Law & Order Franchise

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit "A Vicious Circle"

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit “Clickbait”

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit "Feed The Craving"

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit “Under The Influence”

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit "False Idols"

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit "Showdown"

Law & Order “Snowflakes”

I watch one Law & Order episode a year: The SVU crossover.

While Rick Eid is showrunner, it’s all I’ll tolerate. It wasn’t as terrible as usual, but it reminded me in several places why I don’t watch it.

When Brady insists to the woman she’s safe now, and she gets shot in the head a second later, THAT’S why I don’t watch this.

Also, the dishonest moves Brady is pulling are that of a dirty cop. And she’s a regular cast member! Pass. Just no. Not watching that shit in 2025.

Apparently, David Ajala is currently slumming as a new cast member. Dude can do better. Also, his fake New York accent is atrocious.

I’m glad I’m done for this year. It wasn’t bad, but I’ve already had enough. 2 1/2 stars.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit “Purity”

White Supremacists on my TV in 2025 are not entertaining. Back when SVU was doing this shit in the 90’s and aughts, the notion was flashy and intriguing in a very sick way. Like a car wreck. The movement has become so mainstream in the past ten years not even the freak show aspect entertains anymore. It’s just all sick on every level.

Why the fuck didn’t either Carisi OR Price read Brady the riot act for fucking up their case with the shady move she pulled with the lawyer in the last episode? You KNOW if one of the SVU detectives had done it, they’d never hear the end of it. Worse, she did it in front of Liv. That’s precisely the kind of thing she would have given Carisi a heads up about. He wouldn’t have been blindsided if she had. It’s out of character and bad writing that she didn’t.

Corey Cott is now a series regular. I fucking HATE Griff and hate that it looks like he’ll be sticking around. The good news is whenever another obnoxious recurring detective is made a series regular they ALWAYS tone down their worst qualities. In Carisi’s case, they got rid of them entirely. Peter Scanavino literally had a porn mustache in his first episodes. The character is unrecognizable now. I sincerely hope the same happens to Griff. In fact, I expect it to and for you to hear fewer complaints about him from me.

Just for the record, the thing that tells me I’m right about this is this is literally the first episode I hate zero negative notes for Griff. They are gonna bland the asshole up for sure.

I understand the controversy of the deal with Dawson, but frankly considering what he was accused of compared to what the lady was accused of, it was necessary. Luckily, the cops were clever enough to fuck up him getting back the embryos. But the thing that says it was a good deal is that he brought the receipts and handed them several bodies they didn’t even know about. Good deal, especially since they screwed him over about the biggest thing.

It was all right, and better than the Law & Order half (which isn’t an actual brag) but I felt squeamish about a lot of it. 3 stars.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit “Career Psychopath”

I thought it was great. It was tawdry in the best way SVU can be. Absolutely appalling on every level. And the sex crime stuff is negligible. SVU’s gift is making non-sexual cop drama seem fucked-up and pervy, no matter what.

Amanda Rollins has always been one of my most-hated characters on this show. If you watch her earlier seasons, you will be outright appalled. As awful at his job as Griff is, there is no real malice present there. There was always this really twisted sense of loose morality and intrinsic corruption attached to Rollins. The moment that told me everything I needed to know about the character was when she lost a ton of money to crooked bookie. And he calls her on it and threatens to out her corruption to the department. So, she kneels to give him a blow-job. And he puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her to stop because he’s a secret undercover fed. THAT is Amanda Rollins in a nutshell. I fucking LOATHED everything about that character and that moment distilled every reason why she sucked.

The irony? She is absolutely right that not every person deserves Liv’s empathy. The thing is, Liv’s empathy isn’t the problem here. ROLLINS was the one who fucked up that interrogation. Is it annoying to see Liv treat this grown-ass woman who made her own decisions with kid gloves? Yes. But it was working until Rollins screaming at her clammed her up. THAT’S why I hated the character, and why the show was always a special level of trashy and watchable when she was the focus of an episode.

I was unsurprised Henry was involved. Not just based on the episode title. But c’mon, why else bring back B.D. Wong? Seeing this now feels like a shame they didn’t do that for Henry’s last big messy episode. That could have been been even more fucked up than it was, and it was already fucked up as hell.

