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Unfortunately sometimes the news is depressing.... RIP Actor and Comedian Richard Belzer, Munch of “SVU” and “Homicide,” Famous for Dry Sense of Humor

Probably at least a dozen future recurring villains. Oh you mean who was supervising Noah? Who cares as long as he's not on screen? Nah. Ice-T has stated publicly he's there until the end, even if he's spending more and more time on the beach every year and he's pretty central to the brand still. The whole thing about him stumbling and barely able to walk was to explain why he didn't simply kick Dutch's ass and why he didn't notice something was off. And the pickle jar was all about setting up the metaphor at the end and giving Fin a reason to share a little bit instead of just coming out and telling us without any reason. You probably are just a bit confused as it's good writing and competent storytelling and it's been a long time since the show worried about that kind of thing.

Actually as soon as I saw him there at the scene in uniform I knew something was up. He did do a great job, but none of the surprises were actually surprising. I honestly would have preferred different casting just so that it wasn't so obvious something was up. Or perhaps if he had more to do up front so that it wasn't obvious that Chekhov's beat cop was waiting for Act 3?

The Good: Fin! We actually got a Fin-centric episode when we were promised one, and not just all about Benson with a veneer of Fin. I was more than a little worried during the opener, as it seemed we were going to get Fin filtered through Benson's self-help "empowerment" nonsense even if we did get him front and center, but they mostly played it straight down the middle. Hell we even got a Munch reference! The guest cast. Pretty great performances all the way around, even the roles where there was a lot of temptation to chew the scenery. Bruno. For the first time in quite awhile they have a new character that they seem to know what to do with. Not since Garland has it felt like they had a fully developed personality and a plan to start off with. Carisi. They finally managed to use him to cover for missing squad members while still keeping it feeling that he was an ADA and not a cop, and he was pushing for a legally sufficient case without being antagonistic - one nice thing about taking an established member of the "family" and moving them to the ADA role is that they have finally (mostly) broken out of the SVU trope of making the DA's office the enemy instead of a separate, yet equally important representative of the people. The COTW. A solid investigation without unnecessary twists and teamwork. It flowed nicely without being too predictable. Benson. She actually let the team do their jobs and acted like an experienced leader who had worked with Fin for 2 decades. The Bad: The promo for next week looks like a suckfest and a half. Although it probably kept Mariska busy enough to not ruin this week's episode. No effort I can recall to explain where Muncy and Velasco were and why Bruno was there and they weren't. I understand how even the newbies on entry level contracts need weeks off now with the budget cut to the marrow, but shouldn't we have gotten some exposition? And a least a nod to the Velasco subplot they seem to insist on giving us despite no one wanting it? Overall this was an actual good episode. Even very good. And not just on a curve. An A- with a solid script and many of the flaws being a matter of forces beyond the control of the writers - Mariska's ego and influence, the show being on the air too long and having covered every story at least twice, and the budgets being tighter than an amoeba's anus. They should be proud of this one and look to it as a model if NBC ever does the right thing and announces a valedictory final season.

I can also buy it and would add that even if they don't turn out to be as bad or worse there is often an extremely bloody and violent period where the collaborators and supporters of the old regime are purged and scores are settled. After all you may have joined the revolution to fight for liberty, but after years of seeing your comrades, relatives, lovers, etc. tortured, wounded, and killed and being constantly in mortal danger it's not hard to see how you are willing to overlook your ideals and even believe revenge is justice. Eventually it can burn itself out, or new leadership emerges that is more focused on moving forward than looking backward. If the show ever revisits Kansas City they could depict it as an independent democratic oasis, an even worse dictatorship than FEDRA, or completely collapsed and desolate and you could find parallels in history to support it.

No they get paid by the episode and only egomaniacs in the William Shatner mode worry about having the most lines. Actually if most lead actors are talking about lines in contract negotiations it's about limiting their screen time to avoid overwork (and paying guest cast less). There is actually a pretty well known story about this from the L&Overse. Vincent D'Onofrio had no experience as a series lead and it seems his agent did not have experience either although both had done a lot of work in the industry, So he never insisted on any limitations on his workload and it took a toll on his physical and mental health. This smells like one of those adjustments for the modern audience that NBC was talking about when they announced the revival and were insisting that it would not be totally retro and would be like how the series would have evolved if it never went off the air. And they probably would have made them do more chases and big "twist" endings if the series had stayed on the air too. And we'd probably complain and have absolutely no impact as well. I'm doubtful that a show has been improved by NBC program executives' mandates/suggestions since Must See TV was a thing. I wish NBC would realize that there is nothing they can do that is going to bring in a younger audience and realize that a high quality "throwback" is going to do better both creatively AND commercially. I mean FFS the biggest thing on Peacock right now is Poker Face so I don't think old school L&O is too retro for modern audiences.

