gesundheit

Really glad Stewart had Buttigieg as his guest the first show back after that major shift. Speaking of that major shift, good segment on the ridiculous criticism of Harris. Surely Jon will get the candidate herself on before too long!

I'm annoyed that Jon didn't push back on O'Reilly's assertion that Trump had "two years post-pandemic." When does Bill think the pandemic was? Trump governed zero days post-pandemic. Bummed they're not at the convention, mostly because the dog event got canceled!

Yikes, I wonder what the uncut version of that interview with Ken Buck is like.

Absolutely. Honestly it's a little silly that the DA is so involved in everything, but it's made the prosecution half of the show a million times better to watch (still don't like Price/Maroun together or separately, but a lighter dosage is an improvement). I was very skeptical about Tony Goldwyn coming on board, simply because I have a visceral ick response to him since Scandal, but he has won me over. And I also have a lot more hope for this revival's longevity. I wonder if she will be back for an episode that actually writes her off. I hope they take this opportunity to promote Connie Shi to series regular. Cast a lesser-known, lower-fee actor for the Lieutenant and let Yee shine! Baxter's wife didn't exactly prove herself to be that much of a protective mother given that she dramatically stormed out while her vulnerable daughter was going through it on the stand. So supportive! Definitely putting her daughter first! (Also I guess the daughter's not going to pass the bar now?)

Oh sorry, I thought you meant the one they exhumed in NYC. That's just bizarre! I completely missed that.

Wait, I totally missed that -- the dad was at the exhumation of someone else's daughter??

A pretty decent episode by current-era standards! Liv bringing Fin in on it so she wasn't solo-crusading, actually coming up with a Manhattan-based crime to justify out-of-state activity (despite Washington Heights feeling extremely unlikely with that particular serial killer's MO, but I'll allow the artistic license), the cousin confessing as a way to get the body exhumed, Jordana Spiro being generally compelling as all hell, Larry Pine popping up as his 5th or 6th L&O-universe character -- I'll take it! I just hope we don't lose Sykes now. My heart really broke for that one girl's dad who was still so upbeat and convinced his daughter was still alive. I kind of wish they'd shown which SVU detective got the horrible job of breaking the news to him. That kind of thing has got to be so much more brutal for cold cases.

Did they seriously say that Fordham offered Amanda tenure??? I am deceased. This woman with zero minutes of graduate school and one year of teaching experience in higher ed and zero publishing to her name was offered TENURE. Just... offered. Unbelievable. Also hilarious to be working the case out of boredom -- oh and it's easy, because the NYPD forgot to file her paperwork or something? So she's magically still official? A thing they didn't know when she first tagged along. Imagine being a rape victim and a detective just brings a friend along to talk to you about your rape kit while you're sitting there in the hospital. It also cracked me up that Amanda felt so connected to the case because she "knows what it's like to be in love." Oh! Well, that does make her unique. Married? She's the only woman on the NYPD who's ever been a bride, she has very special insight! I wish they'd have an episode next season where that guy's lawyer gets his conviction overturned due to a not-cop working the case, but of course there was a plea. We get one non-Benson-centered episode, but it has to be Rollins-centered. Not an improvement from where I sit! Anyone else but those two! I'd very much like to be spared Amanda's identity crisis moving forward. Seriously -- they were even saying the guy was probably on alert because he knew they were onto him! And all of a sudden some middle-aged bride is coming onto him? Please. What was the point of his being hard of hearing? I felt like I missed a step in there because it never came up again. Or were we meant to just think that was an excuse for not answering when his boss first called out to him to come talk to the cops?

Oh I found one that summarizes it a bit on Business Insider. Slightly better place to link to, I guess (if only by a hair)! I chuckled a little at: "I've never owned a toy baby reindeer, and I wouldn't have had any conversation with Richard Gadd about a childhood toy either." Admittedly I know nothing about slander laws in the UK, but she's seriously suing him for the fictional character allegedly being her while at the same time accusing him of inaccuracies in the backstory of the character she's claiming is definitely her? I feel like she's doing his own attorney's work for them. They just never should've advertised this as being even loosely based on true events. Saved themselves and everyone else the trouble. But we appear to be stuck in this era.

100%. Also I think he shows remarkable compassion (that no victim is under any obligation to show!) for her simply in presenting her as a character we can care about, despite everything. Shows a lot of depth and complexity to create a story about your own victimhood in which you're basically the least sympathetic character. Obviously that's all very murky since we're not separating story from actuality (which is unfortunately the problem with billing this as true), but this story shows tremendous grace and humility on his part. But if he had shown zero compassion for his abuser-stalker, it would've been fine! Yes, in no uncertain terms. Didn't stop her. Brought the police into it. Didn't stop her. Yeah, I was trying very hard to avoid any of the coverage of the real-life part of it, but based on her comments the writing is very fair. (e.g., the way she immediately jumps to insulting an actress's physical appearance, brags about her connections, etc.)

Agreed. I thought this was phenomenal, and demonstrating Donny's infuriating behavior was the whole point. I'm so relieved they never gave him some big fake heroic moment to make him finally "likable," and even that they showed how far from healing he was, even in the end. Very honest. Yes, I thought they did a great job illustrating why she "picked" Donny. (And of course at the same time, it's wrong-headed to assume that abusers can only pick someone understandably appealing. That's not how these fixations work!) Me too -- obviously Donny is light years from turning into a Martha, but after all his own hurtful, damaging behavior he had the compassion to understand the trauma that could've led someone else to it as well. Possibly my favorite series of 2024 so far.

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