Serena McClain
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Posts posted by Serena McClain
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4 hours ago, Door County Cherry said:
They show him at home with his daughter (I could have sworn he had 4 kids but I guess it's only 1?)
There was one other thing I hated. The cop was interviewed by the prosecutor. Then the defense did the cross examination. And rested? So did the prosecution call the cop or the defense? And if it was the defense, why did the prosecution start with the questions?
See, I guess the writers forgot this detail and I'm sure she is the seventeen-year-old Frank was referencing you claimed was to another daughter, when Lily was said to be fifteen in the Organized Crime crossover episode. This is what you get when the show does not dwell on the personal lives of these characters. Any small details we do get just told out of the blue on certain occasions just get forgotten later on when they do decide to give something a bit of focus.
I don't really see this as an issue. The cop was the prosecutions witness, the defense did the cross and I'm guessing the lawyer had no other witnesses to call so they would rest.
This episode was an odd one. Jerry came off too finnicky when it came to the evidence and what they needed to find, he clearly showed signs of being guilty here. I figured he would have gotten busted by the end, but he did not and lives to see another episode and do the same thing. So, I expect to see him play more of an antagonistic role this season which will be a nice change of format for this show. I do hope they don't just forget about him the rest of the season like they did with Jamie Ross the last season. That arc sort of just was never resolved from the revival premiere. I expected to see her again by the Season 1 finale. She would have been the fitting third ADA for this show if we were to add another of those to the bunch. We better see her again this season.
They might as well add that female detective to the credits who is always doing research because we see her every damn episode with a great amount of screentime. Also, a nice change to have THREE detectives credited. Of course, to even this out they would need to add another ADA, which is why Jamie Ross coming back and on a regular basis would be good. I'm sure they could squeeze her in.
Glad to see they added the STARRING above Jeffrey Donovan's name, which was missing for three episodes now.
I also think they should do away with the title card scene transitions entirely because dates overlap with other episodes and events just do not make a lick of sense if they are to be out of order. Why are we in April? Shaw was not even there at the precinct at the time and the events of the crossover where we first meet him took place in JULY. Again, the writers are incompetent!
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3 hours ago, Iguessnot said:
This was a strange one. I felt very unbalanced watching this. I get that Amanda is suffering but the full face puppy looks throughout the show were too much. There was no nuance to her portrayal. Almost cartoonish.
I did not care one bit about the case. The way the father was inserted into the story was awkward and really didn't make sense.
Who is this Olivia person? Much more level headed but a complete 180 from the usual Olivia and with no explanation.But if they are going to have a level headed Benson, they need to have good cases. This was a typical Olivia crusader case, but she wasn't crusading, so it all fell flat.
Amanda has been shot for the 15th time and is undergoing some serious mental withdrawal. She is also a mother and comes from a family with a wacky sister and mother that is also coming to mind, certainly with this case and even referenced such to Olivia after they talked to the victim's mother for the first time. The way they are showing this is absolutely reasonable.
The father being there made sense because it shows why Austin was the way he was and to give him a bit of conflict to uncover his own demons. And the father was there also to give Austin a bit of hope of him being able to change his own life since he was able to do so. As underutilized as he was, him being there made sense and was not confusing.
Olivia was tame this time around, something you guys should be satisfied for since she is always getting hate for being too righteous and commanding, though she is a captain. The case was also find, it was laid back and simple and the format was a bit different which was a nice touch.
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22 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:
As others have stated, and I think it was also reported when the 21st season was announced, Anderson only signed a one year contract. And it’s nothing new. Other shows have had pilots where not all the original actors returned.
The pilot was filmed in 1988. It took two years before a network, NBC, bought it. And it premiered in 1990.
And I wouldn’t call the cast changes a “a plague” for the mothership. It worked for the show. The first three years were bumpy until it smoothed out in season three. We’ve discussed this in those threads and in the media thread. So I’ll leave it at that.
Yeah, and Anthony could have renewed that contract. Sam Waterson also signed for a year and he came back. Signing for a year does not mean they had to stay on for a year. Technically, he did not stay for a year only a few months so Anthony should still be on this show until NEXT year.
