SVU, how you mock all semblance of intelligence

[kellinator]

Thanks to The Shield and then Thief coming on at the same time, and the fact that I really can't wait for The Shield even though I could go ahead and watch SVU at 10 and catch The Shield an hour later, but I just can't wait for that show because it's pure adrenaline-laced crack, and can something be pure if it's also laced with something, but I like the phrase so I'm keeping it, and anyway this is a ridiculous run-on sentence that doesn't make any sense, but the point is I haven't been watching SVU and therefore I haven't been making those ranty posts about it and you haven't missed them. But anyway... here are the text messages scarcrest and I exchanged during the season finale.

kellinator: omg are you watching this shit?!
scarcrest: SVU? Not yet. I'm watching House now; that's up next so I can skip the commercials. It's a Tom Cruise takeoff, right?
kellinator: omg omg omg this shit is unfuckingbelievable.
scarcrest: Good unbelievable or bad unbelievable?
kellinator: omg omg omg my eyeballs are bleeding...
scarcrest: That doesn't sound good. About to watch it now.
kellinator: omg omg omg dick wolf needs to fucking diiiiiie.

From my messages, Jason figured Munch must have been killed off. No, my beloved Munchkin continues to wither on the vine because THEY WON'T WRITE HIM A FUCKING PART.

Personally, I think since SVU is the only current L&O where female characters are front and center, it's the paradoxically the place where we get to see Dick Wolf's sexism front and center. Key examples:

* Olivia's insistence that OMG THE GIRL WAS TRAUMATIZED SHE MUST HAVE BEEN RAPED. The girl was a space cadet whose story didn't hold up and who kept topping herself with stupidity. Olivia, please get over your "we must protect the VICTIMS" fetish. Being a chick does not automatically make you right.

* Casey's apparent infection with whatever Olivia's got, which makes her say stupid things like "she's not a danger to society." HELLO SHE RAN OVER A DOZEN PEOPLE. You LOSE.

(Interrupting myself to wonder -- is this SVU's attempt at questioning the racist pretty-white-girl bias taking over the media, as Without a Trace did a couple of weeks ago? Without a Trace has some things going for it, like subtlety, that Dick Wolf wouldn't know if they bit him on the ass.)

* The complete half-assed treatment of mental illness. I suppose I should give them points for presenting Tom Cruise as stupid as he actually is. Wonder if he'll sue them?

* Casey's usual sucktastic excuse for lawyering.

* The truly moronic final scene, in which (because it always has to somehow remind the characters of something that happened to them, or else it doesn't count) Casey beats herself up for not saving her schizophrenic fiance who refused to take his medication. OMG I'M A WOMAN HOW DARE I NOT DESTROY MYSELF TRYING TO SAVE A MAN. This was so hamhocked I almost threw something at the television. Sometimes, shit happens. Sometimes you CAN'T save someone -- they have to save themselves. How many people out there who have already had their lives turned upside down by a loved one's illness had insult added to injury by this? What alternate universe are these writers living in? We aren't all Saint Olivia, and we shouldn't have to be.

In conclusion, I wanna beat Dick Wolf like a pinata.

Comments

[tunskit.livejournal.com]

It sucked, from beginning to end. There was a notable lack of plot AND acting in this episode. I can't believe they ended the season with that craptastic suckfest. Was it just me, or were they just trying to see how many actors they could cram into an episode?

[kelvinator.livejournal.com]

As an aspiring actor, it pleases my old heart to see that at least you don't take your television overly seriously or anything :D
*ducks for cover*
:D

[(Anonymous)]

and tonite on the original L&O, we get a kidnapped female ADA now...saw the other day Annie Paresse's L&O debut...when she played a stripper...

NBC axed Conviction...Dickie seems to be losing his grip...maybe the reason Sci Fi Channel ran that SVU marathon the other night was to prep for his new Sci Fi show Law and Order: Martian Justice...

[twisteddaydream.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised they axed Conviction. It was actually a fairly solid show and it was good. I liked the cast and I liked seeing more of the court room work. Ah well, go figure. They axed Trial by Jury last year, and I liked it, too.

