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Everything posted by watcher1006
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When the original Law and Order was canceled the franchise lost its anchor. I never watched LA. I don't watch Organized Crime. SVU continues to this day, having had marginally higher ratings back in 2010 but (IMO) sinking slowly in quality as it became ever more of a character showcase. I thought that bright spots in the SVU cast in the last decade included Raul Esparza and Danny Pino, but I stopped watching the show years ago. I think there were ways to reinvigorate the original, I think I heard that the decision to cancel was at least partly driven by disagreements over money and production cost.
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Press Conference: The Law & Order Media Thread!
watcher1006 replied to WendyCR72's topic in Law & Order
If I recall correctly they did delve into stories of character lives for a brief time during the period when Carey Lowell and Benjamin Bratt were part of the ensemble. They didn't do so for long though, they soon went back to the show's tried and true case driven format. A new psych person would be fine but I wouldn't mind seeing Carolyn McCormick reprise her old role as Elizabeth Olivet or J.K. Simmons his role as Emil Skoda, even if just for an episode or two. -
IMO the risk of getting shot is much higher if one reaches into one's coat for a gun while being confronted by a cop with a gun already drawn. But maybe he DIDN'T have his gun drawn. That's the point - Price needed to probe for inconsistencies in the defendant's story since there was no person and no visual evidence to give a separate account of what happened.
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Mostly I liked this finale to the season. Maybe it was okay that the rich investment/finance witness got immunity. I think his karma is coming to him. For one thing turning up like that in a high profile case where it comes out that he dated a teenager won't do much for his career. The jury delivered an ambiguous verdict but hard evidence of the situation was lacking and the defendant did present a sympathetic figure. Trying to protect her sister when everything went south. Perhaps Price could have pressed her a little harder on her story. She claimed the gun was in her coat and that she pulled it out when the detective approached her with his gun drawn. If that is what happened then IMO a more logical course of action would have been to just throw her hands up and plead surrender.
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Press Conference: The Law & Order Media Thread!
watcher1006 replied to WendyCR72's topic in Law & Order
I'm happy to hear that the L&O reboot has been renewed. Overall the cases/plots may not reach the level the original show did in its heyday and I'm still reserving judgement about the characters aside from veteran Sam Waterston. Yet I find myself watching it with a sense of nostalgia. It's great to see the old format (for the most part) and remember how dramatic TV was written decades ago. I was also put off to see Mariska Hargitay being featured in the season finale. Make no mistake, I like her and I know her heart is in the right place with her outreach efforts. But the show doesn't need her "star power". The original L&O distinguished itself by not being a star vehicle for any one actor and by building itself around the plots. I gave up L&O SVU several years ago because with the departures of Dann Florek and other actors the show evolved to center too much on the Olivia Benson character and away from being a true ensemble act. -
I also don't think it likely that the DNA evidence would have been thrown out. But still, the defense went to an affirmative strategy, saying that the suspect did what he did because of his medical circumstances. Perhaps it was not all that strong a defense, but isn't the switch basically a concession by the defense that the suspect actually did the act in question? I would think that the prosecution's job changed at that to proving criminal motive and non-medical causation.
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The time jumping made perfect sense early in the show's run. As a general rule that holds for TV shows. It develops the characters of the show, allows us to know their backgrounds and "where they are coming from", and sets up context for what is happening in the present. But this show has used the mechanism constantly throughout from beginning to end to the point of overusing it (IMO). I've gotten confused at certain points in the narrative(s) and I have even started to ask whether the show isn't trying hard enough to write extended storylines in the present. Which shouldn't be the case given the rich suite of characters that the show possesses. Constantly cutting and pasting together vignettes from different decades - that's not how TV shows used to be written.
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This is one thing that has made my enthusiasm for this show fade over the last few seasons. I have grown weary of the constant time jumping, not just the flashbacks but also the flash-forwards. It can get so confusing that one doesn't know when some character is being shown at what point in time.
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Well I'll just add my voice to those who have sided with Toby. I was unhappy back when he tried to persuade Kate to move to San Francisco for the sake of his career (although I appreciated that it was brought up that Beth had done the same for Randall). But after that, I thought that he really did try harder than Kate did to make the marriage work, giving up his job to move back to L.A. and doing an honest job of trying to be a good parent. With Kate's mindset I can't see what more he could have done that would have satisfied her.
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I've always thought that Mercedes McNab should have gotten more credit for her portrayal of Harmony than she did. On both shows. But I guess that's the typical fate of minor characters.
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I guess Reed or Reid or whatever could have been taken from the headlines' Alex Jones. I imagine there are people who would take offense at the portrayal. Following the suicide I really did not think the D.A.'s office did not have a strong enough case for a conviction on murder, not even murder 2. I think it more likely this would have resulted a hung jury. Maybe a case could have been built for a charge like reckless endangerment. Not to pretend I'm a legal expert, of course.
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Entirely good for Randall and Deja that Rebecca chose to go on the road trip with her son. In addition to the time that Rebecca and Randall could spend together she slowed him down enough such that Randall, Deja, and Malik could think through their situations before the three came together. That which is said or done on impulse is all too often destructive.
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I do wish they'd stop constantly being so obvious about the "ripped from the headlines" business, doing variations of high profile cases. Anyone who keeps up with the news has ideas of where the case is going to go, and when it veers in a different direction from where it went in real life it often feels more contrived than clever. The vast majority of criminal cases don't ever get public attention, surely there's more material in the case files if the writers need a starting point. By pleading guilty to the manslaughter charge the young tennis player was giving up her career. Even in the best circumstances it's not an easy thing to come back after leaving the tour for years. But one can believe she had come to hate the tennis life anyway plus she was tired of being exploited as a cash cow.