Yeah, it took two years for the show to get picked up but everyone else came back. Why couldn't Roy Thinnes as well! The casting changes are a plague since you get use to these people and want them to be around long and they leave as quickly as they come on. Like what was the point. My hat goes off to Chris Noth, Jerry Orbach, Steven Hill, S. Epatha Merkerson, Fred Thompson, and Jesse L. Martin who knew how to stay on a show.
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On 9/30/2022 at 9:11 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:
I see nothing wrong with Anderson leaving after the first season. The mothership has always had a rotating door for detectives and ADAs during its initial 20-year run. The exceptions being Orbach as Lennie; Martin as Green; Merkerson as Van Buren, Stephen Hill as Schiff (until he decided to leave after 10 seasons), and Waterston as McCoy.
Dzundza: 1 season
Sorvino: 1 season and a handful in the third season before he left
Florek: replaced in the fourth season
Moriarty: left after four seasons
Noth: 5 seasons
Bratt: 4 seasons
Milovich: 1 season
Brooks: 3 seasons
Hennessy: 3 seasons
Lowell: 2 seasons
Harmon: 3 seasons
Rohmbot: 4 and a half seasons
Parrisse: 1 season
Weist: 2 seasons
Foghorn Leghorn Thompson: 4 seasons
Who knows how long Sisto, Anderson, La Garza or Roache would have stayed had the show not been cancelled? Merkerson was going to leave anyway, so we would have gotten a new squad commander.
Reading the comments for this episode makes me glad I dropped watching this revival.
I am aware of all of this. My point is I did not want this to be the case IN THE REVIVAL. I wanted the cast to be stable this time and we could maintain that for a few seasons. Anthony of course had to ruin that. Casting changes has plagued this show since the first production episode. The original DA before Adam did not come back when the show was picked up for a series, so there was a change even THAT early before Season 2.
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Well if he thought that was going to be the case given he only had a two-year stint in the franchise in general, he is delusional, whereas Mariska and Chris have set their marks far longer than he has to warrant their executive producer momentum. He should have waited longer. What a shame. Reminds me of when Michelle Hurd left SVU because she felt underutilized when it was only the FIRST DAMN SEASON she was on the show and interesting enough, given main billing halfway through the season which was not even the case with Dean Winters, whom she was taking over the mantle from. What did she expect so early on when she had four other cast members with higher ranks than her. If this was Season 4 and 5 where this was the case, fine, but she got too greedy and lost her longevity with this series. UGH, when will these actors learn!
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30 minutes ago, Door County Cherry said:
I liked Bernard but I won't lie, given how many times Anderson has been accused of sexual assault, I'm read to move on. Plus, I do like that it seems like they're going in a direction that points out flaws in policing a bit more.
If I remember correctly, he said he had four daughters last season. The one he was eating with is only one of of them. They were likely having a one-on-one lunch because of her desire to home school.
You're comparing Anthony Anderson with a guy who didn't have much of a track record. Anderson is pretty established and he left because he wants more control of his next project and to be the lead.
Except last season they had stumble on the body eps for the most part.
Never heard of Anthony being involved in this sort of thing. Gee. News to me.
Well if they said that about Cosgrove having more daughters, then I stand corrected and this is not an error then. This just better be the case then or these writers need to be fired for not paying attention to their own detail.
Still, Anthony was quick was jump on the revival as soon as it was announced so you would have thought he was desperate for a gig as soon as he can get one and then after that he decides to leave. I really don't see him doing much at this point so he made the wrong choice and wasted everyone's time.
And now they are going back to the Season 18 angle which is still a fresh season and luckily we see more of it this time around in Season 22, which should really be 32 had we had this show on for the last dozen years. Grrr....
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Or NBC could just limit commercial time or the makers could cut out some other unimportant scene.
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I also like to give congrats on this show on making it to three seasons. By last year, it managed to break the curse every spinoff after Criminal Intent failed to do, not even being able to make beyond ONE season and there's been FOUR since, Trial By Jury, Conviction, Los Angeles, and True Crime. Like geez. The last two on that list just did not need to be made at all and Conviction could have just been TBJ Season 2 since they used the same sets and even had the ORDER side as the main focus once again.
