watcher1006

I liked Atwater in this one and how we were reminded of his situation and the tough choices he faces. Also when he is coupled with Burgess it brings her level up. There is of course the nostalgia element harking back to the early days of the show when they were partners. I gave up watching the NBC show Revolution in large part because of Tracy Spiridakos. My impression of the first season was that the show was originally supposed to revolve around her, cashing in on the then current Hunger Games craze, but she wasn't a good enough actress to carry the role and it evolved toward being more about the Billy Burke character. But that's just my theory. I find her presence on this show annoying.

I wonder what they are doing with Antonio and Brooks' attempt to undermine Voight's squad. I can't imagine Antonio would sell them out.

I did not appreciate this episode. I was hoping this season they would back off the Olivia Benson: SVU formula but it is getting worse, and this one was over the top. Plus I didn't buy the idea that Andrew would cave and give the detectives and Barba everything they needed. But of course wrapping it up that way meant they could minimize the Order part of the case so they could put on the PSA at the end. It was just luck that Barba got as much time as he did on this episode. When Cragen ran the squad, it could be assumed that he couldn't go out on cases himself because he was tied to his desk! There has to be a ton of paperwork associated with the job, when does Olivia Benson have time to do it? That is why there are detectives on the squad to work these cases, duh. The Olivia Benson show makes less of an effort all the time to capture the feel of police work.

Given that Beth has done nearly all the parenting of their daughters up to this point, it seems inevitable that Randall would seem bewildered by the task he has taking on a girl as a foster child. I wonder if he might do better with a 12 year old boy? Of course introducing a boy into their household would be problematic in its own ways, but Randall might develop a different perspective on his own childhood growing up as an African-American boy in a white household. I imagine bonding/conflict between children in a home with a foster child or children is a major issue and it would be good if they will explore that. Of course child actors can work only so many hours.

If the Brooke Shields story is a way to have Noah exit the show, then good! The Noah adoption story has felt unbelievable and forced from the very beginning. Sure, like a judge is going to single out a law enforcement officer in her courtroom and encourage her to take on a loose end child in a murder case and then expedite the paperwork. With a whole NY state department assigned to child care plus a long list of families looking to adopt. And a police sergeant doesn't seem like an ideal single parent to me. Having the Noah story has pushed the show to spend more time on its prima donna, as if it doesn't do it enough already.

It is impossible now to see an episode like this and not think about the political tumult brought about by the new administration of President #45. We saw the anti-Muslim anti-LGBT persecution that Toma was subjected to. The episode ended with Burgess running into the barricade of white privilege (Voight telling her to back off), the entitled (via his father) white male officer got off without penalty after what he did to his partner. Perhaps we were to speculate that the pressure of being Muslim is what drove Toma to launch such a hazardous rogue undercover operation? He was totally out of his depth. I didn't guess what was going on from the beginning but I felt that the episode wasn't just going to go the simple Muslim fear-stoking route. I don't know what the political leanings of the writers/producers are, but I think that we are going to see more than the usual dose of political themes on TV for the time being, whether they are intended to be such or not. It's the new normal.

I have never been a social worker but I wonder a bit about the criteria for foster placement. Is it the best idea to place a troubled teen or tween from a difficult family situation who has been in foster care numerous times into a super-affluent home with children younger than she is? Maybe it's hard to place Deja anywhere but Beth and Randall's house won't be an easy place to adjust to.

I don't think that every character on the show has to be someone that the audience (or most of the audience) becomes emotionally invested in. The Kevin character and his narcissism grates on me, more so because not too long ago a friend from childhood dropped in on me and while I was happy to see him at first it quickly became apparent that he had become totally self-absorbed and self-pitying. After a few days I just wanted him gone. Yes, he wouldn’t leave plus he didn’t have a job. Kevin brings him to mind. But even if characters are annoying or even grating it doesn’t mean they aren’t an integral part of the overall picture. I think the writers have made some mistakes. IMO the most appalling one, mentioned in the article and by others upthread, was when he walked out on the opening of the play to be with his brother. It was meant to be a family bonding moment, but I don’t think it went over that way with a lot of the audience including me. I wish they would flesh out more of his relationship with his sister Kate and how they grew up together. We saw the bit about the birthday parties last season but they could do more. I enjoyed watching Justin Hartley in “A Manny Splendored Thing”. In the end I think it’s going too far to say that a show involving three siblings should go down to having only two, but it’s not necessary that present day Kevin become someone the audience adores.

