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S20.E10: Alta Kockers


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Episode info from IMDb, The investigation into a promising new author's death leads to a decades-old secret kept between two reclusive brothers.

I hope they give Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn significant time to display their talents.

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This has to be one of the most unusual episode titles I've seen.

ETA: Good to see Judd Hirsch back in the franchise. I remember his L&O: CI episode as a racist newspaper publisher in "Pravda" in S3 eons ago and also liked him in the short-lived ABC show, Forever. (And, sadly, I am old enough to remember him from Taxi when I was little.)

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I had no idea what Alta Kockers meant, but thanks to this article about tonight's TV offerings...

https://www.jweekly.com/2018/11/28/mrs-maisel-is-back-and-so-is-deal-or-no-deal/

Quote

A “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode titled “Alta Kockers” premiered on NBC on Nov. 29. The plot involved an investigation into an author’s death and a decades-old secret between two reclusive brothers. The alter kocker (old fart) Jewish brothers are played by Judd Hirsch, 83, and Wallace Shawn, 75. 

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1 hour ago, dttruman said:

I don't know what happen, they took down the video clips. Did I forget to give them credit for them or did I need to get permission from them or something?

It's all about copyright stuff. Many a show and many a clip have been removed because of copyright and ownership and whatever.

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Anyway, the victim (or lady) was doing a book signing, then stepped out for a break and was killed by someone using a brick. According to Benson she was a transgender and she called it a hate crime immediately. It could have been a mugging gone wrong, but Benson assumes the worst.

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3 minutes ago, dttruman said:

Yeah, it reminded me of that episode!

This seems to be a mash-up of all sorts of L&O episodes: the Ann Margaret/Jaclyn Smith episode, the one where John Schuck owned a building with his sister, Sweetie...I'm waiting for Criminal Intent to represent any minute.

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1 minute ago, chick binewski said:

Well this went from dreck to being really sad

Yes, but we still get Benson consoling a victim. Will someone tell me why Benson and Rollins are interrogating them?. I thought this was a Fin and Carisi case.

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10 minutes ago, MrsRafaelBarba said:

Hi Stone! 

Yes, we still got Stone and also Benson telling him what to do again concerning the trial. They should have had the shrink talk to them, to bring out their buried memories. I don't understand how they would be taken to trial, they should have had Stone compromising with their attorney. It was still kind of superficial of an episode, but one of the better one this season.

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35 minutes ago, MrsRafaelBarba said:

What in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre hell?

 

Is that mom in the freezer?

I thought they were going to make this scenario part of the episode something sinister, but it was just a sad moment in the lives of the brothers.

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what a bizarre confusing episode

 

the episode cut out partway before the second last commercial so i missed part of the show, did they reveal what happened to vince, if he was still alive or dead?

With the mom i was surprised no one mentioned the possibility that with her poor health she choked or ashipaxed herself, i've seen where people have literally suffocated on their own vomit and died

someone needs to turn on  a light in that house, was surprised no one had fallen down a flight of stairs or something

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28 minutes ago, dttruman said:

I don't understand how they would be taken to trial, they should have had Stone compromising with their attorney.

Stone did say he offered them a plea but they turned it down.

Since when does Benson care if Albany has passed pertinent laws before bringing people in for things she thinks should be a crime?  And what exactly does Rollins find "special" about Dr. Al?

I liked this ep better than most this season.  Sure, it was a mash-up of other eps from the L&O franchisees, but it was elevated by the poignant turns of WS and JH.  They held my interest till the end.  Other pluses:  No personal stuff.  No Stone till 50 minutes in.  More Carisi than has been the norm this season, and he had stuff to do!  But I am still convinced the current regime has no clue who Sonny Carisi is as a person.  

Do we know when they're coming back from their mid-winter break?

