S26.E1: Fractured

[dttruman]

The SVU investigates a brutal attack on a group of law students; Benson hopes the discovery of a hidden camera will crack the case open; Carisi's best chance at conviction is catching the defendant in a lie. Got to give credit to (I think) Google for preview of first episode of season 26.

Edited October 2 by dttruman
didn't give credit for preview

[Xeliou66]

Thanks for starting the thread.

Sounds like an interesting enough case, hope it delivers on its promise and doesn’t just become another “St O saves the day” hour. Glad Bruno is a regular now, he’s great. I hope the new female cop fits in well, they’ve really struggled with how to write female characters in recent seasons - Kat and Muncy were epic busts.

[dttruman]

4 hours ago, Xeliou66 said:

Thanks for starting the thread.

Sounds like an interesting enough case, hope it delivers on its promise and doesn’t just become another “St O saves the day” hour. Glad Bruno is a regular now, he’s great. I hope the new female cop fits in well, they’ve really struggled with how to write female characters in recent seasons - Kat and Muncy were epic busts.

Since it's the first episode, the spotlight will probably be on Benson!

[Xeliou66]

4 minutes ago, dttruman said:

Since it's the first episode, the spotlight will probably be on Benson!

The spotlight is on St O in just about every episode now, I just hope there’s more to the story than just hero worship of Benson. It sounds like we might get some legal stuff with Carisi which would be good, all too often they don’t know how to use Carisi/the legal stuff. 

[preeya]

She's back! Just heard the first "you did nothing wrong" of the season.

St. Olivia is aging.

[Xeliou66]

Decent overall - the case was decent enough, and it was nice having a full squad of investigators again. Carisi in court was the best part of the episode, he did great and it was really nice to see them utilize his legal skills, and he even got to share the glory of closing the case at the end along with St O. It was nice that more than just Benson were used and it was awesome to see them go into the courtroom, they rarely do that now so it was nice.

The case was decent, I figured the other roommate did it so it was a good twist he wasn’t the perp, but there weren’t a whole lot of twists to the case. Fin and Bruno we’re good as usual, seeing them paired together is always a treat, and it’s great that Bruno is in the opening credits now.

What was absurd was the riot breaking out when they arrested the suspect, that came out of the blue and was just ridiculous, I didn’t buy at all that all of the sudden a ton of people would start going berserk over nothing. And having protests at the courthouse was absurd too. It felt like they were trying to make a statement about tension between cops/civilians but it made no sense to do it in this episode and it felt shoehorned in.

A better start to the season than I expected - nice to see the courtroom again and more people than just Benson were involved. 

[EtheltoTillie]

That was a Perry Mason ending:  I did it I did it. It was ridiculous that the guy suddenly went on the stand to “clarify” after jumping up in the middle of testimony. 
I was expecting the hammer to be excluded as evidence because it was found in the homeless guy’s shopping cart, as in that was his home. If he had been a suspect that would have happened. Last year there were so many of those search and seizure mistakes on the mothership. 

[MerBearHou]

It was a good opening episode, I thought.  Nice to see involvement by everyone, not just Olivia.  The new female officer (detective?) meshed in nicely, I thought.  I would have liked a quick scene of them giving the homeless guy a new hammer like they promised.  I didn’t want it to be the 4th roommate so the twist was welcomed, though very out of left field (but that was ok as that certainly happens IRL).  Carisi was terrific — he’s my favorite and he did so well in the courtroom.  Love seeing how he’s grown.  

[Ohiopirate02]

9 hours ago, Xeliou66 said:

What was absurd was the riot breaking out when they arrested the suspect, that came out of the blue and was just ridiculous, I didn’t buy at all that all of the sudden a ton of people would start going berserk over nothing. And having protests at the courthouse was absurd too. It felt like they were trying to make a statement about tension between cops/civilians but it made no sense to do it in this episode and it felt shoehorned in.

 

I agree on this one. The police are looking for someone who raped a classmate and murdered another one. This isn't them chasing down someone who jumped a turnstile on the subway or some other petty crime. Now is not the time to cause a riot.

[txhorns79]

14 hours ago, Xeliou66 said:

And having protests at the courthouse was absurd too.