[godessillyria.livejournal.com]

I thought last weeks ep was bad yet this one beat it by a mile. The acting was horrible. The premise was wretched. The bipolar girl was abhorrent. The students she went to school with were vile. The rock star guy was a complete moron and put in the story for no real purpose. I laughed out loud on several occassions. The last scene with Novak and Olivia was gratuituous. Pure and unadulerated horse poop.

SVU is resting on it's good ratings and giving us garbage. Pretty soon the audience is going to get wise and abandon this show in droves.


But ah....there's hope....Rescue Me starts in a few weeks!!! Thank goodness for tough/fun/love tv. This SVU crap is sickening.

[hooper-x.livejournal.com]

The hell with that... motherfucking FORTY FOUR HUNDRED is coming back, suckaaaaaaas!

so great can't wait!

-hx, so enthused he had to spell the show's name out!

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

anon above was me...I keep having to swap computers and forgetting to log back in...

[chicating.livejournal.com]

We Munch girls should have a protest...FREE THE MUNCHKIN! Olivia Benson isn't fit to buy Kay's Tampax, anyways.

[ariedana.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that you *gasps* MISSED HOUSE?!?!?

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

How DARE you doubt my House-love like that!! I thought you KNEW me!!


;)

[ariedana.livejournal.com]

I thought I knew House too, but there he was last night, making hand-love to Cuddy's ass and wanting to impregnate her. :P

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

DUDE. Cuddy's ass is HOT. That's about the most I've ever been turned on by chick-ass.

[scarcrest.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was a roller coaster, like I said in my text message. What you might not realize is that I don't ride roller coasters, have never seen the appeal in roller coasters, associate them with nausea and losing one's lunch.

And I think you're right about the predominance of female characters on here meaning this is where he dumps his sexism. That's this show's flaw, much like the main L&O series is marred by Fred Thompson's politics and hatred of the media. Criminal Intent doesn't offend; it just frequently doesn't rise to the talent of its cast.

(Though I finally saw the Whoopi episode last night, so now I know the story behind the events leading to Capt. Deakins' resignation. Noth and Sciorra were both great in that whole episode.)

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

YES, YES, YES.
I can't even watch it anymore. It makes me yell at the television. And I thought they supposedly moved Benson over to Computer Crimes? What was she doing there anyway (although I missed last week's ep, so maybe that was answered then?) Oh, right, of course, she's goddamn superwoman and can probably be in two places at once.
The last good episode was last season's season finale, the one with Amy Soleway. Everything since has been crap, IMO.

[hooper-x.livejournal.com]

they moved her back last week.

which was retarded. Basically they took SuperOlivia out for a week and EVERYTHING GOES TO SHITTTTTT

fuck that.

i liked anthony anderson. he was awesome.

-hx

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Anthony Anderson was Olivia's replacement and I missed it?! DAMMIT!

[hooper-x.livejournal.com]

it didn't live up to its promise. basically he was just SUPER BAD COP, pushing witnesses too hard, threatening to beat the shit out of suspects, roughing people up, basically the kind of shit Stabler almost-does all the time. He was Steroid Stabler.

-hx

[blondeheroine.livejournal.com]

Wait. I thought that was 21 Jumpstreet without the Johnny Depp factor. You mean that show I watched last night was SVU? Bugger.

[reannon.livejournal.com]

I didn't hate it as much as apparently everyone else, but I thought it was truly uneven. I thought the girl was far too believable in her opening scenes to be outed as a liar later. I thought she did a very uneven performance of a manic-depressive - where Sally Field overdid it on ER a few years ago, she way underdid it, but as I recall she was stunt casting so at least we should be happy it wasn't Paris Hilton (I will never forgive Veronica Mars for that).

It would have been a nice change of pace for someone else to believe in the girl, like, say, Munch, but then you'd probably be mad they made him the dumb one, so I'll shut up. :) I just felt for an episode that centered on the mental-illness-medication debate, they took way too long to actually get to the debate. Oh, and Casey needs to grow a damn spine already. Either she has prosecutorial discretion or not. Make up their minds.