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i'm glad that this episode touched on the business of jury selection but I was left wondering. If the prosecution forms its selection criteria based on what it's expecting the defense to present and then the defense changes its case strategy after the jury is selected doesn't that leave the prosecution at a disadvantage? Price mentioned early on that they should go for jurors without a too high level of education and who are not too wealthy. Seems like those are often characteristics of the way jury selection tilts.
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I hope Anita van Buren gets mentioned at some point, even if she doesn't appear. Perhaps the character succumbed to her cancer? I believe S. Epatha Merkerson is still busy on Chicago Med. The characters and their relationships have yet to shake out on this reboot but I'm willing to give it a couple of episodes to do so. It's important to remember that the original L&O was very much a plot driven show and the characters played their part in the criminal justice drama without their personnas dominating the action. I feel that that was part of the reason why most of the replacement characters made smooth transitions into the structure of the show. Of course some didn't go as well as others. Whatever its shortcomings, I thought this reboot "pilot" did try to stick to the plot driven concept of the original. I watched L&O SVU for many seasons until I finally had to give it up because it had become too much of a star vehicle for Mariska Hargitay. Make no mistake, I like her very much, but I couldn't keep watching the show when it became overly character driven.
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Is it possible for a character to be overwritten? I've never heard that adjective applied to a character, but I sometimes get that feeling about Milo Ventimiglia's Jack. They use him so much in the constant flashbacks to motivate or put in context what is going on in the present that his character feels overbuilt and forced. To me anyway.
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Season 5 of Angel had too many elements from the by then extinct Buffy that they tried to graft onto the show, the foremost of them being Spike. I was however more impressed with Not Fade Away as a series finale than I was with Chosen.
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Looking at the totality of Season 1 I don't think it was pre-determined that the character of Willow would become so prominent on the show such as to rival the title character herself. Instead I feel that at the beginning it was vaguely supposed to be more of a teaming of Buffy and Xander, the way it was Buffy and "Pike" in the 1992 feature film. It is after all Xander who saves Buffy's life in the finale "Prophecy Girl". I think the writers quickly found out how much they could do with Alyson Hannigan playing Willow, and thus we got what we got. I remember an interview with Jane Espenson where she talked about how much fun it was to write tongue-twisty lines for AH, some famous ones being in S3 "Gingerbread" (Re: doodles) and S5 "Buffy vs Dracula" (Re: knowing). I do agree that she became far less endearing in the late seasons of the show and that her character arc was overwrought. Just as an aside I resent CBS' "How I Met Your Mother" for ruining Alyson Hannigan for me. I loyally watched that show for seven seasons after which it became mostly unwatchable for me. I would have never gotten hooked on that show were it not for AH (and partly for Neil Patrick Harris). But by the end they were grasping at straws for good storylines.
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I agree, both Drs. Manning and Halstead should be fired, whoever stole the meds. And isn't that still a possibility? I haven't heard confirmation that Nick Gehlfuss' contract has been renewed. Loss/theft of experimental drugs HAS to be reported. This show has been over the top for a while, but this unending series of ethical violations and lack of medical professionalism on the part of the characters is too much. I know this isn't real life and truly realistic stories wouldn't make for a compelling series but going to far makes the melodramatic portrayals become insulting to medical workers. I eventually couldn't watch House. I'm done with this show, whoever is coming back.
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Of all the character interactions shown in this episode I liked the dialogue between Rebecca and Beth the best, and thought that what Rebecca said about feeling like a real vital person because of Beth opening up to her had a true resonance to it.
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Flying on a plane up to and during the time of the Vietnam War was much simpler. No security screenings. It was only during the early 70s that everyone started to take flight security seriously. So if Nick hadn't flown since being medevac'd out of Vietnam today's process would have been totally bewildering to him. I was wondering if Cassidy could have given him some warning.
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Harvey Weinstein, now Joss Whedon. It seems odd that these stories would come out so many years after the fact but maybe it isn't surprising. It points to the power structure in the business that people don't want to speak up for fear of losing their careers. And such doesn't just apply to the actors. If all this was going on then people like Marti Noxon, Jane Espenson, and so on had to have been aware of it and kept silent.
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But not before they had ruined the Dr. Rhodes character with that awful melodrama with Ava Bekker. The current show could use a cardiothoracic specialist and Dr. Latham's appearances are too infrequent. No, April can't fix the medical world by herself and she can't just bend the rules but the issue she raised about minority representation in clinical trials does provide food for thought. I personally can't comment about the validity of her numbers, I just don't know.
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S06.E04: In Search Of Forgiveness, Not Permission
watcher1006 replied to WendyCR72's topic in Chicago Med
Funny, when I saw this operation that had not been authorized by the Oncology Department I thought "who is going to pay for this EXTREMELY expensive procedure?" Whatever health insurance the patient has, the insurance company would have plenty of grounds to question their financial obligation, and the most relevant department in the hospital would back up their doubts. Might Chicago Med end up eating the cost? Another reason for Goodwin to be pissed. It also seems to me that the patient was hardly out of the woods given how far the cancer had spread and the degree to which it could have metastasized. Not exactly the time for Crockett and Manning to celebrate by having sex.