S26.E10 Master Key

[Xeliou66]

Episode description 

When a teen from a group home goes missing, the squad has only minutes to determine if he ran away or was abducted; Velasco suspects the system at large is to blame for letting children slip through the cracks.

[wknt3]

The Good:
The opener. A nice classic example of the crime being discovered and detectives showing up. No personal melodrama intertwined. No showing us the crime in a quick montage where overly loud music tries to distract us from a lack of production value or writing. Best of all we have 2 detectives responding and not Benson showing up to start the investigation.

The COTW. Actual police work with actual prosecution,with the Benson nonsense mostly a sideshow instead of the central focus. Plus she actually did some productive work instead of just speechifying. And the entire team actually got to contribute to the plot instead of being glorified extras.

Carisi. He was the experienced investigator trying to uncover the truth and willing to call out lies on all side that Benson SHOULD have been.

The Bad:
Once again we have Benson as advocate and mystical savior instead of cop. Why not just show her like everyone else - investigators whose gut is telling them there is more to the case than the surface trying to get to the bottom of things? She is the most experienced and could even be the best and first to figure it out without being more of a social worker than the the social workers.

Overall this was a solid episode. A classic style SVU story with some good performances and a nice distribution of screen time. Dragged down as usual by Mariska's ego, but it was pretty well contained. Not great, but good and in a season that has been mostly meh that is enough.

[Xeliou66]

This was a good episode, an actual mystery to solve plus good work from each character, not just the St O show. It had some good twists, I couldn’t tell where it was going, I liked seeing Bruno and Silva take the lead at the start and Velasco and Curry got good roles as well and Carisi was solid with what he got. I didn’t peg the case worker as a bad guy at the start, it was a good twist. Liked seeing an ME as well. The usual Benson acting as an advocate and being all knowing was annoying but it wasn’t as bad as some other times and she didn’t hog the screentime. Probably the best episode of the season. 

[cfinboston]

Who else thought Benson was going to adopt Anthony?

[preeya]

4 hours ago, cfinboston said:

Who else thought Benson was going to adopt Anthony?

She did say to Anthony "you've got me"

[tennisgurl]

That was probably the best episode we have had in awhile, with an actual mystery, strong performances by the guest cast, most of the squad got to do something, and the Olivia worship wasn't too bad. She still had to have the last word, of course, giving Anthony faith in at least some people in power, but any episodes without at least three speeches is a winner for me. I am glad that the first two episode this season are not the same old cases that we have had a million times.

This episode did take a few turns I didn't expect, I suspected that the social worker might be sketchy but not to the point of trafficking the kids in his caseload, I like when an episode isn't predictable with an obvious villain. I have to say, while every crime on this show is horrible, this one was viscerally horrible in a way that this show rarely is anymore, there is just something about a social worker pimping out kids he's supposed to look out for, who have probably gone through horrible things already to end up in the system, that really makes you feel gross. Poor Anthony, hopefully he gets a TON of therapy after all of this, as well as the other kids this asshole hurt. 

While it wasn't as bad here as it is in other episodes, its frustrating when Carisi tries to get more information from victims or just asks basic questions about a case and Olivia gets all annoyed with him. He isn't trying to be a dick to victims, blame them, or act like they're making things up, he's trying to build a case so that he can convict the perps! To do that, he needs information about what happened! You would think that a police captain would understand that, its not about not believing victims, its about trying to get abusers put away and not letting them get away because of some legal nonsense! 

Edited Monday at 09:50 PM by tennisgurl