Malbec

More hostage musical chairs! I'm sure this has been remarked upon already, but Jedallah's vague resemblance to Henry Cavill was really throwing me off this episode. Kinda cracks me up every time. Grant is the worst, he and Jennifer were clearly made for each other. I did think it was cool when Rebecca got to drop a classic "I give you my word".

And there's also not really a SHERRY Palmer figure, who in my opinion was also really important as a plot driver (and source of entertainment). Who in our current cast could yell a man to death? Edit: I think Rebecca is a solid character but she's in the "CTU" cast of characters more than the "White House/political" cast of characters; Donovan needs a devil-on-the-shoulder character like Sherry, Olivia Taylor, President Anil Kapoor's various family members, etc. Jimmy Smits is a solid actor but his character is in a fairly passive mode. Maybe they'll fix that soon.

Good for poor old Andy. Dude won the "facial expression of the hour" prize when he was told about the missile strike. I didn't know Oded Fehr was going to be on this show! Wild.

This was my trajectory with her as well. As the group thinned out I came to quickly realize that Tregaye was best in very, very small doses.

Oh yeah, there's a ton of actor overlap with Oz. The guy who played O'Halloran played a completely awful human being on Oz, Kirk Acevedo was Barba's other childhood friend (not Munoz) in "October Surprise," Sean Dugan played psycho corrupted Catholics on both shows (Timmy Kirk on Oz and a perp in the same episode with Eric Stoltz), and Harold Perrineau even showed up in a wheelchair for his SVU episode. Edit: And how could I forget! The great Lothaire Bluteau, who's shown up three times on SVU and once on CI, had a really tragic one-shot appearance on Oz. He appeared only in one episode but it was a hell of a memorable character.

Yeah, Fin is gold. Him and Rollins having to arrest Santa Claus in "Presumed Guilty" was hilarious. So were their exchanges at the strip club in "Criminal Hatred." ("Your undercover name was 'Detective Tutuola'?") I always thought Huang was underrated as a funny character. There's a part in the episode "Fallacy" when Tucker from IAB is ripping Stabler's ass, and then he turns to Huang and just sort of blusters that he's going to call Huang's bosses at the FBI. Huang doesn't even bother responding, just gives Tucker the most priceless "bitch, please" look. A subtle moment but it cracks my shit up.

That guy who got his dick cut off in "Control", once it turned out it was revenge for KEEPING WOMEN IN HIS RAPE DUNGEON. Gaaahhh what a sicko.

You really hit the nail on the head. For the most part, I could go with the individual plot developments they came up with for Amaro. IMO there were some great episodes focusing on him (I really liked "Undercover Blue," "Born Psychopath," and especially "Padre Sandunguero"), and Danny Pino always brought it when called upon. But then they just... never went anywhere with what they'd brought up, never seemed to have Amaro develop self-awareness, and seemed to always prefer to drop a new Drama Bomb on him rather than develop what they already had. It's really nonsensical. I also have to say, I think the point of no return was when they had him beat the crap out of that molester and get arrested. The shooting in "Amaro's One-Eighty" was not my favorite thing, but it was a believable morally gray situation and I actually do like that it seemed to have consequences. So why not take THOSE consequences and go with it if the writers wanted a super dramatic finale for Amaro, instead of having him go all Stabler lite on Wilkes? It was just so dumb, aggravating and needless.

The thing is, I did think Nick and Olivia played well off each other when he first showed up, before they took him down the nu!Stabler road. It wasn't the same as her relationship with Stabler, but it wasn't trying to be. Taken on its own terms, it worked. I am still just confounded that they couldn't think of anything better to do with Amaro than have him go wild and angry.

Crying!!!!

Agree with you all on the comments referring to Stabler. The thing that kills me is that I can honestly think of ways I like Amaro more than Stabler (and vice versa), but "I grew more in these last four years" was just a big old Whut? Out of all the things Olivia could have said, that really came out of nowhere. Otherwise, I thought it was a pretty average-to-weak episode. I'm glad Nick gets to go be with his kids and got to smear Johnny D all over the floor on his way out, I guess, but I think it does suck to lose him. And did no one see the conflict of interest with Noah's adoption coming? Lord.

I think you may be right, but I have to say it annoys me if the writers' solution is "kill him off" instead of "stop fucking up the writing." They were able to write Amaro as fairly different from Stabler when he first joined the show, so it CAN be done. I like Carisi as an addition, but if he's here to take Amaro's place because the writers decided they wanted to just start over... that's going to legit piss me off.

It was never said, but my impression of Bobbi is that she would have expected Kara to make exactly the same call if their positions had been reversed, if Kara had been the one undercover at SHIELD and Bobbi had been at the safe house. From that perspective, while it's kind of harsh, it does makes sense to me that she wouldn't consider it something to apologize for.

Well that wasn't as awful as the headline it was (I think) ripped from, which was that case where the whole family was in on the boy's kidnapping. Still pretty bad though. I foolishly thought they might subvert the fairly obvious "evil Middle Eastern guy" trope, but alas. I'm not fully on the Carisi train but the yoga class scene was hilarious.

I agree. This must be like the acting equivalent of #TheDress because I thought her performance was mostly excellent. (She did waver a little bit in some of Jiaying's "big emotion" scenes, but I thought she was otherwise charismatic and complex).