Edited by Fellaway
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The Good:
Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn. This was the best use of big name guest stars in quite some time if only because they are capable of elevating the material and they wisely decided to let them work and (mostly) get out of the way.
Stone had another good week. Even though his bits were just as perfunctory as the rest of the non-Mariska main cast he came off pretty well if only because he seemed to be making the legal decisions.
It had that old school SVU feel of the better episodes of the last couple years. In this case the middle Baer years in that it was twisty and gothic without going completely OTT.

The Bad:
Benson. Why is she on scene first? Why are we expected to believe that Benson has heard victims speaking in flowery prose? How does she have the gall to tell Carisi that they have to follow the law and can't arrest someone based on moral outrage? Who the hell does she think she is trying to give Stone orders on how to prosecute the case?
Rollins. They should have just given her the week off. She added nothing and I don't see why they had her going to the prison when there were better choices from both a character and acting stand point. Her part of the interview scenes was at best dull and at worst actively bad.
It was sorely lacking some of the little things that made old school SVU so good. The Yiddish slurs badly needed some dry wit instead of just righteous indignation. I could just see Munch saying something like "I believe the polite term is Negroes" and when they found the "booby trapped" passageway it would have definitely been played more for comedy and come off better.

Overall it was was good, although I don't think it's a sustainable formula - I'm sure they are capable of cranking out another half season's worth of mediocre scripts rehashing plots from past franchise episodes, but I don't think they can convince two of the finest actors working today to guest star every week and even if they did Mariska is not going to accept not being the center of attention.
 

Edited by wknt3
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What an odd episode. The original victim was murdered by some crazy John, and that case was solved really quickly, and the other crimes were committed so long ago, that getting justice would be impossible, as I assume that the perps are probably long dead. 

I haven't watched in awhile, but I went into this for Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn, and they were great all throughout. The episode took some turns that made it look more creepy and sinister, especially with the moms body in the freezer, but the whole thing just turned out to be so sad. Especially as it came out that both brothers were abused, thinking that they were protecting the other one, and keeping it a secret for so many years. 

This felt like the old SVU episodes I used to like, where it started out one way, and took about a thousand turns until we finally got to our ending. Like going from possible trans hate crime to decades old sexual abuse cases and euthanasia. 

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I am mixed on this episode. It was entertaining in some ways and flawed in some ways.

The opening reminded me a lot of the L&O episode Sweetie, both episodes began with a reading from an author that was formerly a child prostitute that turned out to be an imposter that was then murdered. Sweetie was a much more compelling and entertaining episode IMO, the opening of this episode felt like a total ripoff.

The twists did make sense and I understood how the case unfolded despite the opening having nothing to do with the ending.

Carisi and Fin were awesome again, but they disappeared in the second half of the show in order to give Benson and Rollins more screen time. 

Stone was barely in the episode and didn’t do much at all, and I hated how Benson was trying to act as his boss again.

The 2 old guys were funny and entertaining, and made me laugh out loud a few times. I hated the PC preaching thigh when they used non PC Yiddish slurs (which I couldn’t understand and had to look up). Fin should’ve had a funny retort instead of his “words can hurt” diatribe, the whole thing reeked of Mariska’s politically correct agenda, and I hated Fin’s line about words hurting more than a gun, it’s stupid for one thing, I don’t condone ethnic slurs but it isn’t violence, and it was very OOC for Fin as well, who’s never been shaken when dealing with bigoted suspects and who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. Like I say, it just felt like “mean words are the worst thing ever” SJW preaching. 

I didn’t understand what the 2 brothers being molested by Vincent had to do with them mercy killing their cancer ridden mother, other than make them more sympathetic figures. 

No Noah, no Al and no Stone drinking was nice.

Abernathy should’ve interviewed the 2 brothers to determine their mental state and find out more about them, but of course we have to get Benson and Rollins doing it in instead and getting all of the glory.

Please get Mariska’s cousin off screen, it’s a pathetic case of nepotism and he adds nothing to the show.

Overall this was a mixed bag : a good investigation with twists that made sense while keeping you guessing, with 2 compelling characters in the old geezers, and no personal shit, but the opening felt ripped off from Sweetie, Carisi, Fin and Stone didn’t get enough screen time, too much Benson and Rollins, Benson was incredibly irritating once again, and the episode seemed all over the map in places.