I have faith to see this show lasting for quite a while now that it's made it to season number three. But it tickles me how long it even took them to do a show like this given watching many of the episodes from the original shows first ten seasons where organized crime and or the unit is mentioned many times, but we don't get an actual show on it until twenty something years later.
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10 minutes ago, Raja said:
If they need to find time to give ADA Maroun something to do cutting the Criminal Intent start and going straight to the Law & Order start would be one place.
If the murder had occurred on campus it would have been Hudson for sure.
I just figure Detective Bernard for having retired
Well we have had those CI like intros since Season 18. I do not see that changing anytime soon. I frankly like it as we get to see and know the victim a bit before they bite the dust. Why this would affect ADA Maroun's work I am not quite following since from her perspective, she does not know what went down and even we as the audience do not see everything leading to the death.
Yeah, no mention of Bernard either. Shame given this should have been addressed in the first episode of the season. I should not have to wait multiple episodes down the road to know where such and such is. Bernard was a big character too so to NOT address his absence is like silly. Trial By Jury replaced Lennie Briscoe and did not even allude to the fact that he was gone or ever even there at the DA's Office at all when his replacement came in. It was just so weird they did that. We had to find out on the OTHER SHOWS years down the line that he had died. Lame. Like we had to find out three seasons what Claire Kincaid's fate was which was never a confirmed death by Season 7 or 8. LAME.
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34 minutes ago, storyskip said:
I'm going to sit over here on my unpopular opinion bench, but I'm glad Anthony Anderson has moved on to other projects.
I got the sense last year that he was phoning it in, and it just feels like the cast is more balanced this season. If Anderson had other projects he wanted to be working on, then good for him for moving on to those projects and I'm happy to see what Mehcad Brooks does with Jalen Shaw.
I found his acting a bit bland at times, but given this is his first gig shortly after a long running show JUST ended, he was a fool to make this decision this quickly. It was a waste of him even coming back and like I said, he BETTER have something grand happening very shortly within the next few months or him leaving a good gig like this is the biggest mistake he will make in his career now. If we don't see anything from him in the next few years, I will not feel bad for him. This is what you get for jumping the gun so quickly.
Reminds me of when Jake T. Austin did this when he was on The Fosters on ABC Family. His character was written off for half a season and he wanted to do other things in the meantime. But he left the show as his contract would not allow him to do other things during the time if he remained tied to the show. So when his character came back, the role was recast, and THAT actor continued it for the next four years while Jake did absolutely nothing special since. So, him leaving that show was pathetic, all because he could not be patient and still could have been working had he stayed and just took his break. But he left thinking he was going to land something else and didn't and the actor who took over, while I did not like the fact he was too tall, made the role his own and basically overshadowed Jake at least when it came to the fans who took a liking to him. The second actor would continue the role well into the sequel series, Good Trouble for some guest spots.
Like I said, this acting thing is not easy to do as roles are offered and snatched like cookies every day whether it be the same character or a replacement character. If you think you are going to land something greater, then you better make sure the seeds for that is ALREADY in motion or you are going to fall down big time.
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Noticed an error. Cosgrove stated that the victim was the same age as his daughter, who was seventeen. Now unless he has ANOTHER daughter, which I highly doubt, this is not right as in the Organized Crime crossover LITERALLY A WEEK AGO he told the one and only daughter we see that she was FIFTEEN. I recall him saying that and went back to the OC show to review that scene if that was the case AND IT WAS. Like, how do they screw this so quickly.
Also a funny moment, while the governor was talking in front of the courthouse, there was a bird walking on the steps in the background just chilling and minding its own business, haha.
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I just made a rant on the L&O twitter page for whoever does the show's editing to add STARRING above Jeffrey Donovan's name during the intro credits. I do not see why and how was this even overlooked given he was to take over Anthony Anderson's spot when he had the STARRING title above HIS name. Talk about lazy editing to just use the image and credit of him when he was not starring at the time and leave it at that.
