JyDanzig

I feel like the answer is in your own post. It was a forceful kick to the face. It doesn't have to be intentional to be violent. I just recalled that during the end of the episode, I was wondering if Rogelio would ultimately kill River (accidentally of course), and if her death would also be treated as a laugh riot. That shouldn't seem like the possible next beat to the story for one of the hero characters. Yes, I was including that as an example of a story that failed because it treated trauma with inappropriate lightness, not as an example of physical violence against women.

So, anyone else disgusted by the way violence against women was used as the comic relief in a story about gender pay parity? The misfires on this show are rare, but when they happen, they're huge. In my view, they've only ever done three truly terrible stories: Petra's paralysis, Rogelio's captivity by his obsessed stalker, and now the recurring subjection of River to violence and mutilation. And they all failed in the exact same way, by asking us to laugh at the characters as they suffered an ongoing and severe trauma, at the point of the story when it wasn't clear that the trauma was ever going to end. The way JtV is usually successful at finding the humor in trauma is by having the victims find it themselves. But I don't want to be invited to laugh mockingly at characters who are coping with the fear that they will be imprisoned for the rest of their lives and never get to be with their loved ones again, or who have been physically brutalized in a way that could end their career, at the very moment they reach the peak after a lifetime of working for it. Ask us to laugh at them then, and it's punching down, there's such a mean maliciousness to it that so deeply betrays the spirit of everything else happening on this show. And holy hell, the sheer violence of that kick to her face. Brutal. My full expectation for the end of the episode was that Rogelio's career was going to end because of the scandal, and the show would go on to be a huge hit as "The Passions Of Brenda", with his character cut after the pilot. I though this was bringing us to a final season story for Rogelio of: who is he without his career, now that he's ruined it because of his own inexcusable pettiness and tantrums? And then to handwave it away as a cutesy, fun thing after the commercials. God, that edit of the three times Rogelio injured her truly made me sick. Grotesque. Love the show otherwise! JtV is so often trying to do a very large number of extremely difficult things, so to expect no failures is unrealistic, but eesh. They could at least stop making this mistake, it's clear how this route has been going wrong at this point!

I stopped watching FG a year ago, after literally never missing an episode until then. Came back to check in with this premiere and YIKES. I'll think twice before trying that again. It really reminded me why I stopped, and is a great example of why shows should not run too long. The cultural context has changed completely around FG, in a way that truly makes it no longer funny. Their humor used to play as edgy and transgressive, now it's just toxic and ugly. That being said, I did love the callback bit with the super and the studio audience reactions.

Julianne Nicholson also had a pregnancy written into CI. I think the father was a fiancee she had just broken up with when it was discovered he was some kind of criminal? Alicia Witt was her maternity leave replacement? I remember two Benson pregnancy workarounds. A transfer to computer crimes where she sat behind a comically huge monitor to conceal the pregnancy bump, and a stint going undercover to bust a ring of eco-terrorists. Maybe those were strung together consecutively to make one long maternity leave? Agreed, and apparently not.

"Russian Love Poem," for the locations. It'll pull me in at any point because I always want to see that last shot on the boardwalk with the Coney Island parachute jump in the distance. "Guilt," for being my actual favorite Good SVU. "Wildlife," for being my actual favorite Bad SVU. "Missing Pieces" or "Presumed Guilty," if we're in the 6 weeks leading up to Halloween or Christmas.

http://www.scoutingny.com/why-you-should-never-ever-go-to-new-york-citys-hudson-university/ I love this, about Hudson. Let's bring back the Hudson University nuclear reactor! Could cause some trouble with that...

God, it could have been so good! They could really have located an exceptional emotional climax of the story in her testimony, not his. You would probably want to set it up that there was a ton of physical evidence with the real rape -- you would need that, to justify taking the case to trial at all, because only with a ton of physical evidence would there seem to be any chance of conviction. (Let's say this is also taking place in the Mirror SVUniverse, in which the purpose of prosecutions is to convict the guilty, as opposed to the Actual SVUniverse, where the purpose is to obtain useless indictments for theft of dignity, and/or to allow people to Speak Their Truth, the less credible the better!) But anyway, imagine what an incredible episode climax her testimony could have been, if they weren't afraid to actually deal with moral complexity in the victims! She would be simultaneously reckoning with her extreme remorse for the first allegation, and getting racked over the coals for it, while also dealing with the trauma, and wondering how guilty she is for what happened... that's an incredible guest spot for some actress! This idea they're pushing lately on this show, that by being raped everything you've ever done and every action you've ever taken is rendered benevolent and benign, once the mantle of victimhood descends it makes you forever noble and saintly... I think it's a corrosive, unhealthy worldview. It does no favors to society or to rape victims, and I wish they'd stop deluding themselves that it does.