It's not like that. Muncy doesn't see color! And Benson only see's what's deep in our hearts and minds. In all seriousness this is just a reflection of the overall sloppiness and lack of attention to detail and they either never bothered to explain to casting how important it was for them to strikingly resemble each other or it is just one more example of dialogue that never got polished from the early draft to filming. We've seen a lot of that, especially lately, where they never make the effort to go beyond the idea they want to get across and think about putting it into a character's "voice" or what else they might be conveying.

The Good: The COTW. A solid sexually based offense solved by team work with everyone having a hand in it. It was also nice that they had a good idea and didn't completely waste it while they spent time on nonsense. Partially yes, but not completely. Carisi. His time on sceen was limited, but it is nice they are letting him make the legal decisions as ADA without waiting for Benson. And he wasn't involved in any of the melodrama following off the time with Bronx SVU so that was another plus for him this week. Bruno. It's nice to have another detective around, especially one whose personal issues are in the background, instead of the police work being a distraction from the soapy plots. The promo for next week. Let's hope it's an actual spotlight episode for FIn and not 5 minutes in a sea of the usual nonsense or all about Benson saving the day. They handled a hostage situation competently! The Bad: Muncy. They continue to be unable to write younger women. Also they are unable to do any sort of subtle interpersonal dynamics. It's a good idea having Velasco being concerned for her. Maybe if they had done it with any sort of subtlety and nuance it would have been an interesting way of developing the new characters instead of a sledgehammer over the head? Velasco. Not just the OTT writing, but they do seem to be doing the subplot about him having skeletons in the closet. Yuck. I can't see this going well. Either it continues the trend of eating their young or it's a tease that almost certainly ends with Benson being the ultimate moral arbiter of the NYPD and his character being tarnished with the viewers. Either way it seems like a mistake. Benson. Not only did Provenza from Major Crimes pull off her hat better, but the whole nonsense with Bruno having to prove himself worthy of sitting in Rollins' chair. He should have gone off and slept with someone inappropriate, gambled away his settlement and then come back and made a judgemental comment about the victims and asked her if he was worthy now. She was better than usual, but still not a net positive. Overall this was a solid episode dragged down by the hangover from the Bronx arc and by a continuing lack of polish in the writing. Much better than what came before and hopefully a sign that they are going to try to give us some new variations on sexually based offenses investigated by elite detectives. Take away the Velasco/Muncy clumsiness and it would be a solid B. Possibly a B+/A- if they used the extra time to smooth over some of the rough edges.

I think there are two possibilities here. One is that everyone realized it was in their best interest to negotiate a surrender/truce of a kind and NYPD knows he is a gangster with all that implies including the whole twisted sort of honor code and that the show simply did a bad job of fleshing out the idea like with everything else this episode. The more likely explanation is that Benson knew he was being truthful because she used her wisdom and insight and peered into his soul, much as she will when she sits at the right hand of the Almighty at the end of all things* and judges the living and the dead. *Almost everything. SVU will still get a 2 season renewal.

The Good: We have probably reached the end of our Bronx Tale for now. Fin. Not necessarily a great week for him as he had the same weak script to work with as everyone else, but he at least kept my interest and they weren't swinging for the fences and missing with him like they were with the rest of the team. Carisi. Some decent plea negotiation scenes and it was nice to see him as the one making legal decisions without taking orders from Benson. The Bad: Mariska. Holy crap was she bad in this. Even when she was with Meloni who usually brings out her best she was overacting while somehow also being flat and boring. Much like her bruise makeup she managed to be too much and not enough at the same time and was garishly fake and unconvincing. The dialogue. Just terrible throughout even when they had an interesting idea. It really read like they filler that was mean to be polished and brought to broadcast quality later and they somehow never got around to it. The courtroom scenes and the scenes with the potentially interesting Bronx SVU case were comically bad examples of just writing down the gist of what the writers were trying to convey without bothering to actually try to make it sound natural or fit it into context or character. The Velasco plot was very weird and just sort of petered out. Are we actually supposed to believe he is crossing the line? Is this supposed to be some sort of running plot or cliffhanger? They managed to somehow make it feel like all of the major plot elements were underserved while somehow also making the episode rather slow and not having enough story to tell. All filler no killer. They do not have to send Noah away forever. Overall this was a marginal improvement over the past couple episodes, but it was still mostly a waste of potentially interesting ideas with nothing new to offer and no reason to exist other than that everyomne involved was contractually obligated to produce an hour of television.

