The primetime lineup of the 2023 TV schedule this fall continues to be very light on new scripted content and heavy on reruns. After Law & Order: SVU revisited the BX9 arc to remind me of one thing that still makes no sense, the long-running show repeated the Season 24 episode called “King of the Moon.” It was a standout when it first aired back in February thanks to leading lady Mariska Hargitay directing, and The West Wing alum Bradley Whitford guest starred… for the second time. Now, as NBC aired it again, I went back to his first episode of SVU, when he played a very different character than who he portrayed in Season 24.
But first things first! Let’s look at the very special episode that brought Whitford back to SVU, nearly ten years after his first installment back in 2014.
Bradley Whitford’s Season 24 Return To SVU
Bradley Whitford played a tragic character by the name of Pence, who was a brilliant neurologist and scientist before he developed dementia. Perhaps more importantly, he deeply loved his wife (played by Last Man Standing’s Nancy Travis), and couldn’t remember whether or not he was the culprit when she was raped and murdered in their home. The Special Victims Unit was ultimately able to clear his name, but he still had to go back to an empty home. His story ended with a tear-jerker of a moment with Benson, when he believed that she was his wife.
All in all, Whitford was far from a dastardly SVU villain as Pence in “King of the Moon,” and I felt back when it first aired that he deserved to be in the running for the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor. I still haven’t changed my mind on that front, and he has actually won in that category twice before: for Amazon’s Transparent in 2015 and The Handmaid’s Tale in 2019.
But seeing that NBC was going to air the Season 24 episode as a repeat this fall had me flashing back to when the West Wing alum appeared in SVU Season 15, and so I went back for a rewatch via my Peacock Premium subscription that really reminded me of how versatile he is as an actor. His first SVU character was definitely not a tragic man whose innocence you want to root for!
Bradley Whitford’s SVU Debut In 2014
The actor first appeared in the long-running Law & Order spinoff in Episode 22 of Season 15, called “Reasonable Doubt.” Whitford played Frank Maddox, a television producer who made an absolutely terrible impression on the set of his show even before Benson showed up with the allegation that he abused his 8-year-old daughter. The case was complicated, to say the least, by a messy divorce and his affair with his then-wife's 19-year-old sister.
The cops were divided on whether Frank was guilty or not. I have to credit Whitford for playing Frank as somebody who is an absolute scumbag, but not necessarily somebody who abused his own daughter. The question of whether Frank was guilty or his ex Catherine had coached their daughter was never fully answered, although the allegations kept adding up. That said, Frank was found guilty of abusing his daughter, and fled to France with his teenage fiancé before he could be locked up.
If anything, revisiting “Reasonable Doubt” made me want Bradley Whitford to get some awards recognition for “King of the Moon” from Season 24. I already knew that he was talented at playing different kinds of characters after seeing him in everything from ER to The West Wing to The Handmaid’s Tale, but watching him play two very different characters in the same show was a great reminder.
Of course, Bradley Whitford isn’t the first actor to play more than one character within SVU. Actors Diane Neal, Kelli Giddish, and Peter Scanavino all played one-off characters before being brought back later as series regulars. When a show runs for 24 seasons (and counting) with more than 500 episodes, it’s easy to get away with the same actors playing different characters!
If you want to revisit Whitford’s Season 15 episode or any of the earlier seasons of Law & Order: SVU, you can find every season of the show so far streaming via a Peacock subscription and/or a Hulu subscription. As for when SVU will be able to return for Season 25… well, the end of the WGA strike meant that writers rooms could open, but the SAG-AFTRA strike is ongoing to keep actors on the bench.
