a possible arson blaze, Stone had to revive her best hard-boiled Catherine Tramell tone to sell hokey lines such as, “Let’s cut Pizza face loose” and “Let’s light this baby up.”
If the guest star was failed by the script, Meloni and Hargitay must be wearily used to it by now; SVU has long been the most mawkish and overwrought Law & Order franchise. This week’s case was about two children dead in an apartment fire that investigators think was set by an acne-ridden pyromaniac — no, a desperate dad; no, a… aw, who cared? Stabler and Benson cared, of course: They continue to embody righteous indignation; no crime is too small to evade their angry glares and pious speeches when cuffing a perp.
L&O: SVU loves to find new kinkiness to exploit, and last night hit upon “pyrophelia” — a real condition in which the sinner gets off on fire (unfortunately literally, as we were shown tape of the jerk pleasuring himself while gazing at the apartment conflagration).
The interrogation scenes would have been almost laughable in a sitcom. In one, “Pizza Face” went into a swoony erotic trance as soon as Stabler lit a match in front of him. In another, Stabler wiped away sympathetic tears with his handerkerchief to build trust with the dead kids’ father, only to reveal to Stone and Hargitay that he’d used a wily trick I thought only worked in Bugs Bunny cartoons: He’d hidden a Bermuda onion in his hanky!
Even a stern cameo by Sam Waterston (yay, a new episode of the superior Law & Order next Monday!) or a nice brief turn by Brad Dourif as an arson expert couldn’t save the show for Stone’s debut. She got to have nice, big, table-turning scene in the final courtroom showdown, but it was too little, too late.
[From EW]
Yes, Brad Dourif – one of the greatest weirdo character actors working today – was the only good part. He specializes in playing freaks, and his hyperactive arson specialist was a great character for him. Note to producers: Cast Dourif as the ADA next, hm?
About halfway through the episode, I really began to wonder – was Sharon always this terrible an actress? Thoughts?
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