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S26.E12 Calculated

Xeliou66

By Xeliou66
in Law & Order: SVU

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wknt3

wknt3

The Good:
The opening. While it certainly had it flaws (see below) it did not lay out the whole crime, rely on quick cut editing and heavy handed music. or drag on for too long, or try to rely on some overly cutesy thematic link between Benson's day to day and the crime so overall a good start.

The COTW. Good team approach with solid police work and interaction between the police and DA's office. A nice straightforward story with just enough twist to keep things interesting.

Carisi in the first 3/4s of the episode. It's nice to see somebody telling Benson she is not the moral arbiter of the universe without immediately being shown to be a bad guy. Also nice to actually see him call bullshit Livsplaining the law to an ADA.

Silva. It took too long, but it's nice to see her getting some character development and they finally are not trashing a younger female detective.

Bruno and Fin. It is nice to see that someone at SVU remembers how to write with a degree of nuance. Nice mix of pragmatism as well as humanity. It reminds me of what this show used to be across the board when even the leads were pragmatic investigators in an imperfect world, trying to do the right thing within the system instead of moral paragons who always had the right answers.
 

The Bad:
A Captain going on a routine call while Detectives sit at their desk? Why not send Fin with Silva? If this is a De Minimus case that is supposed to be done by lunch why do we have the whole team working on this from the jump? So Benson can show off her super special psychic abilities that she knows this one could be special? Or worse lecture Silva about how SVU is more subtle than homicide? Really? Really?? Really??? Olivia Benson is talking about subtlety???!!!

Benson as super counselor and victim whisperer. It added nothing and was a waste of time except to show that she can solve everything and make everything right.

Carisi after the arrest. It is not in character for him to be a stickler for the rules without seeing shades of gray and using his discretion.

Even when they do a crossover with Baxter we still have do that "8th Floor" bullshit? Why are we still doing this?

 

Overall this was a good episode. It could have been a great episode with a few tweaks, mostly the usual (if the time we spend building up Benson was devoted to a bit of comic relief or maybe some slightly better crafted storytelling (for example in the old days they would have had the other detectives jumping on a case that seemed to have more potential for OT and stats leaving the newbie to take the nude selfies at the school nothingburger) but this was still an actual good episode and I can certainly take that.

  • Like 8
Xeliou66

Xeliou66

  • Author

This was a good episode, I liked the case and investigation, good use of all of the squad members and a good storyline. Silva and Bruno were both very good, I’m glad that Silva seems to be a strong addition and that they are doing a good job with a younger female cop after botching Kat and Muncy terribly. Bruno was his usual awesome self. 
I liked that Carisi told off Benson at the start and I thought Benson was being ridiculous with her whining about cutting a deal with the original suspect to nail more perverts, but I disliked how they seemed to make Carisi irrational about the mentally challenged guy just so St O could save the day. If there was no reason they had to charge him then it was clear he should be released as he was nowhere near competent enough to understand what was going on, and it shouldn’t have taken Benson going to Baxter to see that. It was nice to see Baxter crossover and get a scene with Carisi and him calling St O a pain in the ass was great - that’s exactly what she is. It just seemed like it was simple enough that the guy shouldn’t be charged that it shouldn’t have required such a big rigamarole, but it was nice that Baxter appeared in person. 
Overall a very good episode, SVU can still deliver them when they care more about coming up with an interesting plot than making St O look good. And they finally have a strong cast of characters around Benson. 

  • Like 8
marny

marny

This episode was incredibly out of character for Carisi. And Finn. I guess that’s how they got Olivia to save the day and had a reason for the Olivia/Baxter showdown (which was barely a blip). They’ve had plenty of episodes about mental capacity to form intent or to consent to sex, but all of the sudden a pedo is a pedo is a pedo. This episode just wasn’t credible in the SVU universe. 

  • Like 7
MediaZone4K

MediaZone4K

2 hours ago, marny said:

This episode was incredibly out of character for Carisi. And Finn. I guess that’s how they got Olivia to save the day and had a reason for the Olivia/Baxter showdown (which was barely a blip). They’ve had plenty of episodes about mental capacity to form intent or to consent to sex, but all of the sudden a pedo is a pedo is a pedo. This episode just wasn’t credible in the SVU universe. 

I think they have Olivia on routine calls to give her more screen time.
 

She is the longest running cast member, and the largest draw factor for audiences. Having her in limited scenes  like Captain Creagan was, would be  hiding their (subjective statement) best jewel.
 

Audiences were used to the majority of scenes being Stabler & Benson.  To have Benson drift to a supporting role might be jarring for viewers.

pezgirl7

pezgirl7

The special needs guy didn’t even know what a condom was, which I think helps prove that there was no intent, yet Silva never mentioned it! And did the detectives really show the nude photo of the girl to her classmate right outside their school?! It pissed me off that Olivia was willing to charge the admissions officer instead of giving him a deal that would give the detectives a chance at catching a bunch of bigger fish, just because the girl was upset her photo might get spread around? That doesn’t even make sense. How does she know it hasn’t already been sent to others? Other than a few other minor annoyances, this was a pretty good episode. I’m glad the charges against the guy got dropped in the end. 

