gesundheit

So they really cut the character of Steffi the Staffie from this adaptation? Foolish decision!

I can easily see why they cast Bhanu - very overzealous, enthusiastic, warm guy who's incredibly animated and will probably be beloved at first, but it's always dramatic to cast someone on Survivor who was simply born without guile. Had he not ended up in that tribe situation, the guilelessness probably would've been an occasional wacky moment but not really doing damage until later in the season where he'd emerge from the supporting cast and then everyone could see how unhinged he was and then he'd flame out fast. It could be extremely entertaining! But instead we got we got, and it was deeply un-entertaining. If it just get revealed at tribal, she's going to be a fast target for the schadenfreude of it all. Exactly! His mistake wasn't trying to get new allies by giving them dirt, his mistake was telling his tribe he'd done that. Me too. I loved Survivor AU and was halfway through a marvelous season when Paramount+ yanked it. Heartbreaker! (I was also in the middle of Survivor South African and Survivor NZ -- depressingly small grand prize, but still fun!)

Spoiler-tagging this just in case book details are against the rules!

It's so bizarre that changing all the character's relationships and conflicts and personalities from the book in order to make things more dramatic has actually made it less compelling. So disappointing. It's basically the Lifetime movie version. Seems like they thought the series would be more appealing if they added a bunch of secret sex. (They were wrong.)

Someone needs to tell the L.A. writers room that calling the first day of spring "Sundress Day" in NYC is ridiculous, since it's almost always in the 30s on the first day of spring. (As it was this week!) "Every woman in New York wears a sundress that day," my ass! (Also why did a bar have "Happy Pride" in the window in the winter?) He's always neck-deep in a bunch of big Amy Schumer projects, so I wouldn't be surprised if he likes the flexibility for his directing/producing work. Why is Olivia such a mean boss? She wasn't as bad as usual this episode, but she did get a few digs in at the cops that were already there on the scene. Her "everyone in this profession besides me is utterly incompetent" attitude is terrible leadership, Brene Brown would not approve! (And neither would Cragen.) I mean, thanks Liv -- without your expert wisdom nobody would've thought after going to Queens to identify all the potential places that may have employed the victim the day prior, they should find out which one it was! Only Benson would be sensitive enough to think of going to the homeless man's turf to ask him what he saw instead of hauling him into the station! Thank goodness they have her uncanny sapience.

Still no separate reward challenge in a 90-minute episode. No thank you! What did Randen say at the end? My TV cut off. Did we get a medical update, is he okay? That was so awkward having everyone rejoice about his removal. Bhanu's god sure does have schadenfreude! I did see the preview for next week, though, and I guess

Well this should be... bizarre! Rockefeller Center will turn into an SVU-immersive experience The area will temporarily be renamed "Olivia Benson Plaza."

In my experience people in their 70s and 80s with sprawling body art look completely badass. I needed someone to press her on that. What in the world does that mean? Who just says that without elaborating? This show is doing a great job casting social media archetypes. Last season we had "that one social media friend who makes absolutely everything about astrology" and this time we have "that one social media friend who makes absolutely everything about her adult ADHD diagnosis." That said, I liked Astrology Woman (I forget her name) by the end of last season, and I already liked ADHD Woman by the end of last night's episode. There's my personal lesson is reducing people to their one annoying quirk! It looks like next week is 2 hours again, though. Hopefully we go back to 90 minutes. 2 hours is too much! Do we know? I feel like there has to be some behind-the-scenes arrangement for that sort of thing. That had my jaw on the floor. And why was he parsing the several/seven thing so much anyway? If the timer is 4 hours, then you have 4 hours. It's not some trick that proves it impossible.

Jon does definitely interrupt his guests more than Trevor did, but it always feels like Jon's engaging in a conversation that he knows enough to participate in -- Trevor often respectfully sat back and yielded the floor because he just rarely knew enough to really engage. I like both styles, but I consider Jon's guests to typically be there for a conversation and Trevor's guests to typically be there for a interview. (Not that constant interruption is okay for a conversation, either! I just mean I think the basic premise usually means hearing more of his voice than we were meant to hear of Trevor's, and that's okay depending on the topic. But I definitely want to watch all the extended versions because many thoughts I wanted to hear the rest of get cut off!)

