JyDanzig
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Posts posted by JyDanzig
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30 minutes ago, Xeliou66 said:
There were some memorable lines, the racist killer's "that must've been the Mexican :they like tequila, and they like raping, just ask the President" was the best dark humor line SVU has had in a long time, I didn't expect them to take such a direct shot at Trump and I laughed out loud
Dodds also referred to Trump as "that crazy thug down in DC", an even more direct shot, coming from the mouth of one of our heroes.
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Hey, that was pretty good! It needed one more turn through the rewrite cycle, but almost every other script this season needed to just be burned, so I'll take it. The tension was high throughout. The conflicts between our characters about how best to proceed were compelling. That whole sequence of Benson, Carisi, and Barba jumping through the ICE hoops was exceptional, as was Benson's staredown threat of calling ICE on the wife. The interrogation scenes were strong. They were unusually effective at conjuring that "this case is ripping the city apart!" energy (tried for so frequently, but successful so rarely). All the dramatic SVU tropes -- hostage situation, courthouse shooting, courtroom outburst -- were executed well. Loved that scene between Benson and Dodds at the end.
It wasn't without it's rough patches, most of which have already been correctly diagnosed by others -- just dropping the Yusuf thread was off-putting, the actual scene where he was picked up was clunky as hell, as was the first scene where Carisi and Fin were talking to the guy at that deli, and the awkward opening banter of the yuppie couple as they passed by the crime scene.
I would disagree that the white racists were overdone -- I was having the opposite reaction, marveling at how on point they were. Anyone thinking they didn't feel like real people should come by my uncle's 4th of July BBQ, where you will be sadly disabused of the notion that this was unrealistic dialogue.
Kirk Acevedo's presence throughout was sort of odd. Trying out a possible new regular for season 19?
Anyway, impressed they went out strong! Still glad we are done with Rick Eid. Here's to an overall better season 19...
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1 hour ago, Lebanna said:
Actually, I'd say this is a brilliant time for a preachy pro-Muslim episode. Just to remind people that not all... not even most Muslims.
Because a lot of people do actually forget that at times like these, and then more awful unfair stuff happens.
So it strikes me as perfect timing.
Very well said.
I feel like I could go on and on on this topic, but I'll just add that the fact that there are those who think the aftermath of an ISIS bombing is a time when people with "not all Muslims are terrorists" messages should be silent is a rather depressing reminder of why the world still needs preachy procedural's.
But I'll try to save the rest till after watching it. Who knows what the message will actually be, there's been enough bizarre creative choices made this season that I don't feel safe in taking anything for granted...
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I'm rooting for them tonight! By my count, this season so far has consisted of 3 good episodes, and 16 that were various degrees of terrible (and one so objectionable it couldn't even be aired, which is a first for the 27 years of the L&O franchise, isn't it?). The premise is great, they could really do something compelling, dramatic, and relevant with that setup, if they just execute properly.
I'm not a sports guy, but this must be what it's like to be a die-hard fan of the team that always loses. On some level, I know they're going to lose again. But still, I hope! This'll be the time they turn it all around!
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For the season as a whole, they have done such a fabulous job of handling Michael's death. I've seen some people decry that development as a gimmick, which I think is such a dishonest criticism. This is a story about something real. People find true love with partners who die too soon, and then have to figure out what to do next. I find it remarkable how this show has managed to maintain it's fun, romantic tone in a way that also respects the enormity of Jane's loss.
And I complain about most TV deaths these days. Either they're killing a character because their story has come to an end, and that feels false, because in reality (premature) death is not a dramatically tidy end to an arc, but a horrible halting of it mid-stream. Or the death itself is effective -- sudden and unexpected and with a million other things going on -- but then the aftermath disappoints. The showrunners got their dramatic death, but going forward you keep thinking how much better the stories would be were that character still alive.
