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Happens to all of us eventually. Didn't Jack McCoy once say "There comes a time in everyone's Primetimer career when you have to expect a couple over easy in the kisser."?

Co-signed. I was actually coming here to say basically the same thing. I thought the finale was great as a wrap up to the Dominion War, meh as to the Prophets/Pah Wraith, and weak as to the overall story. I know they kind of forgot about the whole Bajor joining the Federation story before that, but it would have been nice to see an actual resolution even if it might have felt sort of tacked on. I would have loved to have seen KIra in her Starfleet uniform at the end along with some conversation about the challenges ahead.

Connecticut city says it's naming sewage plant after comedian John Oliver

I'm with @Xeliou66 on this one. The anger issues were an established part of the character from early on in the series. As charming as the actor and the character are there is a tendency to forget that the portrayal was always a complicated and nuanced and his flaws were always there. The writers aren't pulling things out of their nether regions when other characters talk about him being perceived as maybe not always seeing women equally or having problems with as Cragen so memorably put it "his famous temper". Was it a fair comparison? Not necessarily, but Van Buren was not an infallible character either and it certainly was a quick and effective way of making a point that needed to be made.

Why would you say that? Hasn't 2020 been bad enough already?!

He is getting good money for his Co-Star Emeritus status. From everything we know he is making the same money he was making back when he was in every episode and more scenes per episodes plus a little more, but doing much less. He has taken more time off instead of big raises and both he and Dick Wolf seem happy with that arrangement. And while the ratings are not what they were the series still gets a good deal of attention - the relentless focus on wealthy single white women makes for boring bad television, but good demos, social media engagement, etc. And he is closely associated with the show by the general public that has drifted away and doesn't realize that he is hardly there anymore. He does a good amount of press for the show and whenever they do anything big he is the one who is there with Mariska (The Tonight Show, other interviews, SNL...) If he was just doing nostalgia concerts and disposable reality shows he doesn't get nearly the same media attention. So his association is quite beneficial. Plus he has a steady paycheck that is probably better than 1/2-2/3rds of TV actors for what is now a glorified recurring role which I'm sure plays a role in his desire to keep going.

Yeah the only way Ice-T leaves if is he has some sort of major health issue. He's too important to the SVU brand and SVU is too important to his brand for him to leave. He has said in various interviews that he plans on sticking around until the end and nothing in his actions contradicts that. The only question is how much he is present, both mentally and physically.

Co-signed. At least we no longer have the ads about the couples having sex in a box after censoring a line about getting a chubby. I know some of the members don't think it's a big deal, but sometimes it does truly affect the viewing experience for the worse. "Carrier" is one that comes to mind as we've discussed here before. I believe I've mentioned here my theory that this is not a deliberate choice on the part of the networks airing the show, but simple laziness - the cable networks are using the broadcast syndication edits of the earlier season episodes which were censored so they could air in Omaha at 7pm without drawing too many complaints. Which in many ways is worse since they obviously have the uncensored versions that aired on TNT somebody at the networks or NBCUniversal should be able to make the effort to give us the real shows. I mean it's not like the series isn't making enough money for all involved to make the effort.

Agreed about Fin. Ice-T has obviously made the decision to stick around until the bitter bitter end in exchange for being allowed to do other projects and minimizing his time in NYC winters. (Sorvino has to be pissed that that's an option in the franchise now...) He is content to phone it in and only make an effort when the writers do and toe the company line. I think Kat was added for some more practical reasons - they need someone to run, especially when Giddish is pregnant again, since Carisi became an ADA and Fin is basically Provenza from The Closer/Major Crimes now who doesn't do that sort of thing anymore. Also given that they have decided to renew the show until network television completely collapses they had to face what was obvious to any observer who wasn't writing the checks and add another character - I mean we were talking about how claustrophobic and stale the reduced cast was feeling before they wrote off Stone. It is possible that the (justified) complaints about how the show had become very much unrepresentative of the diversity of NYC played a part, but there were much more practical reasons for adding another detective and Dick Wolf does not pay money for ideological concerns.

Conflict between the squad and ADAs as well as ADAs taking direction from the cops instead of from the law and their bosses has been SOP long before they decided that making Benson the savior of all victims was the most important thing in the world. Like so much else that we criticize about current SVU I think the fact that it's done so clumsily makes us forget that they used to do pretty much the same thing, but better. I think it's really become SOP as a sort of reset button to try to course correct and bring the show back to some sort of reality - having the ADA try to insist on the detectives doing some actual police work instead of just becoming too emotionally involved with the victims and shouting at suspects until they breakdown. Of course where it used to take several years before the ADAs went from adult supervision to part of the family willing to forget about trivia like the law now it takes a year at most. I think where there has been change in the conflict is the way they try to make any man who isn't part of the squad completely in love with Benson and constantly shove clumsy UST down our throats. I think part of the floundering with Carisi is that they can't plug Carisi into those formulas. I mean what do you expect them to do - write good courtroom scenes and legal drama? Have the police and prosecutors be separate, yet equally important? That sort of thing would never work!

To be fair, why should she treat him differently than Barba, Stone, and Jack McCoy?

This won't end well...

OK I think I see the problem and why I seem to be alone in defending it and arguing it was a considered character based choice. You are obviously watching the Special Edition of "Black Tie" where Hayden Christensen plays the perp in the final scene and Van Buren's response to Logan is "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" It plays much better in the original version!