Also pretty handy that Liv just has full-time live-in childcare for her son that makes it easy to just hop a plane on a whim with no notice to the caregiver

Wouldn't it be glorious if the United States had anywhere near as robust a passenger rail system as the SVU writers' room has given it in their imagination? Poor Velasco with the awful exposition. "Tanya Garcia." "The girl we found OD-ing in that bag in that hotel room back in January?" Ouch. (And why did they even clarify that at all? There never would've been a question that they had an ID witness! But of course we needed everyone else to be dumb as a brick again so Olivia can have the genius eureka moment.) And by the way, great news! Tanya's fine, the trauma and drugs are no match for aftercare from Olivia Benson! "Perp on the run -- let's send the 60-year-old in couture shoes!" So uh... what happened to the showrunners' big promise back in 2020 that they were going to start presenting IAB in a new light? Since rooting out dirty cops and police corruption is actually a good thing and shouldn't be presented otherwise? Guess they abandoned that. Sure, they might want to have an opposing opinion on the squad to be more realistic, but zero chance Fin would be the loudest advocate of Blue Wall of Silence out of everyone. Why so much drama about identifying a boy vs a girl? This is a allegedly a bunch of enlightened people who are conversant in vics who identify anywhere along the gender spectrum, but apparently now it's grounds for self-flagellation if you can't tell that a short-haired girl is a girl on first sight. I'd love to be grateful that the Maddie storyline is over, but unfortunately the "Olivia's personal feelings aftermath" has only just begun.

I agree. Partway through this finale I was thinking they actually could have another season with these two working together (still with tension/conflict but closer to the same goals), but of course that twist ending pretty much extinguished that possibility. I was a little bummed by that because of the fantastic chemistry whenever they had scenes together that weren't straight-up adversarial. (Obviously the adversarial scenes were great, too, but hopefully my point was clear!)

I did bristle for half a second when Melissa was "covering" and pretending she waited 2 more years after 14 to smoke and got called out that that would only make her 16 -- but 16 absolutely was the smoking age when Melissa was 16! Her cover was fair! I was going to say the same thing -- there's no way they didn't smoke together. For comedy's sake they're complete opposites in every way, but we have to picture something they actually did together that would lead to that many years. I can definitely picture him getting her to try it and then Janine realizing exactly what she explained -- that it calms down her neuroses and anxiety. (But not something she does at parties!) I didn't really buy the serious FADE woman being so utterly unprepared to answer a single question, but it was funny nonetheless! Jessca was hysterical, and in just the right dose. Wouldn't want her to be recurring because the shtick would get old, but it was perfect for one episode.

God help us all

Hilarious. I just said last week that I hope they didn't make us watch any of Liv's EDMR sessions, and boom! Right in the cold open of the next episode. Also hilarious: a therapist asking for Liv's assistance, and Liv thinking she had to explain to a therapist that she's a mandatory reporter. What would any adult professional in any field do without the wisdom of Olivia Benson? Also hilarious: just to demonstrate how Liv's more saintly than all other humans, they write a scene where McGrath's wife just found out her friend's son definitely raped her daughter but took a quick break to accuse Liv of going after McGrath's job. As if. Also hilarious: they tell us the whole episode it's required for IAB or the ADA to be present at all times in this investigation because of the McGrath situation. Well, at all times except... the actual arrest of his daughter's rapist, an arrest happening mere steps from McGrath's home. Amazing. Not hilarious and actually good: I forget her name but I love the IAB agent and am delighted that she'll be the new girl. Obviously she'll have to live in Liv's shadow, but at least I can thrive off of the shreds they'll toss her. Anyway. Last week sure was a nice breather! Back to the Benson Hour. (Oh wait! One more hilarious: McGrath says he should've seen that his buddy was a wife-beater, and instead of her usual "you can't always know," Olivia just smirks at him.)