So I guess it wasn't everyone who had technical issues? Although given how few posts there are it may be widespread. Or maybe the nonsense has pushed some of us over the line. Apparently I didn't miss anything too good or bad. I'll have to check it out on Peacock after work. Maybe it will go down better with a cocktail? Or three?

Not to the Eminem song?

Yes, but although their only role on the show as far as plot was concerned was as investigators Greevey and Ceretta were never Detectives, only Sergeants during their tenure with the series. So to our list compiler I say -

Dick Wolf has had quite the track record of dumping actors to make it clear that the show is bigger than any one actor. Which is why it's more than a bit ironic that SVU has ended up where it is, as perhaps more beholden to a performer's ego than any other scripted series on television. And yes Rollins got off easy considering how the last few showrunners have written off other's creations. Which is part of the reason I think it was simply business and everyone is trying to not burn any bridges. Have we seen any reporting anywhere she was asking for a big raise? Perhaps she was simply asking for similar pay and more time off as others have when their contacts were up for renewal. It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, but they have simply reached the point where they can't even do that. It's also possible NBC wanted to go younger and/or shake things up a bit. And yes I could certainly see conversations where a performer was told they would need to take a pay cut to keep Giddish and bring in a younger regular and that no matter how much they valued their creative input and leadership it was the only way to make the numbers work. Followed by the response that if that was case they were going to have to deal with public social media posts saying that they strongly disagreed with letting KG go and told them so...

They retired that award 15 years ago or so ...

I partially agree. As I have mentioned before there tends to be quite a bit of romanticizing that goes on regarding the level of quality of the series in the past. Part of it is that even the nadir of the first 15 years had a higher budget and more connections to the glory days of the show, even as it was tenuous at times with some of the classic characters disappearing for multiple episodes with the flimsiest of excuses to save money during the first rounds of budget cuts. I'm not sure however that it was much worse than the present. For one thing there was a certain level of narrative competency and production values that they don't seem to be have the budget to maintain today. I will say that Season 18 was consistently worse than present day SVU, but this season seems to be heading in that direction, with this episode being a prime example of that trend. Correct. There is usually a certain amount of consideration given to quality, but it comes from the stars and producers. And in this case the 2 people who could make that call are more than willing to trash their legacy to keep collecting big checks. Sometimes network executives will consider quality as part of protecting the long term value of a series and the network, and to try to goose ratings by doing a final season "farewell tour" but NBC has too many problems and none of the executive weasels is sure how long linear television will even exist so they aren't going to make the call even if transitioning to something new might be a better long term move.

The Good: Carisi. He was one of the few people who were simply doing there jobs well, with the personal element in the background and shown clearly, but with a degree of subtlety and nuance. And he even got to tell Benson she was being ridiculous. Fin. Again he was professional and had mostly competent or better writing throughout. Velasco. He seems to have replaced Carisi as the squad member young enough to run and blend in who is actually written as a detective instead of as someone with trauma and empathy who just happens to have a badge. The Bronx SVU guest cast. It was nice to see a group of detectives who simply wanted to solve sexually based offenses. The Bad: Waaaay too much BS (Benson Stuff). There was the ridiculous crusade to save the souls of criminals and change society. The ridiculous overacting (if a Benson screams in the woods and nobody cares does it make a point?). The terrible tactics and investigative work. The heavy handed exposition. Basically every terrible trope and acting choice we have grown to loath over the last decade or so packed into one episode. We even got the hypocritical "cathartic" police violence. About the only thing missing was Noah actually on screen. Muncy is being used terribly in an episode where she feature heavily if the writer knows anything about character development and story logic. The promo. Another week of this crap???!!! As a springboard to B/S shipping??????!!!!!!!!! Another dud episode. At least it was better than last week?

Hmmmm. 2 detectives form Miami you say? On a show that often feels more like a CBS procedural than Law & Order? Yeah!

I think we need to cut them some slack here as far as the immediate actions. Both as such things have happened IRL and as a matter of the narrative limitations of an episodic procedural. Just like the aforementioned speedy trials. You would need something like The Wire to show the more common scenario which is a little more drawn out, but ends up in the same place and making the same point. I think there are a few problems as far as the feel of the show. The first and biggest is that it's very hard to a slightly modernized take on the classic formula. Many of the elements that added flavor are either expensive given smaller network TV audiences or seen as out of date and hokey by the NBC executive weasels or both. A good example is the reliance on CCTV vs. witness canvassing - it's true that today's cops do prefer video for various reasons and that the old interviews involved hiring a lot of Broadway actors and are easily mocked - the old trope about people who won't stop unloading the truck while being interviewed about a homicide, Another example of unnecessary "modernization" is the preference for showing the crime or the victim before the crime over the cold opens. But I guess NBC executive weasels are right about that. I mean those cold opens were little gems of NYC comedy and that couldn't possibly work on NBC Thursday nights! I think it also hard to find quality writers given that many of the writers who would be mid-level staff in the 90's are now on streaming series with more creative control and many of the old hands that they might bring back are busy in other parts of the Dick Wolf empire. And the writers they do find have to deal with more network interference and notes, asking to sand off any rough edges and replace nuance as distracted modern viewers need to be hit over the head at every point. I think they are doing a pretty good job so far given those limitations and perhaps the biggest one of all - trying to live up to the original run and our expectations based on that, many of them contradictory or otherwise unreasonable!