I like that Liv shot the guy. And I’ll tell you why. He would have killed somebody if she hadn’t (probably Amanda) and Amanda was seriously opposed to pulling that trigger because she knew her erratic behavior beforehand would make it viewed entirely as a bad shooting. She’d not just lose her job. There could be legal consequence for her in this fictional sci-fi parallel universe where those seem to actually magically exist for cops for some strange reason.

I loved how Rollins and Sonny escape in the opening. The killer insists she ties him up, they look at each other and are silently all, “Nope” and fuck him up instead. That felt quite cathartic even not knowing who it was and why they were attacking them.

I will say this: Regardless of the fact that Liv is right that Ruby is a victim, she’s also a legally culpable murderer. She’s the getaway driver. He plea deal for probation does not sit right with me. It would be one thing if Sonny and Amanda were the only victims, but the psycho killed several other people too. That probation is kind of fucked up, whether she used to be a victim or not.

I was REALLY hoping the episode would make Henry wind up looking pathetic and embarrassing, and the show knows what the viewer wants and gives it to us. That is why the tawdriness of the show is a selling point, where on any other show it would be a weakness. I can’t even call this shit a guilty pleasure at this point because despite the show satisfying my twisted itches, none of that shit is remotely pleasurable. Hazard of the franchise, I guess.

That was trashy as shit, I loved and hated every minute in equal measure, and I want the show to be this fucked up on the reg again. It’s good at it, and it’s gotten a little bit TOO ethical for its own good in recent years. I see the selling point of bringing Rollins back now. The franchise’s resident hot mess is back, ladies and gents! And she’s got a Sargeant’s badge now! Christ, we’re fucked! 5 stars.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit "Hubris"

You know what? I'm sitting with that, and despite the "happy endings" for the affected families, I am not remotely okay with that outcome.

Dr. Allan belongs in prison.

Not just for the perjury, but because it's clear she falsified cases because she's a racist.

And you know, I understand the controversy that if HER testimony gets reversed from all her cases, guilty people don't just get freed from prison. In a LOT of cases, kids go back to their abusers. But her simply quietly losing her license? What the fuck?

Even worse, the show hints that the fact that she has been shuttled from place to place and only found a home in the corrupt Bronx SVU perhaps means that she has been falsifying this stuff for years, and had to move each time she was caught. It's hinted this utterly racist monster gets repeated slaps on the wrist and that happens here too.

I like that the mother refused to forgive CJ. Frankly, I'll never look at the character the same way again either.

Also loved the dude telling Bruno they aren't friends. His wife left him so I don't blame him.

But good for the show for calling out the racist biases for what they are. It's just, when a white person deliberately destroys the life of a Black person their lives are made slightly uncomfortable for that fact. And maybe I could live with that if either Carisi or Liv were genuinely outraged at the outcome too. Carisi tells her he doesn't want to send her to prison. Why the fuck not? She has ill-intentions and has purposefully destroyed at LEAST three lives. Why does she get the deal of simply losing her license when it's made clear she'd also lose her license if it went to trial, but she'd definitely be convicted and sent to prison too? It bothers me because in this franchise, unlike real-life D.A.'s, who have untold discretion in who they actually prosecute, and often will drop charges on probably guilty parties because they would never get a conviction either due to lack of evidence, or even jury nullification, this franchise believes that if a person breaks the law, they have to answer for it. ESPECIALLY on the relaunch Mothershow. Circumstances don't ever matter for shit, and unrealistically neither does the fact that for a LOT of these cases in real life the jury would laugh them out of the room. I stopped watching the relaunch Mothershow after about 2-and-a-half years in pure disgust, mostly because no matter what, if the case reached a verdict, the suspect was ALWAYS found guilty. That's not what the original Law & Order was ever about. Defendants were found not guilty ALL THE TIME, and the fact that the verdict was always in doubt was one of the major tensions of the show. Even SVU seems to deliver convictions every week nowadays.

And while all that is so, Dr. Allan is NOT the character this show should be using the Light Touch on. It feels wrong, and disgusting, and frankly out of character that Carisi, and ESPECIALLY Liv don't raise a bigger stink. If they even said at the end "That evil woman belongs in prison, but if we take this to its logical conclusion a LOT of parents who raped and abused their kids will be sent right back to them." But right now? It pisses me right the fuck off.

Aggravated by the end of that. 2 1/2 stars.