Having seen the first two episodes of Season 2 I wonder if this show can keep up the intensity of the drama of Season 1 with Ron Cephas Jones' William Hill character gone from the present. No, he couldn't have had a miraculous remission and stayed on for Season 2 (thinking of a FOX series) but his departure leaves a void for the other characters' present time stories to fill, especially those of Randall and Beth.

The question is whether they will utilize Jon Seda's Antonio character better than they were doing at the time he left. With Erin and (presumably) Bunny gone there should be more screen time for the rest of the cast, at least one would hope so. I'm still not sure if I want to stick with this show another season.

L&O SVU is on in syndication on several channels. It's interesting to watch some of those old episodes - particularly from the Benson and Stabler days - and contrast the better balance of characters back then to what has been trending toward "Olivia Benson - SVU" in recent seasons. I'm glad for him that Philip Winchester has another job. I suppose it's easy enough to explain Peter Stone's move to NYC. Does this make Raul Esparza's character "recurring" rather than "regular"? He was pretty much that already. I have stuck with this show a long long time and will be tuning in to see the beginning of Season 19. But if it doesn't improve from last season I will be moving on. The new regulars may or may not help.

Even with Jon Seda returning, I may be done with this show. When it starts feeling like a chore to watch the show week to week it's time to go, and that's what happened over the course of last season. I still like the cast overall, particularly the older members - Jason Beghe, Elias Koteas, Amy Morton. I continue to be disappointed that they don’t use LaRoyce Hawkins as Atwater more (lots of possibilities for him in a Chicago police show). I’m not a huge fan of Sophia Bush but that’s probably due more to the writing than to the actress. She did a solid job of playing the role of Erin Lindsey and ably did her part of helping to build up the show, even if the Erin-Hank-Bunny triangle got tiresome. With her leaving now, it seems lame that what casting seems to be doing is substituting a Sophia Bush sorta lookalike in Tracy Spiridakos. Come on, can’t they explore more possibilities?

I must admit I have a bias to get over regarding the idea of making Tracy Spiridakos as Haley Upton a regular. It comes from watching her in the short lived NBC series "Revolution" where they cast her as a teenager and it so didn't work. I'd like to see Jon Seda come back as Antonio, I do wonder if he wants to linger in Chicago. I'm not really looking forward to Marina Squerciati's return as Kim Burgess although yes, her role could be more interesting with Lindsey gone. Nothing wrong with having a non-white female in the unit. Burgess' partner at the beginning of the season worked well with the unit as a uniformed cop, even though she got written out.

Well whatever the reason is that she decided to leave, it certainly wasn't because of a lack of screen time. A lot of the show revolved around her, the Jason Beghe/Hank Voight character, and her mom. Not to mention her relationship with Jesse Lee Soffer's character. So much so that it seems like a reboot to carry on the show without her. Well such has happened before in TV land.

Remember Michaela McManus as Kim Greylek? I had a hard time remembering that one, I think she just lasted one season and didn't seem to make much of an impression. I liked Stephanie March very much, I think she had the role during a period when the show was fresh and had really hit its stride. I tend to feel that Rafael Barba could be more impressive in the ADA role but I agree with those who feel that it's become too much Mariska Hargitay's show. Organizationally, the squad room is different - when the show still had Dann Florek as Captain Cragen he took care of administration while mostly in the office. Olivia Benson has the office now, AND is still in the field. Little wonder she's become so dominant. There was a string of female ADAs for this show stretching all the way back, when you think about it, to the recurrring Angie Harmon as Abbie Carmichael in Season 1, although she wasn't officially an SVU ADA. As the first male SVU ADA Barba has a hard-driving competence while being realistic, not getting overly emotional about the cases or getting too preachy.

For my part, I first saw Raul Esparza on the live stage in the 2007 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company playing the lead role of Bobby. Yes indeed, he sings! Videos of the musical can be seen on YouTube. It was a pleasant surprise a few years later to see him join L&O SVU.

