S25.E13: Duty to Hope

[txhorns79]

Airing May 16, 2024

Quote

The SVU searches for a pattern assailant before his crimes escalate to murder. Fin must contend with a suspect's aggrieved son. Carisi is pressured to close the case quickly to ease public concern.

 

[Spartan Girl]

Yup, we had to get one more Maddy scene. Barf.

[wknt3]

The Good:
Fin. It was nice to see him getting a lot of focus and Benson actually respecting him and his experience.

Carisi. He was great as usual and also got of solid material including scenes with Fin and Bruno.

The COTW. Like last week it was nothing that hasn't been done before, repeatedly and better, but it was a solid story and a nice team effort and it was competently executed.

The Bad:
It seems like they're falling back into the bad habit of everyone in the DA's office other than Carisi being a political hack. And showing a complete lack of self-awareness from Benson and nobody around her able or willing to call her out - she's never been hesitant in the past giving orders to ADAs.

Speaking of the legal side, Warren Leight was terrible with shitting on the DA's office and not caring about the legal element of the show, but at least he could write some good dialogue and seemed to have watched some other Law & Order. PS did great selling the wooden dialogue, but I can't believe this was written by what is supposed to be the A team. For instance it would have flowed better and felt more realistic to have Carisi say something like "Satan is doing just fine Pro Se" in reponse to the line about playing devil's advocate. Much like the victim's sliding door this script could have used a good polish at some point.

Benson as action hero, saving the day while the highly trained SWAT team members just stand around following her lead. And again - we are just supposed to forget her record in previous hostage situations?

The ending. Maybe it was the needed trade off to let us get such a team effort in the A plot, but it was a total waste of time. I mean usually at least the shipper pandering gives us a nice dose of Christopher Meloni, but he was literally and figuratively just phoning it in. At least hopefully this closes the books on Maddie and her family for good.

Overall this was a blandly competent ending to subpar season. In context it seems like that somebody at a high level realized they were going off the rails again and the season ended with a bit of course correction, but that has served mostly to show how tired this series is and how much it needs to end if they aren't willing to actually do something new and different.

[Xeliou66]

Pretty terrible episode all around to be honest - while I thought we were going to have an interesting serial rapist case, it instead was solved pretty easily and took a backseat to a bunch of cliches, characters acting stupid and St Olivia worship. SVU is garbage now and everyone aside from Mariska and her diehard fans can see that it’s garbage. 
While normally I would enjoy seeing Fin get focus, he was acting way more like Benson than himself here - I just didn’t buy that Fin would cover for a kid who shot him and wouldn’t do anything about it. That felt ridiculous and way OOC.  
The case was solved pretty easily and it seemed like they could’ve figured out the explanation of why the original suspect’s fingerprint was at the scene. The whole thing just felt sloppy and cliched from start to finish. 
The worst cliche was the portrayal of the DAs office returning to how it was portrayed before the Mothership returned, with Carisi as the only ethical one and being caught between the SVU squad and a one note political hack boss. I hope we never see this boss again. And it feels like the Mothership and SVU are taking places in different universes once again - the Mothership finale had Baxter’s election coming up and ended on election night, it wouldn’t have taken much for SVU to mention Baxter by name and say he was keeping a close eye on the case or something instead of bringing in a cartoonish boss to piss everyone off and crap on the office. 
And if the rest of the episode wasn’t lousy enough, we have to get one more scene of fucking Maddie and her annoying family, with the sole purpose of them kissing Olivia’s ass and telling her she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Seriously, Mariska’s ego must be gigantic for them to continue to put these scenes in of characters falling all over themselves worshipping St Olivia. 
And then they couldn’t even get Meloni/Stabler to pop in in person for a chat - that was just pandering to the shippers and felt very shoddy and forced.   
Really the only thing I liked about this episode was Bruno, he’s awesome, and him and Fin’s scene at the hardware store was by far the highlight of the episode. Velasco and Fin had a nice scene as well. Other than that it was crap.

I am very tempted to quit SVU now - the Benson worship reached an all time high this season and is just nauseating. It’s mainly just a hate watch for me now. It’s clear the show doesn’t care about having interesting cases or doing anything other than giving Mariska an ego boost. It’s downright comical what they’ve turned Benson into to be honest. I’ll see how I feel when season 26 rolls around, but SVU is pretty much crap now.