Jane this season is one of the few times I've seen those competing imperatives balanced perfectly: the death itself was honest and raw, and I've been just as interested in the story of how the surviving characters move forward as I had been in watching Jane & Michael's relationship progress before. Impressive job, show.
On last night's episode specifically: tough to live up to season 2's incredible finale, but I was happy with this. Some of the hurricane antics were pushing the limits of believability, but it was redeemed by how well-executed it was from a production standpoint... the rain, the sounds of the storm, the candlelight. The feel of it was wonderful, and really helped compensate for too many eye-roll moments in the script.
I LOVE the idea of going full villain with Luisa. They've never done that angle with her before, but have now morally implicated her in so many of Rose's crimes that it's time. I hope we see a lot of this next season (from the beginning I've wanted Yara Martinez to be upped to regular, and I'm going to keep hoping). You can get to real tragedy with Luisa -- think of her scene in last year's finale, where she was telling Raf how hard it had been to move on from Rose, but how Susanna was showing her it was possible. Since then she's made only terrible decisions, but there's a lot of pathos in that crazy reveal -- the person who finally lets you believe you can move on turns out to be the person you are moving on from. It's wacky and melodramatic, but also dark and abusive. It's easy to see how Luisa would end up concluding she really did have to hold onto this relationship no matter what, it would feel like there really could not be anyone else out there for her.
Aneszka I am ready to be done with. I suppose the Petra cliffhanger did it's job, in that I'm in suspense because I do not want something else horrible to happen to her -- hasn't she suffered enough? Can't something just go right for her finally? If next season is any version of extended Petra pain out of this (several episodes of her recovering from being shot, or whatever), I am going to be so pissed off. The Petrafied story was the worst thing this show has ever done and I am not interested in another version of it.
8 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:Awww, when the narrator said that he loved Xiomara, I may have gotten a little misty-eyed. Of course, I always cry at weddings and whenever we see Michael flashbacks so I was already ready to start crying again. Does that mean the narrator is Alba's husband?
My immediate thought there was "is the narrator Mateo?!", followed by "though that makes the Fabian story narration kind of creepy..."
5 hours ago, swimmyfish said:Is that really the end of the Rose/Sin Rostro storyline? I won't be sorry if it is, but it seems awfully anticlimactic.
5 hours ago, Joana said:OMG, we saw Michael!!! And... that about sums up my feelings about this episode. It would be really nice, though, if Jane had in any shape or form acknowledged that the woman who KILLED her husband was now in prison, or if anyone else on the show had noticed it, but I guess you can't have it all.
I've always been convinced that Sin Rostro has to be part of the plan for the final arc of the series (have we done an infamous prison escape yet for Rose? Since she's supposed to be based on El Chapo), and a part of that was her being responsible for Michael's death. I thought it would have to be Jane who was ultimately the key in Rose's final downfall. But the fact that the show does not seem to be treating Rose as the killer is throwing me. Does that just feel too dark to handle, so they're going to ignore it and act like it was just a tragic medical accident?
But I would guess there has to be more with Rose. "Is this the end of that story? Feels really anticlimactic" was exactly what I said to myself when Rose seemed to have died in the hospital, and we know how that turned out...
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Regarding the question of if the show was trashing Christians with this ep...
I don't think that was the intent, but I can't deny I felt that during the show. But I think it's a side effect of lazy writing. They didn't develop the logic of this church worldview enough, they just slapped this extreme view onto these characters that were otherwise "Generic Religious Goody Two Shoes." As someone else remarked, there needed to be some additional cult-y details about them or something, both to differentiate them from mainstream Christians and to make them feel like more fully imagined humans.
On 5/17/2017 at 10:12 PM, Snookums said:The only really funny part was when she was hugging Anne and still trying to hold up that enormous umbrella one-handed.
You're not kidding on that one. The way it was swinging back and fourth! How did the director not get another take where it was held still? Just have some crewperson hold it from just off-camera for the close-up!