This has always been a characteristic of the New York City based Law & Order franchise. The city being the live stage capital of the country, there is always a large pool of accomplished stage actors to tap for guest roles. I recall years ago one of the regulars (I can't remember which of the L&O's it was) expressing envy that the best acting parts tended to go to the guest stars. Yes, I would think Carisi should have kept him out of sight as much as possible. And given the volatile nature of the case and the extreme publicity it had garnered, shouldn't Hector have been given more protection as well? So many people out for blood, he seemed to me a prime candidate for police protective custody. About the white supremacist's wife's testimony - my impression was that the defense did put her on the stand expecting her to provide an alibi for her husband the night of the restaurant attack. Of course the surprise testimony blew up the defense's case. My understanding is that a spouse of a suspect cannot be compelled to testify, so Barba could not have put her on the stand if she wasn't planning to cooperate with him. If she was planning to cooperate with Barba and he'd called her to the stand, the shocker would have come out under Barba's examination, not the cross examination of the defense.

One of the most prominent tensions in the original Law and Order was that between the detectives who had to arrest the suspects and establish the original evidence for the charges, and the prosecutors who had to present the cases in criminal court to get convictions. Many times there were dustups between the two teams, the detectives claiming they had to do their job, the ADAs admonishing them for not doing things by the book which would result in evidence, confessions, and so on being inadmissible in the trial. Pretrial motions were often the transition between the two sections of the Law and Order episodes. How many times in that old show did we hear the phrase "fruit of the poisoned tree"? The way Voight operates, you'd think a number of his "closed cases" would get thrown out in those pretrial motions. If a high percentage of the Intelligence Unit's cases did result in convictions, I would think that that unit and perhaps also Chicago court system would come under Federal scrutiny for Fourth Amendment violations and whatnot.

SA office investigators shouldn't have had the primary role as detectives in a criminal investigation except under special circumstances, or as a follow up. They might have done the show differently, had cases handed to the office by the police, preferably not by the Intelligence Unit, or perhaps Dawson and Nagel could have been part of a different unit? I've been watching Chicago P.D. but am having increasing trouble continuing to do so, because Voight's "old school" methods seem so out of touch with the national focus in recent years on police brutality. Suspects still get beat up on scene and at the department, at least we haven't had as many "silo interrogations" this season. In the real world smartphone videos are showing up everywhere. Sooner or later the rule breakers have to get caught. I wonder if a pure procedural like the original "Law and Order" can succeed in today's TV land. It seems like the creators of these shows feel that they have to get the audience interested in the personal lives of the main characters in order to keep them coming back every week. Even the original L&O occasionally veered off in such a direction.

I wonder about that too. This being TV, it's possible that actress has gone on to a new gig. But this episode and the finale emphasize that someone with that title is needed in the picture. They could give us an explanation, tell us who the new Chief is if she is really gone.

Yes, the Erin Lindsay leaving story has been done twice before. I like Sophia Bush but too much of the series has revolved around her character and also her triangle with her mom and Hank Voight. Looking back to Season 1 it seems like Antonio was supposed to have a bigger role in the series. As they went on he got pushed more and more to the sidelines till he finally departed as a regular this season. If they had continued on the paths set by Season 1 maybe Erin wouldn't have been as overplayed. Jon Seda has had a better role on Chicago Justice this past season. If that show doesn't get renewed Chicago P.D. could use him back. Antonio Dawson was a good fit in the squad, imo.

Can Bunny get more contemptible? She offs her gangster boyfriend looking to cash in on a half million dollar stash of lethal drugs, and then tries to get her cop daughter to help deflect the attention elsewhere and have someone else take the fall for the killing. And layers upon layers of lies. Well I have to give Markie Post credit for acting the role superbly, even if it has gotten old. I've had mixed feelings about Erin Lindsay, maybe because the show has focused too much on her in my opinion, but definitely the show will take a hit if Sophia Bush leaves. I'm not ready just yet to accept Tracy Spiridakos in her place.

Culture wars, U.S.A. Or a caricature about them. The Indiana people kept expressing their contempt for New York and its people not understanding their values. Yup, I wasn't familiar with the actor but that felt too much like L&O SVU twists they've done before and it wasn't a surprise to me either. It was also pretty clear from the beginning that the Reverend was going to be a bad guy, very possibly THE bad guy, because once again that's how predictable much of this show's writing has become.

Pride going vigilante and throwing Stone off the roof. That's going to be overlooked along with kidnapping the mayor when next season starts? I've watched this show because I'm a fan of both Scott Bakula and CCH Pounder. With this Season 3 closing arc I think it has lost me.

I agree 100% with this. Olinsky seems to me to have always wanted to maintain a low profile and do what he do his job while staying in the background.