[preeya]

4 minutes ago, Xeliou66 said:

I am very tempted to quit SVU now - the Benson worship reached an all time high this season and is just nauseating. It’s mainly just a hate watch for me now. It’s clear the show doesn’t care about having interesting cases or doing anything other than giving Mariska an ego boost. It’s downright comical what they’ve turned Benson into to be honest. I’ll see how I feel when season 26 rolls around, but SVU is pretty much crap now.

1000 times this ↑

[mommalib]

I don't know how to feel about Fin letting that kid get away with shooting him, I can understand his anger over his father being in jail but you don't get to just pull up on a cop with a gun. In my mind if it was a Black kid it would have been written that he would have faced some kind of consequence. But it was nice to see Fin get some focus. 

So  Liv had her little Die Hard moment, there goes that Mariska ego rearing it's ugly head. 

I like that SWAT guy, this is the second time he kinda put Liv in her place and he got to make the kill shot at the end. 

Edited May 17 by mommalib

[cfinboston]

OMG please no more Maddie. I swear if SNL did a parody of this show it would be that final scene.

Excuse my language but fuck Liv giving away Elliot's gift. How the AF do you rationalize that? All the Redditors think it was Dick Wolf closing the door on Bensler and I agree. Giving away a symbol of hope for EO and giving it to Mrs Flynn was the perfect symbolism for this dumpster fire of a season.

And to conclude the ridiculous, why did the suspect need the detectives to remind him he worked at a hardware store? Any reasonable person would have realized "hey my fingerprint is there because I worked at a hardware store " 

Next level cringe having Liv duck bullet fire to drive the shot cop around the corner. And obviously they don't need to wait for the trained hostage negotiators. Olivia will take over.

[Ohiopirate02]

8 minutes ago, cfinboston said:

And to conclude the ridiculous, why did the suspect need the detectives to remind him he worked at a hardware store? Any reasonable person would have realized "hey my fingerprint is there because I worked at a hardware store " 

I'm not the best homemaker, but I have washed my windows more than once in the last year.  Apparently the one victim, her roommate, the people who put in the glass door, and even the landlord never bothered to clean it.  That made me both laugh and cringe at how dirty the apartment must have been.

[tennisgurl]

I cannot believe that we had even more freaking Maddie! Please let this be the end where we say goodbye to her and her annoying family for good, because I just cannot deal with the St. Olivia Chorus for another season. This show has been ruined by its never ending Olivia worship and Mariska's massive ego, I honestly have no idea if I am coming back, just shifting through the mud to find the occasional diamond. 

It was nice to get a more Finn centric episode, he had some good scenes here and there, but it was mostly underwhelming. Not only did he have to channel too much Olivia for my taste, but hiding the kid shooting him didn't feel like Finn to me. I can see him going to bat for the kid and feeling bad for him, but not totally covering everything up. 

The "Stabler was phoning it in" jokes really write themselves. I get that Olivia giving his gift away was symbolic, and because its Olivia I assume we're supposed to find it very kind of her, but it felt shitty to me. 

Not surprised at all that we need at least episode of Olivia being an action star and being the Only One Who Can Save The Day, because its not enough for her to be the only competent detective/therapist/victims advocate. 

[Spartan Girl]

7 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I cannot believe that we had even more freaking Maddie! Please let this be the end where we say goodbye to her and her annoying family for good

Hey now, her father wasn't so bad. In fact, I was rooting for him to take Maddy and leave his crazy narcissist wife (and Olivia) for parts unknown! 

[tennisgurl]

Just now, Spartan Girl said:

Hey now, her father wasn't so bad. In fact, I was rooting for him to take Maddy and leave his crazy narcissist wife (and Olivia) for parts unknown! 

Really, the only member of the family I dislike is the mom, who's Olivia's narcissistic shitty soul sister. The feel bad for Maddy and the dad who have had to deal with her and Olivia's meddling throughout this terrible time. I am just ready for this plot to be DONE.

I cant tell if the show just hates the law side of the show or if they just need an army of strawmen for St. Olivia to fight against to show how awesome she is. This happens in a lot of message heavy shows that also never want their hero to ever be wrong, they so badly want their protagonists to look good and to get whatever their message is across, they make literally everyone else on the planet look like unreasonable assholes. 