You might be thinking of Stuyvesant, which is a real high school that has gotten mentioned on L&O fairly regularly. I think it's all geniuses there? High achievers of some sort, it's a coveted school. Maybe that's why they allow their real name to be used in this murder franchise -- they could actually do with less people hassling them for a spot. I also have to reminisce on my favorite detail of Hudson, which is that it is so elite and competitive that large numbers of wealthy mothers are sleeping with the staff to get their kids in (as we learned last season). Imagine with the rape & murder rates are at all the other universities, if Hudson is the prize!

I would say you've crossed over and become a bad person once you start making concrete accusations and filing legal complaints off of something that is only an emotional truth, especially when you know that the nature of the accusations have a high likelihood of ruining the life of the accused. But, of course, the episode is so poorly written that it makes it hard for any judgment of the characters to be "wrong." Every character is so compromised by making unrealistic decisions to further the plot, thus none of them is plausible as a real human being, so as viewers we have to fill in the gaps ourselves, and we all make different filler assumptions and then render different verdicts accordingly. I just wish this show would exhibit some awareness that a false accusation of rape can be as traumatizing and life-shattering as actually being raped. There's a reason slander and libel and filing false reports and lying to the police are also crimes. It really is depressing to contemplate the incredible episode this could have been. Imagine they dropped the whole "and then he REALLY raped her!" twist and just did a story about Carisi being devastated when his niece is raped, getting overinvolved in the investigation, determined to get justice for her -- and then discovering she lied about it, and what that experience is for Carisi, and having to now choose between justice and family, now that his niece is the criminal, and at the end he comes around to believing what she has done is just too awful and she deserves punishment. Or you keep the twist about her ultimately really being raped, just put some more time in between those story beats! She realizes she has made a terrible mistake, she confesses publicly, she goes about the work of actually trying to make amends. Then she might become some variety of likeable, sympathetic, relatable -- like the show clearly wants her to be, instead of this Reprehensible Garbage Human they actually presented us. And THEN he rapes her, with the same justification: "my life is ruined anyway, even with you trying to make amends I'll still always be tainted by the accusation, so might as well take what everyone believes I took anyway..." Then fighting that out in court actually holds some drama!

The morality of this show has become so grotesque. This last scene, where Carisi and his niece are doing their cutesy banter, she's had the line where she blames herself, a sentiment which gets immediately and emphatically dismissed... it's absolutely sickening that they think this adorable ending is appropriate for this character! Everything that has happened is her fault! Morally, she comes off worse than the rapist! To make an intentionally false rape report like that, then keep it going for months, then when she gets him punished because of these lies, to respond to his justifiable distress with such pure selfishness, and to escalate it to the police... the satisfying ending would have been her getting convicted of something, not him! I really don't understand the purpose of these stories, where they go out of their way to make the victim as vile and loathesome as possible, but then attach it to a narrative structure where we have to view the victim as pure, saintly, and uncomplicated for the story to work. This should not be so hard. Just pick a lane! If the show wants these simplistic climaxes, then stop presenting the victims as Evil Human Garbage, like this week's girl. Or -- the better option, though one I don't think they are capable of implementing -- if they want the morally gray victims, carry the implications of that through to the rest of the show! Within the basic contours of this arc, they could have done something very powerful. But a story as morally complicated as "a girl who destroyed a man's life with a false rape allegation is raped for real" should not end with this kind of simplistic "white hat/black hat" conclusion.

Yep. Also, THIS show wrote out McCoy! After L&O Classic ended, there were a ton of SVU episodes in which they referenced a "new DA" we know nothing about, but whatever "new" concerns they had would conveniently be at odds with whatever our heroes wanted, thus providing an extremely lazy plot device to pad out episodes that needed a few more story beats. This is starting to feel a bit like a "Black Mirror" episode. Ben Stone resigned, yet apparently hung out in his office for decades thereafter following his son's career. McCoy was replaced, yet still wanders the halls telling people not to beat themselves up about that baby they killed. Cabot is sent away to witness protection forever, until she's inexplicably managing an unruly brood of sexy junior ADA's. Obviously, the DA's office itself is somehow cloning/copying the people that work there. The original person may move on, but their ghostly double will always remain...

