marny

Are me to the Gary-is-the-bad-guy club. He was way too much of a “nice guy” to be innocent. Strange writing. And he was a recognizable actor so I’m hoping we’ll have an episode next season where he eventually attacks Marie from Breaking Bad when she rebuffs his romantic efforts again. It seems like the last several episodes have given Carisi very little to do other than say “get me some evidence.” I guess the current writers don’t feel like writing courtroom scenes.

Agreed with the above comment that the whole DA’s office would have had to recuse based on Maroun’s sister. Also, it seemed clear to me that Maroun wasn’t the killer because she was still wearing her work clothes when she got home— she definitely would have changed if she’d gotten bloody. The argument about the cops checking DNA against a commercial database resulting in suppression of the. results is absurd. The only “wrongdoer” as far as his privacy is the company itself— murderer can sue after he’s convicted if he wants. But since he wasn’t a customer, he has no standing to complain about any of it and the cops didn’t violate anything or anyone. So dumb. Also the defense lawyer was on this show a few seasons ago as an abusive wife who sexually assaulted her husband.

I figured out that Atlas was in on the rape pretty early on but that may have been because of his terrible haircut.

To be fair, the trial was probably 3 days after arraignment so the defense attorney didn’t have much time to prepare. After Price’s speech about his cold father and how he and his brothers never killed him, I was waiting for Baxter or Maroun to say, “Yeah but didn’t your brother wind up an addict who died of an overdose?” Like, trauma can affect different people differently, dummy. And what’s interesting is I can imagine that if the younger son had killed himself instead of his dad, they would have wanted to prosecute the dad for driving him to it. Anyway.

I’m actually fine with her being a prosecutor and still having empathy. Our justice system would be much better if more prosecutors did. I’ve worked on both sides of the aisle and the best prosecutors were ones who understood how to treat people with humanity.

I think Maroun’s character suffers because the writers don’t know what to do with her. As is the apparent requirement on this show, the female ADA sidekick is merely a sounding board for the brilliant male ADA’s self-righteousness. She doesn’t get to speak at trial— she doesn’t have any actual function as a lawyer. If you watch the older episodes, it was always like this. Jack McCoy’s hot sidekicks always disagreed about some moral issue in the case or questioned the integrity of certain decisions and then either got smacked down by the DA himself (or, briefly, herself) for having an opinion or got to give a smug one liner at the end when it turns out she was right. Truly a thankless role that makes no sense when there’s much better gender parity in the law than there used to be. I’ve said it before but a lead female ADA would be nice. Or even letting a female ADA speak on the record would satisfy. I remember Connie got to speak in trial once but it was because the male ADA noticed a juror thought she was hot and took advantage. Which is a truly a gross excuse to let a woman matter on this show for once.

I think the idea for the scented nose rings at hotels was to give that "spa" feeling at bedtime. Like, the scent of lavender is supposed to be relaxing and good for sleep, so putting a lavender ring may make things feel more luxe and relaxed. It would be all about the packaging and presentation to sell it as a treat rather than a "ugh, sorry things smell so bad."

The cat frame people kept saying how ugly cat trees are and how this was a great fancy alternative— except there are lots of aesthetically pleasing cat trees now that look like legit high-end furniture. If someone told me they paid $400 for a cat shelf with a frame around it, I’d laugh in their faces. Plus the side view of the frame looked ridiculous when it wasn’t occupied by a cat.

This was… fine? I mean, we’ve had plenty of episodes over the years of bad cops (or judges) taking advantage of marginalized women so the fact that it took Benson and co. so long to suspect the undercover guy is surprising, but I did enjoy how much Brady was irritated at Benson’s sanctimonious attitude. I didn’t need the random Stabler moment— I’ve never enjoyed his character. My nickname for him has always been Unstabler because he’s clearly too unstable and hot-tempered to be a police officer.

They explained why the alibi was meaningless though. And as for Shaw, he was just making a personal comment to a friend about race, not actually worrying— he’ll never trust Riley again as someone he can speak freely to. As for discrediting Riley, Shaw was simply saying he believes he saw something different. The cross examination was implying Shaw intentionally lied to help a black man. He didn’t think Riley was lying, just mistaken. The two are not the same.

I watched an old episode the other day where the actor who plays Bruno was the husband of a woman alleging ADA Stone raped her. He was really good in the role, of course. But it was funny to me to think, “Wow, Bruno has really moved up in the world from a guy holding an ADA hostage at gun point to an SVU detective. People really can change!” Anyway. I do really like him as an actor and he brings a good vibe to the show.

It sounded like there was at least some question about her manager. But it isn’t the defense’s job to solve the case. I think this is one that showed we do need more prosecutors like Maroun who question the strength of cases and whether to bring certain charges. Justice is convicting the person who is doubtlessly guilty for the offense they are doubtlessly guilty of. If the prosecutor has doubts, it’s unethical to go forward with the case. Period. You don’t just throw mediocre cases out there and say “Well, let’s let the jury decide.” That’s what prosecutorial discretion is all about, and prosecutors take a special oath about that. And I thought it was shitty of Riley to act as though Shaw’s comment about hoping the guy was innocent was evidence that Shaw would lie about what he saw. He was talking generally about the societal impact of the Black man being the perpetrator, not a plan to hide his guilt. Shaw has every right to be pissed that Riley would use that to discredit him and his reputation.

The Manhattan DA’s office would have had to recuse itself since their employee was a victim. This is a normal thing in real life— when there’s a conflict an interest, a prosecutor from another county is brought in to handle the case.

Not really, so long as he isn’t her guardian or something. But also, telling her he doesn’t want her to take them just isn’t obstruction. She’s a grown woman who can make decisions for herself. It’s not like he held her captive. Price’s back should be hurting from this enormous reach.

I thought the murder charge in this case was the usual overcharging that this show does. Despite the mother’s post-partum, she managed to get herself to a psychiatrist, so she knew she needed help. She absolutely could have just taken the prescribed meds secretly and helped herself, but instead apparently thought it was more important to appease the dad, which she consciously chose to do. While the shitty dad should have worried about his wife and supported her, there’s no evidence he knew the severity of danger she posed. His lawyer was right that the mother was responsible for the daughter’s death and she had enough moments of clarity and stability to override her husband’s wishes and take the meds. The proper outcome was a divorce, not murder charges against the husband. The husband sucked but that’s not a crime. Also this may be one of the first L&O episodes I’ve seen where they were like “oh, she’s insane? Ok.” Usually they try to argue with the psychiatrist way more in order to prosecute the bad guy. Particularly since mom knew right from wrong enough to lie to the police about her whereabouts. And kept lying until they confronted her with the video.