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On 5/13/2017 at 3:55 AM, millennium said:
Hands down one of the worst episodes of this entire series. The Law & Order franchise is barely recognizable anymore.
What next? The rapist uses witchcraft to coerce his victims? Olivia Benson brings down a UFO and arrests the alien for abducting a victim and inserting an anal probe?
The other series had similarly deranged escapes from reality. There was an ep of the mothership that was all about the psychic powers of the killer. Criminal Intent had a show where we saw actual ghosts haunting Logan.
And both those shows recovered and finished strong somehow! That's my hope for SVU. The mothership hit bottom in season 17, after growing progressively worse each year for nearly a decade, but then their final three seasons were excellent (not that I think SVU is following this exact progression -- though not without flaws [so many hostage crisises!], I thought the WL years were largely good and a nice upswing from the end of NB's tenure).
Anyway, now that Rick Eid is Chicago PD's problem, I'm praying they get a strong new showrunner and we similarly get three impressive final seasons here. They can take the record from Gunsmoke/Mothership and then sign off victorious.
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10 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:
I don't know; I liked "The Last Street In Manhattan" from CI S10, which Rick Eid wrote! :-)
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day...
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12 minutes ago, sockii said:
Rick Eid is out! And moving to Chicago PD...
I just saw that and was coming back to post it! Ask and ye shall receive. I don't watch any of the Chicago shows, so this is great news for me.
Let's see if this board has become magic. I hope I win the next Powerball jackpot...
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Now we just need to hope for a new showrunner... this year under Rick Eid has probably been the worst year in the show's history.
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2 hours ago, 25thID said:
As a related afterthought, (sorry about the rambling), what if Carisi is in a relationship with Rollins' sister????? Maybe that's why he's being quiet about it, and how the ad for the bra came up on his work computer.....she may have access to it via visiting Amanda at work, or him taking it home....just a thought.
That's exactly what I've been thinking. It just seems like it can't actually be some legitimately new character, as would happen in reality. It has to be a big reveal of a secret relationship with an already established recur, a move they have loved to pull with Benson again and again and again. Who else could it be but Sister Rollins?
I guess it could also be Lucy, the world's most amazing time manager. Barba's assistant Carmen, finally given something to do beyond walking in with one line announcing who has arrived for a meeting? Rita Calhoun? One of the judges? All options are ridiculous!
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At the mid-point, I was ready to pronounce this one of the rare successes in a mostly terrible season. I loved the way the investigation unfolded, the guest cast was great, well directed with good NYC visuals, sharp dialogue.
Then the trial happened. Oy. What the hell was that, guys?!? The rapist was sitting on that audio tape where she says yes to sex the whole time? The victim knew she might have to read her essay about hating her relationship, but just couldn't bring herself to discuss it with her boyfriend in advance, because springing it on him in front of a courtroom full of people is a viable alternative somehow? After Benson's inspiring speech about going forward with the trial and flipping the script, the next scene is just walking into the buzzsaw of playing the "consent" tape" for the jury while Barba doesn't do or say anthing? The big twist is that we have found someone to testify about some completely unrelated bad thing the defendant did 20 years ago?
Instead of all that nonsense, why not make the trial ABOUT THE HYPNOSIS, given that that is the aspect of this week's iteration of Rich White Rapist/Pretty White Victim that is new? Dueling expert witnesses. Digging up other examples of different ways in which he abused his hypnotic powers in sessions with male clients. A heated cross-examination of the rapist regarding his therapeutic hypnosis philosophies.
I wonder if the two credited writers just split the show in half, and one of them is great and the other is incompetent.
Anyway, other failed episode for SVU. Though, this one came CLOSE to working! And in a season this bad, that qualifies as a type of success.
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I thought this episode was great. I'm shocked, I would not have expected that from the episode blurb! Somehow combining these two done-to-death plots (Moe's new bar, Homer & Marge's marriage is tested) made them both feel fresh again. Visually it was great, loved that whole rainy-luxury-high-rise vibe. An impressive outing, probably my favorite all season.