I still find it a shame Anthony left. When this show came back, I was craving they could go a season without any casting changes which seems to have plagued the original run so much except for those last two seasons when the cast remained stable. But for TWO seasons really!!! They just could not keep a good cast together, something I like SVU for doing for the most part and CI to an extent. Anthony had to go and ruin that. I get Kevin Bernard been around the 27th precinct for a dozen years and from a timeline sense, it seems reasonable he would leave now, but we only got to have a little over two years with the character in regard to the actual onscreen run, so Anthony should have stayed. He wanted to do other things, but why even come back for such a short stint and this was a blessing given Blackish ended. Now what is he doing, nothing, so he better have a new gig soon that makes him leaving even reasonable or else he is going to look so dumb. These actors want to leave a good gig for them and most of the time not be able to find anything else for the longest time or something that is just as good. This acting thing is quite the challenge. So many actors out there with very little available roles, so they ought to manage what they got and make it stick for the long run or they will be at ground zero for God knows how long.
I do not think Jeffrey should have been given lead billing given his character was still fresh to the department. Mehcad Brooks should have taken that spot even though he is a newcomer but that does not mean an existing character has to automatically be the lead like when Jesse L. Martin left and Jeremy Sisto was given the lead as opposed to Anthony Anderson. After all, Chris Noth was never given lead on this show even when his top costars before him left during his run. Newcomers Paul Sorvino and Jerry Orbach took that mantle immediately.
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On 9/19/2022 at 10:23 AM, idiotwaltz said:
Saw some promo photos of the first episode of the reboot, can’t say I am impressed. I love Joe Mantegna but Rossi is starting to look like the old man on the first edition of The Giver. Prentiss looks like she’s aged about 10 years. Lewis and Alvez still look pretty good, can’t really tell with JJ.
I just want to watch pretty profilers with semi-decent MOTW cases. If the show could go back to its roots, I’d be happy to sign up for the reboot, but nope, not this. Just the idea of a pandemic inspired network of serial killers makes me cringe. The last few seasons were painful, but this looks even worse.
Joe clearly needs to dye his hair. It kills me how old he was just letting himself age by the last two seasons like he just did not care about his youth anymore. The Giver he is definitely turning into.
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7 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:
Technically, this is the thread/forum for Law & Order mothership. But to answer your question, SVU came close and until the last three minutes, viewers thought Alex had been killed off. So they almost killed off a main character in the early years.
I know what the thread is, but I was referring to SVU as the topic of discussion since I was talking about just that show. Yeah, I know about Alex and do not care since that was how long ago and clearly she did not die by the very ending of that episode so....it means nothing. But thanks for the info anyway.
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22 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:
That's right! Although that one was just weird because of the episode order messing that whole thing up... (Alive, dead, alive...) No wonder Law & Order: Los Angeles failed.
The show failed because it was just a lackluster need for the franchise. Why did we need a LA based take on the original show. What made this franchise great was because unlike NCIS and CSI, the spinoffs all revolved around different DIVISIONS within the same area and weren't just trying to rehash the original but in a different city. LA also made me mad because the original got cancelled because of it when NBC could have just axed that show and just continued the original. To do this AFTER the original was cancelled also made a bad taste in people's mouths. By the midway point of the show they had to halt things and make changes, though I never understood why they had to leave five episodes unaired when they could have been aired. I still find it humorous they tried to market the second half of the show as a new show since ads for that batch of episodes made it seem like it was a new show. Going through a number of intro sequences and title changes, it was handled worse than TBJ when Jerry Orbach died and the scrambling there to replace him and having THREE different intros, though slight changes with it. LA was just a mess from the beginning and I knew it was as good as cancelled when the hiatus occurred. If you can't have your stuff right BEFORE the show starts airing let alone production, you are screwed.
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22 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:
Well, she was technically listed as part of the main cast on the Mothership during her brief tenure, so I think both Annie Parisse's ADA Alexandra Borgia and Eric Bogosian's Captain Danny Ross on Criminal Intent already had that angle covered.
Hell, ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), too.
I am talking about THIS show, not Law & Order in general. Give me a main SVU character who was killed off. I do not recall one.
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On 9/24/2022 at 1:32 PM, Zaffy said:
I thought they would kill off Amanda, I had read it is her last season, but I did not expect to get rid of her so quickly.
