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They always do try to call bullshit on Benson's nonsense when there is a crossover and make sure to point out that she is not automatically right. I think Rick Eid is working out some of his trauma from his season running SVU. There are a number through the franchise. Off the top of my head there are a few that come to mind. Briscoe was a corporal in the army. Stabler served in the USMC. Ceretta aluded to military experience, but I don't think they specified branch. Cragen was in the army during Vietnam. Amaro from SVU was an Army veteran involved with prisoners in Iraq. There are probably more that someone here with a better memory will point out. And there is some ambiguity with Fontana - Farina served in Vietnam and the character is largely based on him, and he talks about his time in Vietnam with a suspect, but tells Green he was making it up and it's not really clear if he is running a game on the suspect or doesn't want to share painful memories with Ed.

It was University of New York. I guess Hudson had to shut down their law school as no firms wanted to hire their grads due to the conflict of interest issues with all of them being witnesses, victims, or perps in multiple active cases...

True, but there are many ways that they can deliver some comic relief. And just because nobody can do it like Jerry Orbach doesn't mean you stop trying entirely. The later years still had a lot more humorous moments than the current seasons both wry observations and slice of life comedy where the humor came from people being walking NYC stereotypes or simply dumb and/or self-centered. It is a problem of writing not acting - I mean Ice-T is still on SVU but he doesn't get the same amount of snarky one liners he used to. And they still had Sam Waterston until last season who could deliver a quip, even if he was not Steven Hill. I suspect it's the same thing - the writing not being as good. With a little bit of budget cuts tossed in. It's harder to write a gripping courtroom scene and usually requires exposition in the DA's office to set up which is even more difficult to write compellingly. Also many of the great courtroom twists come from seemingly minor characters who we discover later on are much more important - with significantly fewer witness interviews and side characters it is that much harder to pull off.

The Good: Another Carisi heavy episode. One really nice thing about moving him to ADA has been that they cannot fall back on the series trope that needing to prove a case means the prosecutors don't care about victims. They are keeping Benson front and center without having her do everything herself which is a good sign that they might have finally learned their lesson. Or maybe Mariska simply can no longer keep up with the physical demands of shooting schedules to be in every scene. Either way it is a nice to see an actual squad again even if they didn't use the rest of the team well (more on that below). They actually managed to pull off the story with some degree of realism. There was additional concern about getting things right and access due to connections balanced out by also not wanting to show favoritism. The Bad: You have a new detective. Why not have her taking the lead on this one? If you are going to retread old ground (and this point just about everything has been covered multiple times) why not freshen things up by giving us a new POV and take the opportunity to develop a new character? Or give us a new angle with her family connections putting the brass on the squad's side against the powerful perp with connections? Bruno and Fin were underused. It seems a shame to use your best actors and not actually write anything for them. Especially as again you have some characters who haven't been through this a hundred times before and could do something other than wary resignation and moving the plot from point A to point B. It's not like you are even giving them a full week off for budget reasons. Actually everyone other than Benson and Carisi was underused. Nobody got anything meaty in their little bit of screen time and you could have swapped lines without anybody noticing which is probably the biggest sin in screenwriting. Overall this was another dully competent episode. Nothing too egregious, but nothing that rose above the level of "not bad" and lots of potential to tell an actually good story wasted. Oh well judging by the previews maybe next week is the week we will get something interesting - even if it is just interestingly bad...

The Good: An actual ensemble feel with the whole team involved. Hopefully this is a sign that they have figured out you can have a star lead without shoving everyone else into the background. The opening credits! Kevin Kane's credit and and enough cast members in the final shot to fill a minivan. Lots of Carisi without making him an investigator instead of a prosecutor. He actually got to play an active role in bringing the case to a conclusion. A decent investigation with a reasonable flow from one lead to another without being either too obvious or too "shockingly" twisty. The Bad: More of the whole NYPD as victims nonsense. I mean even the Thin Blue Line crowd was probably rolling their eyes a bit at the courthouse riot. While new blood is badly needed and the franchise has a loooong history of good characters with rocky debuts, I'm not sure why they decided to do the same thing as the last few failed attempts at adding a younger female detective. Yet another tough girl cop's cop? But this time it's different because we're adding another cliche by given her family connections to the brass? How is she not going to meet the same fate of arousing Mariska's jealousy and being written increasingly dumb every week and needing the guidance of the all knowing Benson to make a callow youth into an elite detective? Not enough Fin. They never seemed to actually finish anything. I kept expecting them to do something with one of the obvious potential plot threads (like the victim actually exploring exhibitonism or the hammer being thrown out as evidence) but they never bothered to explore any one angle. Overall this was a perfectly cromulent episode. Not as bad as feared, but not as good as wanted. If they manage to tighten up the writing while keeping with the overall approach of Benson as the lead instead of the end all be all it could be a good start. If they backslide on the Benson worship with this sort of clunky writing maybe it will actually kill the zombie corpse of SVU.