Still, SVU beats the hell out of Original Flavor, which I'm going to give up soon if they don't stop hammering on the press, goddamn it. I have SO had it with that. But hey, I'm watching the finale, in the hopes that the ADA's kidnapping leads to *trumpets* Fred Thompson's defeat at the polls! Please? They've been building up to it all year.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

I gave up on the mothership a while back. Fill me in on what happened?

[bossieboots.livejournal.com]

As a former American Dreams junkie, my entire reaction was summed up with, "Meg Pryor, your daddy is going to kick your ass."

[twisteddaydream.livejournal.com]

~laughs~ Yes!!! That was one of my biggest problems with the whole episode. Seeing her in that role on SVU last night was hard to swallow because she looked like Meg, sounded like Meg, was on Meg's channel, but she sure as hell wasn't Meg. I think it was a bad casting job there because she's not far enough removed from Meg Pryor to convincingly pull off a character like that.

Other problems I had involved it being too... trite. It was too cut and dry an episode for a season finale... although with some of the others shows I watch and some of the finale's they have had, I am still kinda okay with that. But I expect better out of them. I think that they blew the end of this season because they were trying to work around Hargitay's pregnancy. I think that there were episodes in the past month that would have been better done as the season finale. Hell, the episode with Anthony Anderson would have made better sense as the finale than the episode last night.

I think that they made some interesting points in the medication/mental illness/responsibility debate, but they didn't do it well. They could have handled this episode much better. First, they tried to tackle too many issues. You've got kids having sex will-he, nill-he. They have a girl who was on her meds and then off her meds and can't decide what the hell she wants. They have a rock star who wants everyone off meds because he had a bad experience after he tried to off himself... and as Casey ended up pointing out, he could look at *that* from a totally different perspective, too. Oh, and toss in just a bit of parental responsibility, and you get a whole lot of mess and not a lot of resolution for anything.

Second, you've got the fact that they tried to get everyone into the season finale. They would have been better off pulling a CI and making it two episodes which could showcase Liv and Stabler AND Munch and Finn. If you throw in the fact that the characters in the episode couldn't decide what the hell they felt, well... it was kind of stupid. And yes... in this episode even I got annoyed by Liv's attitude, and I am usually with her in most respects.

Third, and finally, the casting was bad all around. As I said earlier, using cute "Meg Pryor" as the vic was a poor mistake. I also think that the guy playing the rock star was... less than convincing in more ways than one. Oh and the parents. Cardboard cutouts who can't decide if they give a shit or not.

Okay, so all in all, I had a lot of issues with this episode and I think it's one of the worst ones of theirs I've seen in a long time.

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

Pretty much had my mouth hanging open the whole time, except when I wondered if Tom Cruise would sue.

This is a hot button issue with me. I wish it could be given better treatment in an hour long show. I wish they'd focused on the mental illness and the meds issue more than the other stuff. And there was such stupid stuff--the shrink saying he'd devoted AN entire session to covering the fact the girl needed to stay on her meds. Any shrink would know that's not nearly enough, especially with a bipolar teenager.

Argh!!!

[sertrel.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I didn't see it, but it sounds like I'll have to torrent it just for the utter trainwreck.

Just out of curiosity, are you watching Conviction? That show is actually growing on me, after my complete and utter revulsion upon watching the first few episodes. Whether that's because it's actually any good, or it's just better than the other Dick Wolf series these days, I just don't know.

[madshrubbery.livejournal.com]

I was disappointed, yeah. From the Ausiello dribble I'd been reading back in February/March, I thought Olivia was supposed to be gone after the 04/04 episode until October, and was excited we'd get to see what Stabler does with new people, or even *gasp!* more Munch/Finn. But no, she's gone for what, 35 minutes of the next episode? I got real tired of seeing the pregnant parka in preposterous places.

Just hide her away already! The Special Victims Unit can survive without one detective for awhile!