I love that this is the exact explanation that brought Rubirosa onto Law & Order: LA. Had to move to take care of her sick mother! Since Andy Karl was killed off, this show has really suffered from the absence of a character in that Meloni/Pino/Karl leading-man mode, so that makes me glad we're getting Philip Winchester -- but really I want him as one of the cops! If Barba is out and they wanted to keep working with Winchester post-Chicago Justice, the genius move would have been sliding lawyer Carisi into the prosecutor slot, and putting Winchester as some new detective in the squadroom. That gives you so many fresh avenues to explore in the writing. (Or, speaking of LOLA, they could have repeated the same ridiculous move they pulled over there, where Alfred Molina switched from prosecutor to cop halfway through the season, with essentially one line of explanation. But it was such an obvious improvement from the prior configuration, so why complain?) I like Barba, but I'll also be OK if he's out. Some cast turnover is generally a plus on an L&O show, helps keep things fresh.

"I know I won't be the first or last woman who doesn't get justice after being raped at Hudson University." She has Hudson's number! Pro tip for next time: don't accept public speaking engagements at the rape & murder hellmouth. There were all sorts of things wrong with this episode, but I also thought it was the best of the year so far. This is always my thought as well -- this was not a good episode, but it was SO CLOSE to being a good episode. And all they have to do to make it much better is just restrain themselves a little. That insane scene of the alt-righter specifically pointing out all the non-white jurors is a good example. As actually staged, it's completely over-the-top nonsense, and it's impossible to believe the trial would have continued after. But there was no need to go that far. You have Barba draw out the same sentiment, get the witness talking about his plan to create a white ethno-state, and that does it! All you need is the witness being openly racist with that air of cold calculation, insert reaction shots of the jurors, done, point made. The theatrics are so undermining, the drama would be more effective if they didn't try to dial every moment up to a million. And was the challenge to the writers that the dialogue could be constructed EXCLUSIVELY from hot controversial buzzwords? Just pull that back! Not every word has to be "cuck" or "libtard" for us to get it. I'm of two minds about the more professional, skeptical Benson we got this week. On the one hand, I wish she acted like this all the time! On the other hand, it is a bit ridiculous that she's usually so endlessly soft and forgiving to victims that she KNOWS has lied to her repeatedly, and yet here, the mere suspicion of dishonesty has her adopting this much harder approach. And there was something incredibly gross about how cavalier Benson was at the end over the fact that they had no idea if the man they were prosecuting was guilty or not. But she still wants to go to verdict, because the victim getting a verdict, any verdict, is more important than an innocent man being convicted for a crime he did not commit? I know there is realism to this, but it's just not what I want to see from a procedural where our characters are supposed to be admirable. The one thing I thought was unambiguously great about this week was Rhea Seehorn. That was a fantastic performance, she really elevated this material. She was just as irredeemably despicable as the real Ann Coulter, but she was not only a hateful cartoon, she also registered as an actual human being (unlike the real Ann Coulter). Impressive work.

I thought this one was a bit of a mess, honestly. First, the setup was a huge problem -- the co-pilots actions were just so extreme! She could have easily killed 135 innocent people! I had zero sympathy for her after that. I wish they had done a less amped-up version, something without so many people so seriously imperiled. And once you're doing "their crime is excused because they were earlier victim of another crime", where does that end? You could trace that back endlessly. Her rapist was just acting out his own trauma from a time he was violently assaulted 10 years ago. But that guy only became a criminal because he was molested. etc etc etc. Also, this is another story they've so recently done badly! Wasn't this last years premiere, a female terrorist helps with a mass shooting and all Benson cares about is that she was abused? Like, yes, we get it, sexual abuse is a very serious issue, but it's a little weird how pushy this show is becoming with the idea that sexual abuse is ALWAYS THE MOST SERIOUS ISSUE. It doesn't demean rape to hear "a rape victim committed a mass shooting in Central Park" and first be concerned about the mass shooting part. Benson also comes off kind of dumb in these eps, in that she can't even seem to grasp why everyone else doesn't care about the rape and only the rape. It also felt like they didn't treat the fact that he was A NATIONAL HERO as a serious enough problem for our characters building a case against him. Any obstacles they encounter are so easily overcome. I just want this show to pick a lane: you can have these hyper-dramatic and exaggerated setups, OR you can have these easy beat-to-beat plots. Either one can be a satisfying procedural. BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. They work against each other! Pick a lane! And, somehow this is building towards indicting a company for grand larceny for stealing their employees dignity? That's a story that should be on 30 Rock, not Law & Order.

Well, I was expecting a total trainwreck, but I actually thought this episode was OK. Not good, but OK. It still easily outperformed nearly every ep last season. Maybe I was just relieved to have a female perp in what was ultimately a murder case! Anything to get a break from the rich white man raping the young white woman. Honestly, my favorite thing was the rain out the squadroom windows. Yes, yes, I know, but the dark-and-stormy-night thing is a cliche because it's effective. Use that rain machine more, show! And... I think that's all I got. It's weird that the most heavily promoted ep in forever is the one about which I have the least to say.