Triumph has been on various other shows and platforms as well. Apparently Robert Smigel established ownership at sone point and NBC either didn't care to fight it or was told by their lawyers or accountants that the case wasn't worth fighting.

These are comedy writers you are talking about. Most of them have done their best to forget high school and the rest probably couldn't have told you the name of their math class even when they were actually in high school...

Yay! He certainly deserves it. I wonder how they are going to make the numbers work budget wise? Is there a writers room meeting right now trying to figure out how they are going to work in Fin's product placement scenes with Tide and CarShield?

I agree that she is a good actress. And if there is any role where there is little hazard of falling into the trap ER did with Abby - excessive focus on them and their personal lives at the expense of more interesting elements - the Lt. on the Mothership would have to be it...

Exactly. He was saying that he wasn't referring to Amber coming out, but suggesting that Jenny was going to "come out" as Black. Yes it is a bit obscure and inside, geared to a relatively small audience of online nerds and hard to parse for the general public, but isn't that kind of the whole point of Corrections?

Latest Update From David Simon 🙂🙂🙂

From your lips to NBCUniversal's ears regarding the chases every episode! And yes we do need some more regularly recurring characters in the auxiliary investigative support roles. I can see where you are coming from. As I said before it's probably not going to happen. She is a good actor and someone is needed in the role since I don't see them moving away from using video footage to save money on speaking roles for witnesses and more location shoots. It also does reflect reality in some ways - my work is law enforcement adjacent at times (more often than I would like) and I find that investigators do actually seem to be prioritizing video - it's easier and generally more reliable than dealing with people. But the same reason they use her so much is the same reason they won't bump her up - it saves money to have her under contract, but not main cast. If they are going to promote her - reveal she has been going to law school at night and have her replace Maroun...

You don't want that. It's only going to result in Benson tracking them down by saying it's a parental abduction investigation, violating about 57 NYPD protocols, jurisdicational boundaries, and state and federal laws, with only Fin and Carisi being allowed to momentarily suggest it might not be the best idea before shrugging and going along with her, and then in the end finding them almost single handedly before saying just the right words to bring them all back together so they can all tell Liv how special she is while Carisi has to do all the actual work of keeping them out of jail. Haven't you watched this show in the last decade?

Well, the divers say there's a shallow shelf that drops off. Runs 20 feet out. Pretty deep after that. Maybe he didn't throw like a girl? Or maybe the new guys don't want to be stuck with a decades old cold case? I doubt it's going to happen. We should just be happy they have decided to folow the mothership casting talented actors in the "recurring third detective who delivers exposition and joins in on stakeouts" role following in the tradition of Profaci, LaMotte, and Cordova.

I would say it's mostly the latter combined with some of the first, and all mixed in with some general poor writing. In some ways this show is the mirror image of Blue Bloods - everyone outside of the main cast are incompetent or evil reactionaries and misogynists instead of incompetent or evil woke leftists. And the show has always had a complicated relationship with the district attorneys who prosecute the offenses which has only been dragged down by Warren Leight who hated writing courtroom scenes being in charge for so many years. Plus these writers don't seem capable of mastering the nuance required for antagonists to be good people carrying out flawed laws. Of course this episode was written by Julie Martin whose sole job seems to be catering to Mariska's whims so it was likely all about playing the old hits to make Benson look better.