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5 hours ago, Fellaway said:

Stone did say he offered them a plea but they turned it down.

This is one of their standard gimmicks. It now gives them an excuse to write in a situation for Stone and also allows the usual opportunity for Benson to weigh in on how the brothers should be prosecuted. But the good part about it, it allowed Judd Hirsch's scene to play out.

Edited by dttruman
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6 hours ago, balmz said:

the episode cut out partway before the second last commercial so i missed part of the show, did they reveal what happened to vince, if he was still alive or dead?

Not that I noticed. And, yes, the statute of limitations would have run out, but what about that tried and true SVU plot of "if we can show a pattern" and "pediophiles don't just stop"? I mean, if Creepy Vincent was in his 20s in the 70s, if he's still alive, he'd be younger than Judd Hirsch.

Maybe the original script had Vincent in the freezer, and they changed it to terminally ill Mom so Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn would accept the roles.

Wallace Shawn may have done the lion's share of the guest acting, but kudos to Judd Hirsch for being able to confess in court and then immediately drop dead without missing a beat or looking cheesey.

Edited by shapeshifter
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8 hours ago, Zoe said:

Whatever slur that was got completely lost on me lol

It was schvartze(r), which means Black woman or Black man. On its face, it actually isn't a slur, but can be depending on the context. For example, "those people." Those people over there are selling ginger scones vs He's one of those people. Shiksa would be another one. Technically, it just means a non-Jewish woman. However, the way it's often used today is to describe a non-Jewish woman who sexually tempts a Jewish man away from marrying a Jewish woman.

I'd argue that Finn was correctly picking up on some bigotry just based on Judd Hirsch's character's code switching. Mensch, schmuck, and meshugganah you hear often enough in everyday speech. But schvartze(r) I usually only hear when the speaker is old, trying to say something kind of racist, or old and trying to say something racist. Granted I'm not Jewish; I'm a Black woman. So when I do hear someone using schvartze, it's pretty suspect.

Edited by HunterHunted
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6 hours ago, wknt3 said:

How does she have the gall to tell Carisi that they have to follow the law and can't arrest someone based on moral outrage?

I guess the writer(s) for this episode forgot or didn't know anything about Benson's righteous stand concerning "Zero Tolerance". The double standard persona that Benson is allowed to display, just frustrates me to no end. IMO, this does a disservice to police officers everywhere.

If you confront the producers with this fact, they will tell you to relax, it's just a TV show. IMO, the obvious conceitedness of Benson is making her an unlikable character.

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46 minutes ago, HunterHunted said:

It was schvartze(r), which means Black woman or Black man. On its face, it actually isn't a slur, but can be depending on the context. For example, "those people." Those people over there are selling ginger scones vs He's one of those people. Shiksa would be another one. Technically, it just means a non-Jewush woman. However, the way it's often used today is to describe a non-Jewish woman who sexually tempts a Jewish man away from marrying a Jewish woman.

I'd argue that Finn was correctly picking up on some bigotry just based on Judd Hirsch's character's code switching. Mensch, schmuck, and meshugganah you hear often enough in everyday speech. But schvartze(r) I usually only hear when the speaker is old, trying to say something kind of racist, or old and trying to say something racist. Granted I'm not Jewish; I'm a Black woman. So when I do hear someone using schvartze, it's pretty suspect.

Excellent, nuanced explanation, @HunterHunted, of the Yiddish racial slur, Schvartzer, which I cannot attempt to duplicate for the other two Yiddish terms used in the episode, so I will provide links:

Slurs are learned at home and at school, but there is the theory that those who use them (like Archie Bunker) do so out of a sense of self-inferiority—I don't know if that theory is now passé—but it might be what the writers were going for.