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27 minutes ago, Gigglepuff said:
My question is, if she had the evidence to charge him, why didn't she do so previously? Was she threatening to blackmail him with false charges? What was the scenario there?
I could have misread it, but I did think the intent was that she was threatening to frame him.
And the episode really didn't earn Benson going that extreme. But they could have! There was a great "our heroes are pushed to the edge and then cross the line" story in here that they just didn't find.
When they introduced the hapless hacker who said he'd just been hired to frame the congressman, they never told us who was behind that, did they? At the time I thought they were going to reveal it was Sleazy Fake Journalist who had contacted him anonymously to manufacture the story, and then feed it back to him as a source.
If you go that direction with it, focus the whole episode on the fake news with no real trafficking, then you have people getting killed, Benson and Noah and Rollins and Jesse are in increasing danger, there's no way to fight back legally because it's all cloaked under journalistic protections, and then that's Benson's desperate last gambit: she'll get the hacker off, if he pulls the same trick on Sleazy Fake Journalist and plants child porn on his computer. Or she just threatens to do so, and leaves him in a sword-of-Damocles situation... he's now going to dedicate himself fully to combating the fake news stories he started (once started, they just go for years), and if he ever lets up or goes back to his old ways, off to prison as a pedophile.
I feel like I should just start watching the first act and then turn it off and make up what I think the rest of the story is. It will probably be more satisfying.
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Resigned sigh. Another terrible episode!
Aside from the fact that we've seen it a million times already (often with these exact story beats), bringing in the real sex trafficking ring for the back half really muddied the waters of their message against fake news, given that the fake news guy had in fact picked up on real clues that no one else did. I kept thinking how much better the episode would be if the murder of the Congressman was the 15 or 30 minute mark, and then it's Barba and Benson trying to come up with a creative way to prosecute this guy or legally shut him down as the situation continues to escalate. That's a much fresher story, and Patch Darragh's character is established as so thoroughly despicable, you really want him to be the primary villain. That tacked-on and underthought postscript we did get was not at all a satisfying comeuppance for him.
On the plus side, Kelli Giddish had some great moments of contempt throughout the episode.
Also, as others have said, this episode seemed packed with false details that were constantly taking me out of it. To cite one more that wasn't already mentioned, Benson gets the call about the shooting, travels to the restaurant, is greeted out front by the restaurant owner (and not a cop to give her a report? OK, we don't want to hire another actor, I'll handwave it...), and then gets inside, to see the ambulance tech attending to the young daughter SITTING DIRECTLY NEXT TO HER FATHER'S BLOODY CORPSE. You couldn't have moved this girl away from the body in the last half hour?!? Maybe at least get her behind that partition that you're sitting directly next to?
What an awful season of television. If I didn't have 27 years of accumulated fondness behind me for the L&O franchise, I would be long gone. Once it's all said and done, this might be the worst year SVU has ever done (I think seasons 11 and 12 are the only real competition for that title).
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9 hours ago, skittl3862 said:
TV pet peeve: How did Heidi know where Benson lived? They met "years ago" at a thing, and suddenly she has Olivia's address and apartment number? Even if she gave it to her after the disclosure, doesn't Olivia have a doorman? Only my best friend's doormen all recognize me and let me up without calling.
In addition to running the squad, doing all the investigating, interrogating, and interviewing, and sitting in on every day of every trial, Olivia also operates a 24/7 rape crisis drop-in center out of her apartment, so her address is publicly listed.
All the "this is the best of all the rich-white-man rapist episodes this season" comments have me wondering if they're going to eventually claim in interviews that this wasn't a repetitive lack of imagination -- it was their THEME for the year. Maybe that's the season finale plan: the rapiest rich-white-man with the prettiest young-white-woman victims yet!
