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The only lipstick problem I had this week was how you can't put lipstick on a pig. Nothing to do with Linda who is quite lovely thank you very much, but strictly metaphorical. Giving us Michael Imperioli again doesn't change that you are trying once again to sell us on the idea that any questioning of police procedures and abuses is strictly politically motivated persecution of selfless apolitical public servants exploiting the naivete of liberals and minorities, pushing misleading statistics, and promoting the idea that anything short of fatally shooting someone can't possibly be excessive force. You can write an interesting scenes for Will Estes, but that doesn't hide that you are trying to make Jamie and Eddie a thing and not giving us any character development for Jamie the past few years. And Bridget Moynihan, Steve Schirripa, and Donnie Wahlberg are all charming and have sold a lot of leaden stories, but they couldn't make this one interesting and making them rivals working together doesn't hide that Anthony is basically a less annoying Danny designed to fill the blue collar detective role when DW took a reduced role and episodes feel kind of disjointed and overstuffed when they both have plotlines.

I agree. Unfortunately it's not just the election and the wealth of material it provides it's that late night shows are increasingly judged on internet views. Have you seen any PTV featured stories on Venn Diagrams? For a weekly show it's relatively easy to consistently produce viral content as well as a good viewing experience for the television audience. For a daily show it's tougher. You run the risk of overexposure and becoming repetitive for the audience that watches on a regular basis. So I hope for more variety, but I'm not so sure it's going to happen.

My favorite scene of the show was actually the guy driving the kid "off the road" and into the display of boxes. As someone who did time in retail I love the background gags of customers doing crazy things while they shop and how it's pretty much just ignored or shrugged off and treated as normal. Both absurdist and depressingly realistic.

From the greater Capital Region. The franchise did a pretty good job with accuracy of upstate as far as travel times, etc. but pronunciation was a weak spot. I remember them butchering Coxsackie as well. It actually spoiled "Knock Off" from the mothership since I knew there had to be something up as they were making up a town and exaggerating how backwoods things were in the area, which they never did. And I was also a bit thrown off by "Art" as well. Although Troy has actually been gentrifying lately with a farmer's market, artisanal bakeries, etc. I was really surprised the last time I visited my brother and his family to see the news talking about all the hipster stuff going on in Troy. So maybe we are just behind the times although as far as I know there is no art museum. Yet.

I liked this one a lot. Like everyone else it seems I thought the Klingon/Ubbi Dubbi scenes were the funniest, but my favorite scene was actually Amy and Sheldon's discussion of philosophy. One of the things I'm really enjoying about this season is the bits like this or the retinal scanner where we are going back to the humor coming from the characters being brainy and nerdy, but in an affectionate way. As opposed to the Penny hides Leonard's stuff plot which is the kind of mean spirited thing they were doing last season. As far as the apartment swapping plot is concerned there are the meta reasons for most of what we find illogical like wanting it to be quickly clear where they are (hence not redecorating as much as Sheldon probably would insist on) and keeping the main characters in the main set, but much like the complaining about the way the characters handle money in real life people aren't always completely logical or consistent about the way they handle living arrangements.

Another L&O fan from upstate! Yay! I no longer live in the Albany area, but being from there it always made it interesting when they ventured out of NYC upstate. My NJ friends from school have said the same thing about the Jersey references.

Waiting is probably a good idea since I imagine that the final decision on whether to air that episode depends on what happens Tuesday...

The most recent episode dealing with registries was "Sheltered Outcasts" from last season IIRC which pointed out some of the problems. As far as taking a stand there was "Bullseye" from the late Stabler years which was pretty critical of the registry being easily publicly accessible and the way that all the incentives and laws are on the side of putting every offender who can possibly be classified on the list regardless of if they really belong there. There have been others as well as a lot of mentions as both a useful tool and being deeply flawed. In general the show seems to be opposed to the current system, but not necessarily the concept.

Also if it was fake the interviewees almost certainly wouldn't be so blunt and/or self-aware and they wouldn't make fun of their clothing choices. And it probably would have been more pointed and direct with some sort of narrative thread.