I didn't understand the protests at the courthouse.  The guy was accused of rape, assault and murder.  What were the people even protesting?   

[dttruman]

3 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

I didn't understand the protests at the courthouse.  The guy was accused of rape, assault and murder.  What were the people even protesting?   

I agree, this whole protesting scenario was so poorly contrived. and just put in there for effect. They even had a lot of college girls standing around outside of the court building, but I wasn't sure what they were doing, protesting or supporting the victim. But what really put this episode over the top for the executive producers, was the lack of Benson getting too involved, except when she took it upon herself to comfort the mother of Shelli

[wknt3]

The Good:
An actual ensemble feel with the whole team involved. Hopefully this is a sign that they have figured out you can have a star lead without shoving everyone else into the background.

The opening credits! Kevin Kane's credit and and enough cast members in the final shot to fill a minivan.

Lots of Carisi without making him an investigator instead of a prosecutor. He actually got to play an active role in bringing the case to a conclusion.

A decent investigation with a reasonable flow from one lead to another without being either too obvious or too "shockingly" twisty.

The Bad:
More of the whole NYPD as victims nonsense. I mean even the Thin Blue Line crowd was probably rolling their eyes a bit at the courthouse riot.

While new blood is badly needed and the franchise has a loooong history of good characters with rocky debuts, I'm not sure why they decided to do the same thing as the last few failed attempts at adding a younger female detective. Yet another tough girl cop's cop? But this time it's different because we're adding another cliche by given her family connections to the brass? How is she not going to meet the same fate of arousing Mariska's jealousy and being written increasingly dumb every week and needing the guidance of the all knowing Benson to make a callow youth into an elite detective?

Not enough Fin.

They never seemed to actually finish anything. I kept expecting them to do something with one of the obvious potential plot threads (like the victim actually exploring exhibitonism or the hammer being thrown out as evidence) but they never bothered to explore any one angle.

Overall this was a perfectly cromulent episode. Not as bad as feared, but not as good as wanted. If they manage to tighten up the writing while keeping with the overall approach of Benson as the lead instead of the end all be all it could be a good start. If they backslide on the Benson worship with this sort of clunky writing maybe it will actually kill the zombie corpse of SVU.

[Raja]

On 10/3/2024 at 11:02 PM, Xeliou66 said:

What was absurd was the riot breaking out when they arrested the suspect, that came out of the blue and was just ridiculous, I didn’t buy at all that all of the sudden a ton of people would start going berserk over nothing. And having protests at the courthouse was absurd too. It felt like they were trying to make a statement about tension between cops/civilians but it made no sense to do it in this episode and it felt shoehorned in.

Since you got in first on the weakest section I'll quote you 🙂

It reminded me of the first scenes when the mothership was brought back and New Yorkers had nothing better to do than all point their cameras at police doing their duty. But breaking out in a mini riot and then protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court building went beyond absurd.

As law students they all seem infantilized, calling daddy instead of 9-1-1, come on.  The don't call the police call but campus security advice from the parents, have they not watched Law & Order for the past 30 years.

 

To bookend the police haters club we have the Blue Blood new detective who joined the family business after watching the ordinary heroes move towards the towers on 9/11. It did seem a bit odd as she had been in the unit for a little while but then we are getting her captain calling a range day to bond and now the peers bringing up she is a daughter of the higher brass after presumably not talking about it before.

Edited October 5 by Raja

[EtheltoTillie]

3 hours ago, Raja said:

To bookend the police haters club we have the Blue Blood new detective who joined the family business after watching the ordinary heroes move towards the towers on 9/11. It did seem a bit odd as she had been in the unit for a little while but then we are getting her captain calling a range day to bond and now the peers bringing up she is a daughter of the higher brass after presumably not talking about it before.

I watch Blue Bloods, but that speech was ridiculous.  So fake

[illdoc]

8 hours ago, Raja said:

calling daddy instead of 9-1-1, come on.  The don't call the police call but campus security advice from the parents,

I might accept the "campus police will get there sooner than NYPD so call them"...but what about an ambulance? I doubt "campus police" will bring an ambulance! You have two "obviously need an ambulance" victims, three if you aren't entirely sure victim #3 is dead. My first call isn't "9-1-1 I need cops", it's "9-1-1 I need an ambulance and police". 