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3 hours ago, hovegeta said:
episode was ok but i would have liked it more if the news people had dug up stuff on svu and used it against them and not just against the one guy, also they very obviously stole the scorpion story from a a star trek voyager episode which was amusingly enough called scorpion, the ripoff was very clear and a sign that they are running out of ideas and have to steal from other shows
3 hours ago, ForeverAlone said:The scorpion story is a common story I have heard in a wide variety of TV shows and movies. I first heard it over 20 years ago in a movie, and I'm sure that wasn't the first time that story was ever mentioned.
Yeah, I remember rolling my eyes at that Voyager episode, thinking it was ridiculous they felt they could get away with having a big chunk of screentime dedicated to a character reciting this scorpion story that had already been so embarrassingly overused by TV trying to appear deep.
That was in 1997.
Though on the whole, I liked this episode. I would say it's one of only three episodes this season to rise above the level of Total Failure (this really is the worst the show has been since the gruesome end of the Neal Baer era). They developed the specific guest characters enough that it didn't feel as cut-and-paste as all the other recent rich-white-man rapist eps, and the Benson/Dodds material was affecting.
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54 minutes ago, marceline said:
True. I love NYC and visit regularly. I love seeing spots I recognize. The previous spot had a scene at Bryant Park and I kept thinking how they were right next to a bocce ball court I love to go to just to watch the old guys play.
Heh, we are definitely responding to similar things, that was exactly the scene I was praising in my comment in the thread for last week's episode. Though I was pulling the buildings from the deeper background...
QuoteIt did look gorgeous: so well directed, and what fabulous locations! Hell, there was that one scene on the street that managed to get the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, AND Times Square in the background of the various angles -- that's an impressive amount of production value for one street walk-and-talk.
It's all up to you, locations department. You're the ones saving the show this season!
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2 hours ago, marceline said:
I kind of laughed at the scene with the rope guy in the park during what seemed like a blizzard. They really couldn't have found an indoor location instead of making everyone stand in the park?
It's funny, that was literally my favorite thing about the episode. Also, they were right on the water (I think that was the park on Chelsea Piers), presumably making it even more hellish to shoot. But the visuals were incredible... it was worth it.
That's probably the only thing I'll remember about this show down the line. The one with a scene on the piers during a blizzard. If there's not going to be anything interesting or worthwhile in the scripts anymore, the locations and the weather will have to pick up the slack...
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1 hour ago, Stacey1014 said:
I am a bit disappointed that we didn't find out more about Carisi's female friend.
You may wish they kept putting it off when we get to the inevitable reveal that the girlfriend is Kim Rollins!
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59 minutes ago, GussieK said:
What was the rope guy's blackmailable offense? I don't think they ever said.
6 hours ago, wknt3 said:Another frustrating week where you can see a good episode trapped within in the mediocre one that made it to air.
This. So much this. Hardly one scene goes by that isn't marred by some distracting flaw in the execution. Usually with an obvious fix available.
Skipping over the rope guy's blackmailable offense is such a perfect example of this. Writing 101 people: the specific is more compelling than the general! Not providing us the actual details of what brought this man to fraud & suicide is just hackwork. Why bother writing something that justifies the plot twist? Just leave it vague and let the actor do all the work of actually selling it.
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Deleted my series recording for both TWD and FTWD.
That's a first: the single season of television that was so bad, it made me stop watching TWO shows.
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The final battle wasn't even that well filmed! That's particularly frustrating. It's progression was so unclear, you couldn't really follow some of the various power shifts. "Now everyone is captured suddenly!" How did that happen?
And, as others have said, why was there no actual plan here? Most of the satisfaction of this kind of story should be in seeing the characters construct and implement an intricate plan. I didn't need 8 episodes to get to "find guns, give half to dumpster weirdos who immediately betray you, barely survive thanks to random tiger."