That was me. And I don't think it was an inherently gray issue at the core, but a cut and dried black and white one and the gray was added because of the likable guest star and the need to have a big tearful confrontation. My guess is that without Anthony Edwards we don't have the informant, we don't see so much of the perp's family and what we do see is quite different (rich d-bag investment banker blows off his cop father as he's now too good for the outer boroughs is my guess) and Olivia being pissed off and moralizing instead and not acknowledging any nuance or showing any sympathy (with reason for a change!) And that's if they decide to go with the Liv has a connection to the perp's cop father angle at all. My bet is they wouldn't and they would have spent the whole episode making it clear that this is a black and white, right and wrong, cut and dried issue even if the victim is drunk and the perp is smart and attractive.

I liked it. It was a really solid pilot that did it's job of setting up the characters and situations and given the cast and producers I'm definitely willing to give it some time to see how it develops.

They did explain it. On Enterprise. It was not very interesting and they would have been much better off just sticking with Worf's "we do not discuss it with outsiders!" and exploring the issues we've discussed in this thread. Or go along with the Klingons as Soviets/Russians metaphor and have the original first contact being a disaster that lead to lasting mistrust but have them being reluctant allies against a larger threat. Tuvok didn't do that because it would be illogical.

Well to be fair to the writers and producers Scott Bakula does have it in his contract that any series finale he appears in has to be a huge disappointment. His agent insists on it, along with a special clause that if it's a sci-fi show it must feel like a giant middle finger to the fans as well. We should count ourselves lucky that it didn't end with a title card saying "The crew of the Enterpris never returned home"...

Actually that brings up another story possibility. I didn't watch all of Enterprise or remember all of the Trek I have watched. Did they ever explore the founding of the interstellar Klingon Empire and how they acquired warp technology? It could be an interesting story if they got it from some spacefaring race without the Prime Directive and that was how they moved from something like a realistically sustainable society with an extremely influential warrior class, but activity in science, arts, etc. as well as the culture was destabilized by the sudden advance and the expansionists dominated and were able to believe they could just take whatever they needed after they conquered everyone. And that along with the disastrous first contact with the Klingons was one of the major influences on Federation philosophy. Certainly would have been a more interesting story than all the time they spent trying to explain the makeup differences with all the boring Augment Virus stuff or a lot of of the Klingon stories they did on Voyager and the TNG era shows.

I'm wondering if the problem here as far as the message not getting across and making the perp too sympathetic is Anthony Edwards. They've done plenty of shows about the difficulties of getting convictions and judges being too lenient in these types of cases before but the time that would usually be spent on discussing how they have to reluctantly accept favorable plea bargains or light sentences was devoted to the much hyped ER reunion. And I'm not sure that Edwards would be believable as a total villain from the get go so they didn't want to make his son obviously a complete bastard like his real life inspiration.

According to the established continuity the complete dominance of the warrior over all others was a fairly recent phenomenon and before that Klingon society was more balanced. So it's not completely unbelievable that for a few centuries biology, medicine, theoretical physics, etc. withered as society was directed towards expansion and conflict. They do seem to recognize engineers as a necessary part of war so maybe some of the best minds were "wasted" as warriors while most of the rest did go into aerospace during this era. If they ever decide to go forward again instead of doing more prequels Klingon society confronting this issue would be an interesting topic to explore.

Easily the best episode of the season. The Erin plot was great - it was a surprise that we got to see her in court and in surprisingly well written and nuanced story no less! The Frank and Danny plots weren't as good, but they were basically what I signed up for with this show - the television equivalent of well prepared comfort food. I didn't hate Frank for a change and the Danny plot was fun even if I was rolling my eyes a lot at all the usual Danny tropes like him stumbling on to yet another crime. But it was well executed and only went totally over the top once (I'm not a lawyer or a cop but I'm pretty sure a sting involving the informant pointing a gun, even a fake gun, at the suspect breaks about 50,000 rules) so I was fine with it. About the only real downer was the preview for next week. I like Michael Imperioli and it's nice to see him getting so much work with recurring roles on two shows, but the last thing we need is a return to the "police under attack" theme again.