I thought so too after that occurred, but I remembered in an article the showrunner of SVU saying he will give her and Carisi a good ending to their relationship, so I figured she wouldn't die. But hey, would have been a bold choice since when was the last this show killed off a major character. I think Amanda would have been the first MAIN character, and a long running one at that to actually be handled this way.
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12 hours ago, CheshireCat said:
If the Chicago shows are any indication and unless this failed entirely rating-wise, you're out of luck. They've got at least one of these "events" per season.
Depends on how these showrunners feel about them. When L&O, SVU, and CI were on the air, it never occurred at all and the shows barely interacted as much as the Chicago shows have during their runs together, which angers me so much. I want that to be corrected now with L&O, SVU, and OC running together now.
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19 minutes ago, Raja said:
It's actually a 3 hour TV movie and not. 3 episodes that these franchise crossovers normally are. I would say we started with Law, went to OC, then SVU, if Criminal Intent was still around they would have had the terrorism turn and finally Order took us to trial
No, we still had the intros of SVU and L&O for the second and third hours. OC just did not have its intro used for whatever reason. But this could not be just an entire three hour movie because that would mess up the syndication run. It would have to be layed out in its individual shows. Also, Criminal Intent did not rely on trials so what sense does that make to have a trial by the CI side of things. The most amount of ORDER that show ever did was some Season 1 episodes and that two part Season 5 episode where the two teams were working together.
They were initially going to do a three way when CI first started, but that never came to be and for the six years those three shows aired together, no three way ever happened and that never made sense to me at all. It took this long for them to finally do that when they had three shows running together again!
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This was an unusual line up and very confusing. Considering the airing of the L&O shows last season, I figured the order would be L&O, SVU, and then OC. Not that they would switch L&O and OC. When I looked at the episode list of L&O, it said that episode of the crossover was Part 3. I'm like, what. Then watching the OC episode online since this was apparently the start, it came off as a L&O episode because it focused on Cosgrove and his new partner from the beginning and we saw much of the 27th precinct for half the show. There was even the title card transition sequences that were not used on OC thus far. Heck, the intro representing the mash up even had L&O first, then SVU, and then OC so I was like, what is going on here. Is the internet wrong on the order. I only got the feeling something was off due to the filming style which I figured resembled more of OC than L&O and when Christopher Meloni's name was top billing, so then it all made sense. But still many reasons to think this was the L&O portion. I wish as an OC episode, they began with those characters and we transitioned to having the L&O ones involved somehow.
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This was an unusual line up and very confusing. Considering the airing of the L&O shows last season, I figured the order would be L&O, SVU, and then OC. Not that they would switch L&O and OC. When I looked at the episode list of L&O, it said that episode of the crossover was Part 3. I'm like, what. Then watching the OC episode online since this was apparently the start, it came off as a L&O episode because it focused on Cosgrove and his new partner from the beginning and we saw much of the 27th precinct for half the show. There was even the title card transition sequences that were not used on OC thus far. Heck, the intro representing the mash up even had L&O first, then SVU, and then OC so I was like, what is going on here. Is the internet wrong on the order. I only got the feeling something was off due to the filming style which I figured resembled more of OC than L&O and when Christopher Meloni's name was top billing, so then it all made sense. But still many reasons to think this was the L&O portion. I wish as an OC episode, they began with those characters and we transitioned to having the L&O ones involved somehow.
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S24.E04: The Steps We Cannot Take
in Law & Order: SVU
· Edited by Serena McClain
Muncy is starting to grow to me. I like her better than Kat. I feel like she is the retool of that character and we should have saw HER instead three seasons ago. Still find it a bummer how they wrote Kat out. Things just got so difficult for her and she just leaves the force, unbelievable. Not with the way they built her.
I am also sick of this Maxwell woman. I do not get this character and what her position really adds as far as leadership in these legal cases. Why are we not seeing Jack McCoy in these guest roles. One thing I hated about SVU is we always saw these substitute DA office leaders like a bureau chief and now a trial division chief, when we should have been seeing the DA themselves. Still no word on where Vanessa Hadid is who we often saw SVU and Carisi report to recently a few seasons ago. She is just fallen into the same vortex Novak, Cabot (until Season 19), and Cutter all fell into.