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I cannot believe how bad this season was. I was forcing myself through all the way because I've loved TWD so much in the past, and I really thought it would have to come together for a satisfying finale. It did not. I wish I hadn't wasted the time.
I never really know for sure till the new episodes start again, but I suspect I'm done with this show. I didn't like some of the choices last season and I found the finale frustrating, but there were lots of things I did enjoy and I was eager and ready to forgive any missteps when season 7 started. And then this season was nothing but junk from start to finish.
I think it's really going to depend on the press. If they start doing those interviews in which they admit this season was a failure and they're going to do a course correction, OK, I'll give them another shot.
That doesn't feel at all like where they're going. The vibe from the creative team seems to be that any negative feedback is people just failed to grasp their brilliant ideas. But I get the ideas. They're not great, but they could certainly work. They don't, because they are executed terribly. The dialogue is false, the character arcs are contrived, the pacing is self-indulgent, the structure is a mess.
This show has become deeply infected with a creative arrogance. The self-indulgence has become so prevalent in every aspect of how they tell their story, it's impossible to perceive it as anything other than taking the audience for granted. They're not putting in the work to make this a compelling, can't-miss show anymore. They assume their own magnificence, and expect the audience to love whatever they're given.
Just an ugly, awful season. Possibly the worst season of television I've ever sat through (really only "Big Love" season 4 comes to mind as serious competition). I'm just bummed what was once such a fantastic series has degenerated so severely. I hope they can fix it next year, but it seems unlikely.
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S18.E20: American Dream / S18.E21: Sanctuary
in Law & Order: SVU
· Edited by JyDanzig
You were supposed to feel sorry for Yusef, the man whose reasonable fear for his life led him to make bad decisions, and then got murdered for being gay when he tried to find a way to make it right. I don't think we were supposed to feel sorry for Hector, the show made it pretty clear he was guilty and deserving of imprisonment. Soledad's transgressions were intended to read as sufficiently awful that we would side with Benson when she does something as extreme as calling ICE to have a woman deported and taken away from her children. But you can still feel troubled, if not all the way to sympathetic, when seeing her being told that her husband has been killed. In fact, that's a favorite L&O story structure of mine: the escalating-disaster-case where characters make decisions that are understandable but wrong (trying to keep your guilty husband out of prison), leading to greater pain for everyone than if they had been honest from the start.
I mean, yeah... people can fear being murdered for who they are, and also not be perfect saints at all moments of their lives. Many people who are discriminated against for one thing turn around and express similar discrimination to other groups. This was also one of the points they were making, about how people are rarely just one thing. Yusuf was a victim of homophobia, but also sexist. Carleen was abused, but also a bigot. The female ICE agent believed in her basic mission, while also clearly having doubts about how it was unfolding. Hector was a killer, but also a weak victim.
That being said, story-beats-wise, I don't think we needed the comment from Yusuf about the skirt. He was already morally compromised enough by not intervening in the crime, adding this just wasn't necessary. It might have worked better if Yusuf had already revealed his presence at the crime scene to his sister and niece, but the sister had made the choice that he could not testify because of his immigration status (possibly leading to some conflict between mother & daughter over this). Then she tries to get the information in by lying, Benson can catch the lie and have the same moral calculus about whether she plays along or presses endangered Yusuf to testify, she goes for the latter and that leads to his deportation... all the same basic beats, just re-ordered.
I agree this could have used acknowledgement in the actual episode, but I have some relatives just like these white supremacist villains, and they tend to also have the one black or hispanic friend. It's a "you're one of the (only) good ones" syndrome -- the non-white friend is usually some weak guy whose pathetic need to belong will have him playing along with the ugly racist jokes/rants. Even jumping in with his own anecdotes about how awful all the other ETHNIC SLURS HERE are. And the white racist likes having the one self-loathing non-white friend as additional "proof" that his bigotry is correct -- they're all such garbage, even this other ETHNIC SLUR HERE can see it, etc.