[Theli11]

This episode... was fine I guess for a premiere.. Didn't do too much like the past couple of seasons. It actually might've been the most subdued premiere since like.. Season 13. If they're going to have Detective Silva become junior super detective, they gotta pull back on Olivia... 

[dttruman]

On 10/5/2024 at 4:22 PM, illdoc said:

I might accept the "campus police will get there sooner than NYPD so call them"...but what about an ambulance? I doubt "campus police" will bring an ambulance! You have two "obviously need an ambulance" victims, three if you aren't entirely sure victim #3 is dead. My first call isn't "9-1-1 I need cops", it's "9-1-1 I need an ambulance and police". 

Wouldn't the 9-1-1 operator have a few more questions to ask, rather than answer you request is being immediately acknowledged.

[Iguessnot]

Was nothing made of the rape kit and semen samples? 

[tennisgurl]

This was a pretty decent opener, nothing special but a pretty solid case overall and not too much over the top Olivia cringe. I like the new cop so far, but this show has had a terrible track record with new female characters so we will see how it goes. We really need to have a full squad, even if we will inevitably still have a million scenes of police captain Olivia doing things that any other cop or therapist should be doing as if she doesn't have a whole prescient to run. 

The actual case was pretty good, I was sure it was the fourth roommate so it being some "nice guy" type was at least a bit of a twist, even if just about everything else went just the way you would think. However, it was one of those cases that felt like it just needed a tiny bit more work, it felt unfinished when the episode ended. Did we even get official confirmation beyond the end where the female roommate said that she and the others would still become lawyers that the male roommate survived? Did they get nothing from the rape kit? 

The episode would have been so much better without the whole weird campus riot/protest subplot, what the hell even was that? This wasn't cops attacking an unarmed black man who was jay walking, it was a white college kid being politely spoken to by the cops about a possible rape, murder, and assault! During the protest outside the courthouse, I could see signs that were pro victim, anti-cop, on different sides, who are these people? The student liberties group and all of these presumably progressive students are going to feel really stupid when they realize that all of this was for a guy who murdered one of their classmates, raped another, and beat a third into a coma, because he was mad she wasn't into him. This show really wants to deal with the tensions between cops and the common folk, but they really just don't seem to get it. 

[weaver]

I watched the show for the first time in ages.  I liked the group dynamic of the cast and the NY scenes outside were great.

I did buy the students' activities at the arrest of the suspect.  Assuming it is supposed to be NYU, its not implausible to me that it would happen.

I kept shouting "where is the rape kit" through the last part of the show.  Also it struck me that the actor playing the perp was quite tall, taller than the fourth roommate, and that maybe the victim might have noticed that.  

If they'd get some decent writers, the show could be excellent with this cast and crew.     

[dttruman]

3 hours ago, weaver said:

I watched the show for the first time in ages.  I liked the group dynamic of the cast and the NY scenes outside were great.

I did buy the students' activities at the arrest of the suspect.  Assuming it is supposed to be NYU, its not implausible to me that it would happen.

I kept shouting "where is the rape kit" through the last part of the show.  Also it struck me that the actor playing the perp was quite tall, taller than the fourth roommate, and that maybe the victim might have noticed that.  

If they'd get some decent writers, the show could be excellent with this cast and crew.     

Is it NYU, because I forgot to check and see if they mentioned it was the famous Hudson University where all kinds of sex crimes take place?

[wknt3]

On 10/13/2024 at 8:46 AM, weaver said:

I did buy the students' activities at the arrest of the suspect.  Assuming it is supposed to be NYU, its not implausible to me that it would happen.   

 

20 hours ago, dttruman said:

Is it NYU, because I forgot to check and see if they mentioned it was the famous Hudson University where all kinds of sex crimes take place?

It was University of New York. I guess Hudson had to shut down their law school as no firms wanted to hire their grads due to the conflict of interest issues with all of them being witnesses, victims, or perps in multiple active cases...