Edited May 17 by tennisgurl

[Iguessnot]

Everyone has echoed many of my thoughts so I'll just bring up some new points.

I was interesting how Benson trounced line up id's because her vic made a wrong id.  she never said before that it was unreliable evidence.

They really had that injured cop whimpering like crazy just so Olivia could give her guardian of all victims performance. She talked to him like he was a toddler.

[Zaffy]

I am happy this forum exists and warns me. Thank you all so much.
I will skip this one. The "M" one presence is enough not to watch it.

This season broke all the MariskEgoMeters. She is not a character anymore, she is a caricature, like most of the rest of the roles in this show. Even Bruno, that I like, behaves a bit like Stabler in interrogation.

There have been other horrible SVU seasons, but it was watchable again after.
I hope this will also occur next season.
Of course I also hope they gonna tone  down superhero Olivia, but somehow I doubt, cause it seems there is a big  audience that loves this cartoon.

See you next season, nice people!
 

[wknt3]

20 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I cant tell if the show just hates the law side of the show or if they just need an army of strawmen for St. Olivia to fight against to show how awesome she is. This happens in a lot of message heavy shows that also never want their hero to ever be wrong, they so badly want their protagonists to look good and to get whatever their message is across, they make literally everyone else on the planet look like unreasonable assholes. 

 

I would say it's mostly the latter combined with some of the first, and all mixed in with some general poor writing. In some ways this show is the mirror image of Blue Bloods - everyone outside of the main cast are incompetent or evil reactionaries and misogynists instead of incompetent or evil woke leftists. And the show has always had a complicated relationship with the district attorneys who prosecute the offenses which has only been dragged down by Warren Leight who hated writing courtroom scenes being in charge for so many years. Plus these writers don't seem capable of mastering the nuance required for antagonists to be good people carrying out flawed laws.

Of course this episode was written by Julie Martin whose sole job seems to be catering to Mariska's whims so it was likely all about playing the old hits to make Benson look better.

[darockwilder]

22 hours ago, Iguessnot said:

Everyone has echoed many of my thoughts so I'll just bring up some new points.

I was interesting how Benson trounced line up id's because her vic made a wrong id.  she never said before that it was unreliable evidence.

They really had that injured cop whimpering like crazy just so Olivia could give her guardian of all victims performance. She talked to him like he was a toddler.

That injured cop was played by Eddie HARGITAY.  Mariska's cousin.

 

Nothing is more important than family... 🙄

Edited May 19 by darockwilder

[misstwpherecool]

Marisa gets her Diehard or Bourne moment.  Sassy DA makes grand entrance.

Finn opens himself up to future issues with that gun he turned in. He said a neighbor found it several times which means that will come back to haunt him if they find out it was used in a crime.

And thought the shipper stuff was done but I guess not.

[Raja]

11 hours ago, misstwpherecool said:

Finn opens himself up to future issues with that gun he turned in. He said a neighbor found it several times which means that will come back to haunt him if they find out it was used in a crime.

Used in another crime 😉

[illdoc]

Not that Fin even bother to ask the kid how he got the gun.

[wknt3]

On 5/17/2024 at 12:17 PM, Spartan Girl said:

Hey now, her father wasn't so bad. In fact, I was rooting for him to take Maddy and leave his crazy narcissist wife (and Olivia) for parts unknown! 

You don't want that. It's only going to result in Benson tracking them down by saying it's a parental abduction investigation, violating about 57 NYPD protocols, jurisdicational boundaries, and state and federal laws, with only Fin and Carisi being allowed to momentarily suggest it might not be the best idea before shrugging and going along with her, and then in the end finding them almost single handedly before saying just the right words to bring them all back together so they can all tell Liv how special she is while Carisi has to do all the actual work of keeping them out of jail. Haven't you watched this show in the last decade?

[MarylandGirl]

When Benson said she had someplace to be at the end, I thought she was going to the hospital to check on the cop who'd been shot. Silly me, I should have figured it would be Maddie. Blegh.

If I were Elliott, I'd be really annoyed she gave away the gift. It would have been truly awesome if he'd been like, "What, was it Maddie or something? Oh, her Mom? Seriously, Olivia, just get over them already. Have you even asked about how I've been doing?"