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1 hour ago, HunterHunted said:

It was schvartze(r), which means Black woman or Black man. On its face, it actually isn't a slur, but can be depending on the context. For example, "those people." Those people over there are selling ginger scones vs He's one of those people. Shiksa would be another one. Technically, it just means a non-Jewush woman. However, the way it's often used today is to describe a non-Jewish woman who sexually tempts a Jewish man away from marrying a Jewish woman.

I'd argue that Finn was correctly picking up on some bigotry just based on Judd Hirsch's character's code switching. Mensch, schmuck, and meshugganah you hear often enough in everyday speech. But schvartze(r) I usually only hear when the speaker is old, trying to say something kind of racist, or old and trying to say something racist. Granted I'm not Jewish; I'm a Black woman. So when I do hear someone using schvartze, it's pretty suspect.

Very good explanation from someone not Jewish. From the Jewish perspective and from the advantage of age almost as much as the alter cockers,  I'd just add that those expressions were known as slurs even many years ago and were not used by those who knew better. Your definition of shiksa is exactly right and it was always used in that negative way. Same with schvartze.  

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31 minutes ago, milner said:

Who is Mariskas cousin?

Montero, the uniformed officer that has popped up in a few episodes is played by Eddie Hargitay.
 

12 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Excellent, nuanced explanation, @HunterHunted, of the Yiddish racial slur, Schvartzer, which I cannot attempt to duplicate for the other two Yiddish terms used in the episode, so I will provide links:

Slurs are learned at home and at school, but there is the theory that those who use them (like Archie Bunker) do so out of a sense of self-inferiority—I don't know if that theory is now passé—but it might be what the writers were going for.

Perhaps. I personally thought it was meant as another indication that they were trapped in the past and had stopped engaging with the world decades ago (like not knowing that the Carnegie Deli had closed or their big political argument being about Gerald Ford) so even their bigotry was quaint and outdated.

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5 minutes ago, wknt3 said:
30 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Slurs are learned at home and at school, but there is the theory that those who use them (like Archie Bunker) do so out of a sense of self-inferiority—I don't know if that theory is now passé—but it might be what the writers were going for.

Perhaps. I personally thought it was meant as another indication that they were trapped in the past and had stopped engaging with the world decades ago (like not knowing that the Carnegie Deli had closed or their big political argument being about Gerald Ford) so even their bigotry was quaint and outdated.

Yes, @wknt3, the slurs were definitely a reflection of the brothers living in the past, but I was thinking that since this is SVU, the writers might have been using the title and the liberal sprinkling of slurs throughout the brothers' speech to make a comment on how sexually abused children--especially those who do not get "closure" (Benson)--are more likely to grow into adults whose sense of shame causes them to seek to label others as lesser.
Now I'm wondering if the writers did this subconsciously.
Or maybe I'm just reading something into it that isn't there, even if it fits.

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1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

Yes, @wknt3, the slurs were definitely a reflection of the brothers living in the past, but I was thinking that since this is SVU, the writers might have been using the title and the liberal sprinkling of slurs throughout the brothers' speech to make a comment on how sexually abused children--especially those who do not get "closure" (Benson)--are more likely to grow into adults whose sense of shame causes them to seek to label others as lesser.
Now I'm wondering if the writers did this subconsciously.
Or maybe I'm just reading something into it that isn't there, even if it fits.

It was an actual  Chernuchin script (i.e. not one where he's taking one for the team and scripting a plot dictated by others) so we can't rule out intentional layers and nuance! There was also probably some behind the scenes factors at work too like getting to write and perform a type of character that has largely disappeared and a writer's delight in seeing what they can get past the censors by using other languages.

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3 hours ago, GussieK said:

Your definition of shiksa is exactly right and it was always used in that negative way

Until they used the word in a Seinfeld episode. Then it became a humorous term as "Shiksa appeal" and now today, I don't think too many people think of it as a derogatory term, but an amusing moment from the "Serenity Now" episode of Seinfeld.

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I think the brothers were originally taken from the Collyer Brothers. It's a tragic story of two brothers, a lawyer and a piano dealer, both Sunday school teachers, who gradually retired from the world into their Harlem brownstone and died, one accidentally triggering a booby trap that killed him and the other from starvation after his brother's death. And then, as this show does, they just threw everything else into the mix.