  • Like 9
wknt3

wknt3

(edited)
On 2/14/2025 at 4:52 PM, marny said:

This episode was incredibly out of character for Carisi. And Finn. I guess that’s how they got Olivia to save the day and had a reason for the Olivia/Baxter showdown (which was barely a blip). They’ve had plenty of episodes about mental capacity to form intent or to consent to sex, but all of the sudden a pedo is a pedo is a pedo. This episode just wasn’t credible in the SVU universe. 


As always it all comes back to Mariska insisting on being the sun and the moon, and not just the star. If we drop the unnecessary scenes of Benson promising AND delivering making everything all better for the victim, we would have had time to give Carisi some motivation instead of a single line about providing the actual pedos an entrapment defense. Properly developed, it is the basis for an actual conflict between well meaning protagonists motivated by different perspectives who eventually find a creative solution and unite to convince the guest star who is viewing the situation from a big picture perspective that it is better 49 pervs get a lighter sentence than 1 innocent developmentally disabled man is incarcerated. Which is how it would have been done in the classic SVU era. But now Benson has to be the angel on Carisi's shoulder and the one who explains legal ethics to the Manhattan DA. Which is sadly believable in the current SVU universe...

Edited by wknt3
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Xeliou66

Xeliou66

  • Author
On 2/15/2025 at 10:16 PM, tvfanatic13 said:

Really disliked Carisi in this one 

This was another example of a character being made to look dumb/unreasonable just so St Olivia could be the one to save the day. It’s happened over and over and over on SVU - other characters are thrown under the bus in an effort to make Benson look like a perfect saint who can do no wrong and who’s always the one to save the day. In this case, it was very obvious that the mentally challenged guy didn’t understand what was going on or the charges against him, and almost any judge would immediately dismiss the case, and it’s doubtful Carisi or any other prosecutor would even go forward with charges, so I didn’t buy that it would take Benson tracking down Baxter in a parking garage to get him to take a personal look at the case and get it dismissed. Felt just forced to make St O look good and to get Baxter in - while I liked seeing him crossover, I wish they had found a more natural way to write him in, still it was great seeing him tell St O she’s developed a reputation as being a pain in the ass and seeing him interact with Carisi (we never got a Carisi/McCoy scene). 
I liked this episode overall, Bruno and Silva were great, but it’s another example of how even in a good episode they put in an unnatural, forced plot to make Olivia Benson look good. 

  • Like 2
Iguessnot

Iguessnot

21 hours ago, Xeliou66 said:

This was another example of a character being made to look dumb/unreasonable just so St Olivia could be the one to save the day. It’s happened over and over and over on SVU - other characters are thrown under the bus in an effort to make Benson look like a perfect saint who can do no wrong and who’s always the one to save the day. In this case, it was very obvious that the mentally challenged guy didn’t understand what was going on or the charges against him, and almost any judge would immediately dismiss the case, and it’s doubtful Carisi or any other prosecutor would even go forward with charges, so I didn’t buy that it would take Benson tracking down Baxter in a parking garage to get him to take a personal look at the case and get it dismissed. Felt just forced to make St O look good and to get Baxter in - while I liked seeing him crossover, I wish they had found a more natural way to write him in, still it was great seeing him tell St O she’s developed a reputation as being a pain in the ass and seeing him interact with Carisi (we never got a Carisi/McCoy scene). 
I liked this episode overall, Bruno and Silva were great, but it’s another example of how even in a good episode they put in an unnatural, forced plot to make Olivia Benson look good. 

I'm sure those email or chat conversations are part of the evidence. He was told to bring condoms, responded he didn't know what they were, and Silva told him to ask at the local bodega. Absolutely no need for the Benson bravado.

  • Like 1
tennisgurl

tennisgurl

(edited)

This was mostly a really strong episode, but it would have been excellent if they had just tweaked it in a few ways, mostly involving Olivia having to be right about everything. The case took a lot of interesting turns without being ridiculous, we had some solid detective work, and most of the squad got time to shine. But then, we have Olivia. The idea of a police captain in the NYPD going off to investigate a case of teenagers sexting each other is ridiculous, does she truly have so little on her plate that she can just go off to deal with what seemed like an utterly minor issue without even a known victim? That pile of old rape and domestic violence cases are just gathering dust somewhere because the captain of SVU is such a micromanager. I get that the point of the episode was that something that seems small can become something big, and this certainly did, but she couldn't have just sent Bruno and Silva? Then of course we have to have her with the teen girl at the end whispering her way to emotional clarity, its so cringe. 

She also came in way to hot with that first kid who got the nude, all that had happened was him getting a random picture of a girl he kind of knew, and it turned out that he really didn't do anything wrong. Also, his mom could have maybe picked a better time to throw shade at his essay skills. Lady, your son was almost manipulated into giving away nude pictures of himself to be sold to pedophiles, bigger fish!

That counselor was such a smug creep, I just wanted to reach through my screen and punch him in the face. Its wild that he kept saying how he's not a pedophile like that's going to help him out so much, he's selling nude pictures of teenagers to predators, that does not make you any better. 

This was a really good episode for Silva, she showed a lot of competence and empathy, I am glad that the show seems to have finally found a young female detective that we can keep. She was really sweet with the poor special needs man, and I am really glad that she could get his charged dropped, anyone with a half a brain could tell that he didn't comprehend what was happening. Its too bad that Carisi had to be the jerk in the second half of the episode so that Olivia could give more speeches, he was being so weirdly unreasonable. 

Edited by tennisgurl
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