The Good: Fin. It was nice to see him getting a lot of focus and Benson actually respecting him and his experience. Carisi. He was great as usual and also got of solid material including scenes with Fin and Bruno. The COTW. Like last week it was nothing that hasn't been done before, repeatedly and better, but it was a solid story and a nice team effort and it was competently executed. The Bad: It seems like they're falling back into the bad habit of everyone in the DA's office other than Carisi being a political hack. And showing a complete lack of self-awareness from Benson and nobody around her able or willing to call her out - she's never been hesitant in the past giving orders to ADAs. Speaking of the legal side, Warren Leight was terrible with shitting on the DA's office and not caring about the legal element of the show, but at least he could write some good dialogue and seemed to have watched some other Law & Order. PS did great selling the wooden dialogue, but I can't believe this was written by what is supposed to be the A team. For instance it would have flowed better and felt more realistic to have Carisi say something like "Satan is doing just fine Pro Se" in reponse to the line about playing devil's advocate. Much like the victim's sliding door this script could have used a good polish at some point. Benson as action hero, saving the day while the highly trained SWAT team members just stand around following her lead. And again - we are just supposed to forget her record in previous hostage situations? The ending. Maybe it was the needed trade off to let us get such a team effort in the A plot, but it was a total waste of time. I mean usually at least the shipper pandering gives us a nice dose of Christopher Meloni, but he was literally and figuratively just phoning it in. At least hopefully this closes the books on Maddie and her family for good. Overall this was a blandly competent ending to subpar season. In context it seems like that somebody at a high level realized they were going off the rails again and the season ended with a bit of course correction, but that has served mostly to show how tired this series is and how much it needs to end if they aren't willing to actually do something new and different.

Or in other words - "Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

Correct. But there is nothing in NY law that would prevent a DA from prosecuting a case themselves. It is routing in smaller counties although less common in larger offices - usually reserved for cases that are extremely high profile and politically sensitive, where losing is likely to result in the DA losing an election (i.e. LEOs killed in the line of duty) and would probably take up all of their time and attention in any case. But they made it pretty clear that Price was overwhelmed and it seemed like he was doing a pretty bad job of running the office. And as always it was more about the budget than anything else - they weren't going to spend the money to bring in another attorney, And even this writing staff wasn't going to try to get us to believe that Maroun was lead attorney on a major case. So you're arguing he can't be THAT concerned about image and politics?

The Good: It was good to see most of the squad involved and contributing to the case. The teamwork with Benson and Fin was particularly welcome and it was nice to see Fin back in the role of voice of reason, making it feel like the writers at least knew they were stretching the suspension of disbelief. The guest cast. Some nice performances that showed that they haven't forgotten how to direct restrained and naturalistic performances. There was actually a glimmer of self-awareness that maybe Benson could be less than perfect and have problems other than caring too much. The COTW. It felt like old school SVU in a lot of ways, even if it couldn't reach those heights by virtue of the story having been done so many times before and the same old fatal flaw of not being able to have the protagonist actually be fallible and flawed. But it was still a solid story and competently executed. The Bad: The opener. It felt like something rejected from one of the lesser seasons of Criminal Minds or that made it to a subpar CBS procedural a decade ago. The flashback added nothing and the bar scene simply recycled the same tired tropes they have done so often of St, Mariska preaching to her wayward flock. I think Rollins' return brought back some bad habits in the writers' room. In the end of course Benson was right all along. I really miss the old days when Benson or Stabler could be the lead, and be heroic but flawed and actually wrong even when they won. They never really came up with a reason for why a skilled FBI profiler never made the connections and came to the conclusions Benson did. There were some suggestions that maybe it was about reopening old wounds, but it was the one glaring plot hole for me. The preview for the finale. Another big shootout? Is Benson once again going to magically save the day with an incredible shot or action heroics after completely f-ing up tactically and charging into a situation that would make Custer decide discretion was the better part of valor? Overall this was a solid, even good episode. Let's hope the finale continues the recent upward trend.