I think Judd Hirsh and Wallace Shawn did fabulous turns as the brothers and my heart is still breaking for them. Which considering how obviously manipulative this show is, kudos I guess.

11 hours ago, shapeshifter said:
  • Slurs are learned at home and at school, but there is the theory that those who use them (like Archie Bunker) do so out of a sense of self-inferiority—I don't know if that theory is now passé—but it might be what the writers were going for.

Perhaps but they didn't seem racist (e.g. talking to Fin) or feeling inferior except in terms of the sexual abuse. Like @wknt3, I think it was just to emphasize how out of touch with the current world they were.

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What I don't get is if they were so disconnected from the modern world, how could he write a novel (two, in fact) that resonate so well with modern audiences?

I saw a screenshot of the page from the book, and oof, NBC's standards team must not bother going frame by frame!

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How exactly did they get a warrant for the house? What were they investing? Suspicion of not being murdered on 12th Avenue? Conspiring to cash a check? Felony being alive?

Also how dumb is this group of detectives not to wonder if the whole Bobbi persona wasn’t completely made up after the publisher admired hiring a Street kid to play him? I mean this is a post JT LeRoy, The Night Listener, A Milion Littke Pieces, A Child Called It world. Literary scams are not exactly unheard of.

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10 hours ago, dttruman said:

Until they used the word in a Seinfeld episode. Then it became a humorous term as "Shiksa appeal" and now today, I don't think too many people think of it as a derogatory term, but an amusing moment from the "Serenity Now" episode of Seinfeld.

I think it got a little bit worse in the immediate aftermath of that episode. There were books, classes, and services that taught Jewish women how to look less Jewish, sound less Jewish, act less Jewish, and date like a shiksa in order to attract a Jewish husband. It was already a bit of a right of passage young Jewish women of certain means to get nose jobs when they turned 16. To have a very popular sitcom with an obvious Jewish perspective have a subplot about how Jewish men were irresistibly attracted to women who don't look like the women in their communities wasn't helping anything.

Because the issue is one being told by the individuals with the power in the situation (Elaine-the shiksa goddess and the Jewish guys), it's a funny jokey episode of a sitcom. However, Jungle Fever from a few years earlier is telling a similar-ish story, but takes care to include the perspective of Black women; Jungle Fever is absolutely a drama and to a certain extent a tragedy.

In another example, Ross from Friends can date gentile after gentile after gentile until he lands the Jewish, but not very stereotypically so, Rachel. Rachel is never seen as less than desirable even though for the first 2 or 3 seasons she's just as spoiled, shallow, and self-absorbed as Janice ever was. Meanwhile the much more stereotypically Jewish, Janice, is treated like a punchline, an annoyance, and undesirable on like a fundamental level.

I don't want to take this too far afield from the discussion of the episode. So that's the end of my perspective on the word.

 

In other news about the episode, they've received some criticism about how they identified the gender of the first victim. I did think it was a little weird that they initially referred to the victim as a "he" before they ever talked to anyone who knew the victim to learn that the victim did not consider himself a transwoman and only dressed as a woman for this impersonation gig and making it easier to pick up johns. It was some really sloppy writing.

https://www.tvinsider.com/734989/law-and-order-svu-return-alta-kockers-transgender/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-law-and-order-svus-transphobia-controversy

1 hour ago, FozzyBear said:

How exactly did they get a warrant for the house? What were they investing? Suspicion of not being murdered on 12th Avenue? Conspiring to cash a check? Felony being alive?

Also how dumb is this group of detectives not to wonder if the whole Bobbi persona wasn’t completely made up after the publisher admired hiring a Street kid to play him? I mean this is a post JT LeRoy, The Night Listener, A Milion Littke Pieces, A Child Called It world. Literary scams are not exactly unheard of.

Legal smeagol. No seriously, they're getting warrants signed by Judge Gollum "My precious" Smeagol.

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