My comments:
As far as season finales go, this was a decent episode and a good set-up for the other half of the crossover with the Law & Order Organized Crime episode “With Many Names.” While the SVU “crime of the week” was a bit thin, it did provide a good setup for the OC segment.
It looks like many fans get their wish as Muncy was offered a job with the DEA – and at the end of the crossover OC episode, she’s leaving the SVU office with her belongings. (I was cheering inside.) Hopefully this really is the last we see of her. (Note: several entertainment news sources later confirmed Molly Burnett has left the series.) “Professor” Rollins (that still makes me laugh a bit) provided her expertise in this episode and also in the following OC episode. We know Amanda is not really happy in the new job – she hasn’t shared her feelings with Carisi – and many wonder if this is just a tease for Kelli Giddish’s return to the show. Is it a case of regret that they dropped Kelli and now want her back? Unless she comes cheap, I don’t see it happening. It seems the Law & Order brand - along with a lot of other TV shows these days - is more about cutting costs rather than quality. Maybe if we are lucky they will keep Detective Bruno, and Detective Churlish too (even though fans appear split on the latter).
In the middle of the SVU and the Feds chasing down the “Shadowerk” website perp, there was an overlapping case of a man who was sexually assaulting various people, including a previous rape victim, and a young man. This perp did not relate to the Shadowerk website and the case was solved quickly – maybe too quickly for the real world.
Chief McGrath continues to be the stereotypical cartoonish hot-head “just get it done” boss. Of course this means he will eventually look like a fool and will be bested by the more cautious Benson. The problem with McGrath is that he is too focused on the short-term win of nabbing the people using Shadowerk and not so much on the person running the site. He seems like the kind of guy who is more worried about his own job and his standing in the One PP pecking order than in the actual crimes or their victims. Benson, working steadily with the Feds, finally manage to nab someone that they think is running the site…but they’ll soon find he’s only a cog in the machine.
There was a lot of Benson/Stabler interaction in this episode, making way for the faster paced Organized Crime finale which followed. The reason: they're doubly motivated as both Benson and Stabler are now on the Shadowerk website hit list and now there is extra motivation to shut down the site.
The one thing about Benson and Stabler: there’s no denying that these two continue to have a chemistry together that is missing from their individual shows. I wish there was a way to bring them back together. As Organized Crime is a mid-season, short-order series next season, we may have to wait a while to see them together again.
3 comments:
The "professor" bit with Rollins gets me to laugh too. Has her educational background ever been established? I can't find anything about this anywhere. I didn't think a person could be called a professor unless they had a masters or doctorate. Are they calling her that just because she is teaching at the college but she's not really a professor?
I wish the police could solve crimes as fast as they found this perp. They got lucky.
McGrath was irritating. I wonder if they are making him appear so unhinged to make Benson look better?
I was overjoyed to hear Muncy was offered another job and equally overjoyed to see in the OC episode that she packed her things. Bruno would be a great addition and Churlish was so much better than Muncy. Every time I heard Muncy I wished that Rollins was still there.
Good setup for the OC finale.
One thing that struck me abt this crossover was how much it did feel like a crossover. Some other crossovers just feel like the main show speckled w some xters from the other. The SVU/OC crossover felt far more fluid here and allowed for that cohesion we noticed.
Thanks for explaining that the string of assaults done by the Black perp was a case separate and apart from all the Shadowerk stuff. I did not realize that and thought he was doing rapes for hire as well but I felt like I had missed the info tying him back to the case. Makes so much more sense now.
Fin was good in last week's crossover and this one. Can't speak on what it's been like w him all season but from these 2 weeks it felt like the writing of this xter better suited Ice-Ts acting range. I compare this w Poisoned Motive (S14) for ex, where he gave his old boss a hug after finding out her son had been murdered. So cringey. Don't ask Ice-T to do hugs!
Rollins and Benson having a heart to heart is always welcomed. There hasn't been enough of it if you ask me and what has been done has often been *poorly* executed. Exs: Liv's talk w Amanda after the Patton trial 'encouraging' her to get help; Liv and Amanda talking abt their worry as mothers, the flowers from Al and saying, "Sometimes we just need a little happy." The exchange in this ep was so much better, more realistic and without the cringe.
With Muncy's exit and Amanda making it quite clear that she prefers policing it would seem that they are setting up for a return of Rollins. I'm not buying into any of that until I see her face in the opening credits.
Liv calling Amanda "professor" sounded like a quip to me. I would even say bordering on passive aggression. She even takes a short pause before she says it. It felt more like the precursor to their conversation abt Amanda not being suited to the teaching life. And yes, as far as I am aware Amanda has a Bachelor degree so def not a "professor". What I find more interesting is not the title but the scope of her expertise. She speaks like an expert when she likely has broad info on these topics, not specialized info. Also her field of study is criminology but she often speaks like it is forensic psychiatry. She needs to be on Behavioral Minds w the way she is able to profile.
I didn't bother to get into this last week but since they've maintained this storyline for Carisi let me rant a little :) They hv always portrayed Carisi as a family man who has helped w his sisters' children since infancy but now he needs Benson to explain to him how babies poop?? And based on what she's describing she would hv gotten Noah after he had completed that phase so ironic that Liv who is portrayed as having less exp w infants is explaining these things to Carisi who is portrayed as having a ton of baby exp, even knowing that Amanda would need a warmer for her baby wipes.
In Catfishing Teacher (S17) we see what appears to be the start of Rollisi and it is all centered around a newborn Jessie. Carisi is explaining what happens in the first 6 weeks and how she'll eventually learn to self-soothe. He even demonstrates how to pick up a crying newborn and how to comfort her. It is at this moment that A looks at him like she is starting to fall in love. So how is he suddenly such a fish out of water thinking abt a newborn. Based on how the story has been told he has been very involved from the start of both Billie and Jessie's lives. He would hv more officially assumed that parental role when he moved in so what is different abt being a father now except that this one is biologically his? I don't want to get in to the real life families of the cast so I will just say given that there are ppl who have both biological and adopted children as part of their family it's uncomfortable watching them make this distinction between his biological child and his adopted daughters. And I reiterate- the shtick w Carisi has always been how knowledgable he is abt newborns and children in general- how they develop, what devices to get and how to care for them. He was the yin to Amanda's yang of not only being without a partner but not having any real exp to care for babies. Now suddenly he needs all this advising from Benson.
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