I read as both. It's about Logan being his usual cocky self who doesn't always respect rank and the chain of command and Van Buren's response as someone who has dealt with a lot of crap from Irish cops to get to where she is and doesn't know all that we do about him. I always appreciated that the writers had strong women react negatively to Logan's cockiness without making him a total "male chauvinist pig". As I've said it's an impressively nuanced piece of characterization and conflict between our protagonists where nobody is completely right or wrong. Definitely much more interesting than the simplistic "You're so handsome!" "Thanks, but I'm married and Catholic and completely respectful of all women" that followed his departure. Consistency is the hobgoblin of boring characters!

They're BOTH the Logan we know, That's what was so great about the show - the characters were fully realized human beings with flaws and complex personalities. We've already discussed some of the issues of perception versus intent etc. but there is another important factor at play - one of those quotes is Logan still getting used to someone and one is after he has adjusted and accepted them. He doesn't exactly embrace change, but once he has accepted you he will always have your back against outsiders.

I think that it was a deliberate choice to show that Briscoe was a little more experienced and clued in than Logan. Mike had always been partners with the squad's second whip and, at the start of the show with Cragen's old partner, so there was a certain informality there that carried over when Lennie came on. When Van Buren arrived Logan thought that he could keep up that approach. Briscoe knew better. He had been around more and he seemed to understand more than Logan what she had to go through to get to where she was. I always appreciated that. As far as sexism is concerned I think there was a subtlety that sometimes came off as inconsistency, Logan was relatively progressive for a NYPD officer at that time and I don't think that there was any truth he had a problem working for a woman. But Van Buren wasn't the only one who thought he had a problem with strong women - remember Olivet and her line about his problem with women with triple digit IQ's? I think the intent was that Logan's natural cockiness often came off as sexism. Especially to those that knew about his womanizing and his tendency to treat women "like furniture" as Cerreta put it. And given Van Buren's background and having to put up with some pretty blatant bias it isn't surprising at all that she would react that way and assume sexism instead of immaturity. I can see why it came up and why that they didn't give it a lot more dialogue although I do think there was a certain subtext of Logan maturing a bit and learning how to tone down some of the unintended subtext that he didn't necessarily mean or realize he was conveying.

Yes it's all about rights issues. I'm assuming that when TNT dropped the show and WE got the rights to all the episodes that they probably got the internet/streaming rights for the early seasons as part of it since at that point every media company hadn't decided they needed their own streaming service. A;ll of these new streaming services are launching before some of their main attractions are ready to go. Once the existing deals expire they move over just like HBO Max and The West Wing. They didn't pay Dick Wolf a boatload of money twice (for the rights and a new production deal) and renew the zombified corpse of SVU for 3(!!!) more seasons to get less than half of the show's episodes!

Here's an idea. Limit the live cast to say 7 people. Don't do such elaborate makeup and hair and focus more on politicians' personality, foibles, etc. rather than appearance and bringing in outside big names. Let that smaller cast move out of their comfort zones and try different things. I mean I know it's a radical idea, but I could see that kind of SNL succeeding for a year or so.

So what you're saying is you don't foresee any change...

He clings to shows and money. He's more than willing to cut loose individuals when they have served their purpose. I can remember him getting rid of another Moriarty. Perhaps if Nicole Wallace had started ranting about Janet Reno she would have been kept off screen and never seen alive again?

The reference wasn't to the general idea of "back from the dead" which is familiar to most of us but specific to the "polarizing character killed off by poll" part. True. But it seems that nobody who does Sherlock Holmes can seem to resist the temptation to keep bringing back Moriarty despite the diminishing returns just as Conan Doyle did. I mean you would think that if any show would know that when Moriarty gets to be too much you've got to cut them loose permanently it would be a Dick Wold show....

Yeah, but I have a feeling they would have just pulled a Jason Todd (Google it) anyway so we might have to deal with her less, but probably what we got would have been more painful (Goren realizing she had a twin sister who was the one he shot and trying to convince everyone that she was the one behind their big case while everyone told him he was crazy? In a 2-parter?) Remember she was based on Moriarty - killing her off when you run out of good stories isn't necessarily final!

Sure they can. Time, money, etc. are all limited. And while they can't necessarily officially abandon the search if there is no appetite to prosecute the case it's pretty easy to file the appropriate forms saying all leads have been exhausted and move on to new cases. They can't officially drop the case and if he gets caught running a red light and the computer shows he's a fugitive they have to arrest him, but they can certainly decide to wait until that happens and be more proactive in going after less sympathetic perps whom there is more appetite to prosecute.

As I said before I think the writers never really figured out what to do with the character other than be sad it wasn't Adam and be happy they didn't have to the hard work of taking the abstract and filtering it through a character's POV and practical concerns and could just have her recite the points they wanted to raise. I wish that the difficulty of following Adam showed, but that would have required actually depicting it it on screen, just like having us remember and believe that she was a former federal prosecutor and a distinguished attorney as well as a professor of legal ethics would have required her actually making a constructive suggestion, or making an astute observation more than once a season or so, If there is one lesson from the spinoffs it's that "just like the mothership" is a recipe for quick cancellation and you need to do something different and distinctive. Especially doing the same thing, but set in a different city (see Law & Order: LA).

I can only speak for my employer, but yes we do send a letter to the physical address on file (as opposed to the mailing address which can be a PO Box, office, etc.) However due to the way some of our larger competitors abuse words like "official" and "confirmation" many people have a tendency to automatically throw away anything that comes from a bank especially one that's not theirs. And I'm not sure if it's a regulatory requirement or not since I don't work in compliance thankfully (and the rules were laxer at the time) so maybe he picked a bank that let him use a PO Box for mailing the original documents and checks and then deleted it and did everything remotely? As a retail banker I'm not bothered at all. Now the way the detectives get into safe deposit boxes with a simple subpoena in days or track down US currency to individual tellers...