I would argue that the deterioration in writing is evident much earlier and it is not a steady downward trend. The final Baer years were not good at all, and I did stop watching regularly during the grimdark over correction to the campy excesses that followed. Things did improve quite a bit after that and the first half of Season 17 in particular was very good. There has been good and bad after that depending on how well the showrunners were able to keep Mariska's ego in check. As far as acting is concerned there have been some fine performances as well. As far as acting is concerned I wouldn't say there has been an across the board drop off. If you were to fast forward through Mariska's monologue you would generally get 5-10 minutes of good or better acting. Ice-T has phoned in a lot of episodes and Mariska has gone full Jenna Maroney, but there has been some great work since Season 15, much of which has elevated some utter dreck to borderline respectability.

I love Fin, but I have less desire to see the Bronx SVU than Aroldis Chapman. Perusing the numbers it looks like the zombified corpse of SVU will shuffle on unless Mariska decides she has had enough. It might last until scripted network television itself ends at this rate. NBC has much bigger problems and the series is still profitable for NBCUniversal even if it's creatively bankrupt. I do wish that someone at NBC had the guts to pull the trigger us a proper final season with lots of returning cast members (sort of like ER did) and put Hate Crimes on air to replace it as from what we saw of the cast and scripts that they used last season it would be a far better show. Mariska could do guest spots on that and L&O: OC and go off and do some sort of women in peril true crime series for Peacock. Ice-T could cameo and go make commercials and realty shows. I'm sure the rest of the cast would land on their feet as well, if nothing else as series regulars on FBI VICAP or having their characters move to Chicago. If only somebody somewhere among TPTB had the slightest interest in quality and creativity...

I guess you must not follow political news much if you don't think that's plausible...

That has turned about to be accurate so far, but are you really not able to see Benson not bossing around someone? Anyone? Seriously? I mean she has seen fit to tell basically everyone she ever met what to do including her own commanding officers, the federal government and Jack McCoy...

The Good: Dixon. It's good that they didn't turn her into a Benson acolyte and it's good to see a strong female leader played by someone who can actually act. Fin. While there was some clunky dialogue for him like everything else it was good to see him featured pretty heavily and that Ice-T seemed to be actually trying instead of phoning it in. The Bad: The Rollins pyschobabble. Fin would never talk about "feeling her absence". He would just say he misses her too. That, displacement, etc. is stuff that should be left in the writers room and not put in the script - it's the job of the writers to translate the psychological theories into what characters would actually say. No Carisi. It's hard to believe he would not be checking in or involved in Benson's assault or the legal issues. We're expected to believe that all sexually based offenses in Manhattan are being handled by a couple of extras and that giant desk sergeant while Benson plays some sort of unholy combination of Kojak and Serpico in the Bronx? The confession. If we are expected to take it straight - it's terrible writing. If the perp they have in custody is covering for someone - it's also terrible writing that experienced SVU investigators and federal prosecutors would take that nonsense at face value. That is the most superficial confession and statement imaginable especially given that there has already been a wrongful arrest. There's going to be multiple episodes devoted to this nonsense? The script. The plotting was convoluted and didn't flow naturally. The dialogue was so often clunky. It felt like a Season 18 episode - as if they put a first draft on screen. I'm wondering if the BTS drama with the showrunner is showing here? It would be the only good reason that they would film this without the desperately needed polishes and re-writes. Benoah. It took time away from things we actually wanted to see and forced us to try to believe that Noah still hasn't learned anything despite seeing more attacks, hostage situations, etc. than most 30 year NYPD veterans. Nope he just runs back out into the street resulting in all the bad guys getting away. Are we sure he's not biologically related to Benson? Overall this was a steaming turd of an episode with the only bright spots coming from a few decent performances. While it's not on the level of the worst episodes of this series it's still far below acceptable in many aspects. They took a hacky flawed concept and executed it incompetently. And the worst thing is they don't even seem to realize it.

😦 Jeremy Renner Critically Injured in a Snow Plowing Accident