Perhaps they are responding to feedback or perhaps it was just obvious that they had gone too far and that some of what they were doing wasn't working? I'm sure that this episode was produced before they would have seen any comments on Raj's behavior in the past couple episodes. And they do seem to be going back to what works. I wonder if they have now have a pretty clear sense of the end date behind the scenes and are giving up on trying to keep things fresh and do new things just to do new things and make sure you have new story lines without changing the premise too much?

Leave this alone you guys! Mariska or the producers might read these comments and if they do we won't get fewer mentions and more delegation. We'll get more screen time for Noah so we can see that despite being the only cop in NYC who really understands the victims and fighting the evil men in charge of the system (when they're not promoting her and telling her that she is the most special snowflake ever) and facing the challenges of being a working single mother she is actively involved and not a neglectful parent. Noah in the squad room, Noah kidnapped from the yogurt shop, child abuse in Noah's fancy preschool (which is uncovered thanks to Noah's language abilities that Liv has helped him with), Noah somehow facing false charges from IAB...

The Good: The guest stars. It was nice to see Anthony Edwards and the actor playing his son did a good job with a challenging role - just think how bad those courtroom breakdowns would have been if he overacted for example. A solid script. As others have said it was nice to see a Liv centered story without going over the top on the sanctimony or spending the whole time thinking how much better it would be if we were watching the rest of the squad instead of her. It was nice to see a Barba that didn't seem to be working for Benson. The Bad: The massive protests, media crush and another "biggest story on the internet ever" SVU case. I get that it was ripped from the headlines with Brock Turner, but you don't have to copy beat for beat. And while I'm usually in favor of show, don't tell I can't help but thinking that the money they spent on all those extras would be better spent on a recurring character like with the park shootout. It might also make the point stronger if this was getting some coverage because it was similar, and did feel like the end of the world for the parties involved, but Barba and Fin were pointing out that this was a run of the mill case that people were just paying a bit of attention to for a change. I'm not sure I buy the ending. It didn't feel earned. We don't need to hear about Benson's personal life every damn episode! If you have plans for Benson and Tucker I'll care when you actually get there. I guess it's better than hearing about how Noah though. Overall this was a solid episode that didn't try to do too much and didn't have any glaring flaws. Probably the best of the season so far, but still not great. We really need a great one soon though because I'm really not interested in seeing great actors performing middling scripts (but often with a solid story idea that could easily be great) every week.

Or it means that the show's large number of internet views, focus on feminist issues, and viewer demographics means that doing this interview fits into his voter outreach strategy. Alternatively maybe it does means he likes the show. Or perhaps my favorite possibility of all, maybe it means that he is just screwing with Bill Maher? Thanks for posting that. I was already happy to hear the news, but I'm looking forward to it even more now.

I agree about liking Jack more. He was a more interesting character as he was less predictable and less self-righteous. Read the thread title - this is only for UNpopular opinions! Although to be fair I'm not sure if there is any consensus on this forum concerning L&O based pet naming...

Jordan has seniority and the development deal for his own series. He really does seem to be the natural choice as long as he was available.

I'm sure that it was more the chance to work with Hanks in a funny sketch. I don't think Baldwin really cares about anyone's opinion but Lorne's and the industry's. And yes the debates are finally, mercifully, over so they will have to do something different. Of course it's always possible that Trump won't give them anything particularly juicy to work with and he won't have much air time...

I don't agree with the thesis either (but Seth did do some good topical stuff!) I think the author has confused Lorne's repeating whatever the mainstream consensus is at the moment and going after the easy laughs with other late night show's attempt to avoid being perceived as advocating a particular POV and assumed that therefore SNL has more impact when they do something edgier. And has accepted that there has been some sort of conscious effort to go after both sides hard rather than having some good smart writers with different views like Downey and Franken to write some sharper material to go along with the sketch equivalent of a Jay Leno joke. Yes they have done some brilliant stuff this season and hit Trump hard. But I highly doubt it's had any real influence or was intended to although there has been some pieces that have clearly been written with a viewpoint and are true satire instead of "Chris Christie is fat!" It's the effect rather than the cause of the audience's shifting views.