The Good: Fin and Bruno. I wish they were the leads from the jump, but their scenes were the best part of this episode. Carisi. He had some good bits, and was well written, especially for a Rollisi episode, and a "Carisi goes in the field" episode. They even actually had Carisi saying he couldn't prosecute the case because he was involved in the investigation! They remembered how to write Benson as the lead without making her Batman solving crime almost by herself with just a few sidekicks. Rollins. They actually wrote her fairly well and she managed to avoid the usual psychodrama pitfalls as an investigator. Still don't buy her as a profiler, but they managed to make her believable as an investigator. The COTW. Interesting motivation and MO. Nice flow and squad dynamics too. The Bad: It was cheesy 80's cop show ridiculous that Rollins could just work a case because she didn't have anything better to do. Did the history department at Fordham force Rollins out because she was tarnishing their image by presenting "Braveheart" as factual? It's kind of a minor thing really, but this show used to be pretty good about research - even if the story was monkey in a basketball OTT ridiculous the factoids and references were usually accurate. They couldn't go a whole episode without at least some of "Benson the all knowing guru" bit. I mean they couldn't at least go with the theme of the episode and have her telling the victim the perp would never take her freedom? Overall this was a solid episode. It could have gone off the rails easily, but they actually took a flawed premise and executed it well instead of botching a solid concept like most of the season so far. And I liked that the ending seemed to be seriously backing off the Rollins return tease. I mean even if KG took a significant paycut and went part-time it would still mean going backwards plus losing some of the more interesting new characters and having enough bodies for the weeks when co-leads are off to save money. Maybe this "new thing" will be some sort of role that gives her a reason to guest star without us needing to forget everything we know about her to believe she has the job?

How much you want to bet the perp is another powerful rich old white man?

I thought we pretty much always knew Mariska didn't really like it, but she wasn't willing to do what was needed to keep her - take a pay cut or do some sort of deal with NBCUniversal where she produced her own docuseries about abuse or her work with Joyful Heart so she made the same salary, but Dick Wolf didn't have to wait for the reruns to recoup his costs like every other producer in network television. And seeing as how Mariska has shown no inclination to put her money where her mouth is and there really is much they can do to earn more money from the network run short of some sort of truly horrendous product placement ("I think we found our suspect Captain. Her driver for the CarshareEats delivery we found outside her apartment was fired from Door Dash becuase their background check found he was on the registry. Another Carshare Eats perv? That's why I stick with HelloFresh. The foods a lot healthier and it's safer too!") or making streaming illegal on Thursdays, I don't see that changing. And it was actually the right move creatively - as bad as the show is today it would be worse if we had Rollins instead of Bruno etc. I mean I don't want to even think about what the Maddie arc would have been like...

I think that some/many of the cast just figured they would find a way to keep the gravy train rolling even if it meant "freezing" time despite the young actors obviously aging. I mean as much as I agree that this is a good creative and business move (you leave the audience wanting more and have two winners plus a new spin off that has good odds of being profitable while preserving the value of two hits) I'm not sure I would agree if it meant I stopped getting big checks while working with a great cast and some all time greats as guest stars and recurring. It must be especially hard emotionally given all of the disruption with COVID and the strikes. I probably would prefer to keep having fun and making lots of money and then criticize the bosses after they keep it going too long myself.

Yes that is the sort of angle that could make devoting the bulk of a season to a single case worthwhile. They could have done a Carisi-centric episode devoted to this facet of the case. In my perfect world where they actually had the cojones to let this case go unsolved, or at least wait until the end of the season they would have found the connection and it turns out to be a dead end, but they still prosecute the perv who found/shared the picture and the manufacturer. Just one of many wasted opportunities this season. There about a million ways they could have gone and all of them are more interesting. I mean do a simple two-parter or go all out and have the squad hit one dead end after another and go for an entire season before they solve it and/or Maddie turns up dead in the finale. Anything would be better than superhero Benson Taking!It!Personally! before ultimately saving the day as usual, but dragged out over several episodes.

Counterpoint: It could be a good thing if it means something more like this season with a fully planned out and coherent arc with some smaller COTW stories as well along the way. Also they are more likely to be able to get big names to guest as mob bosses at a price Dick Wolf will pay. Also it could lead to fewer unneeded SVU crossovers in the OC episodes. And perhaps this will lead to more of the franchise library at Peacock on a long term basis and perhaps resources going to the mothership or a revival of Hate Crimes. Counter-counterpoint: It could mean that Meloni is contactually obligated to spend more time telling Benson how she is the greatest most special cop and person ever and pandering to the shippers on SVU during sweeps.