law and order svu

season 10. sideshow luke perry guest stars. and sara gilbert.

watching these daily (still) alongside the weekly 2021 episodes and they are chalk and cheese, the new ones are barely watchable. (yeah, filmed during covid, everyone 2m from everyone else, masks and screens everywhere, but i think it's something else, just the overall quality of something that's off)

Last several seasons just weak, especially once they moved Liv to the Captain spot, but even before that. The 2010s cops and DAs are mostly meh

they've just ditched Casey Novak, the second DA, and the new one (Kim?) is being ignored by the entire cast. she lasts 22 episodes according to imdb. stabler's not long for this world either.

the last new detective lasted one season before murdering a perp (which i think was the plan all along). he was strangely stiff.

(they just did the usual end of season thing of everyone threatening to leave or being on the edge of firing, or arrested. i guess this stops the actors negotiating too much of a payrise)

ha! that's probably right. they didn't seem to prepare at all for Meloni leaving at the time though

I will admit I shamefully have watched all of L&O: Organized Crime w/Meloni

the first season was blah, the second has a decent start with Stabler undercover in the Albanian mob and has some decent bits for a while before reverting to more of the plot arc from the first season. crossovers with SVU are kind of dire

the o.g. L&O was great because, with some exceptions, it was more about the crime of the week and only lightly touched on the character backstories. by a few years into SVU, about half of the content was ongoing character drama

Criminal Intent was always kind of a mixed bag, but the character development was more interesting because D'Onofrio's character was a great big weirdo

def will be interesting to see if they can recapture the old magic with L&O: Classic returning

I doubt it, but you know I’m watching it anyway!

Really don't like the Organized Crime one. L&O is not about serial storytelling.

Once upon a time I had this kind of philosophical typology of the three L&O shows going... the original was Marxist because the villains were almost always the rich, Criminal Intent was Nietzschean because it was up to the super-smart detective to outsmart the super-smart criminals, and SVU was pure Schopenhauer - there is no hope, the world is pain.

Ehhhh I dunno, there a lot of SVU episodes with endings where the kid gets saved, or the victim gets away from abuser, or said abuser gets killed by a vigilante or something

I tried a couple of episodes of Organized Crime, just didn't take for me. Will take a warmed-over original recipe Season 20 any day

end of series 10 and the last few episodes have had the following guest stars

seven of nine
river song
jim from neighbours

still the same core team 10 series in, which is what makes it comfortable viewing i guess.

So who has been following L&O: Organised Crime? what a hundinger of stupid comic book villainy!

I dont imagine anyone even CARES about spoilers for this show. Dylan McDermott plays this nemesis/foil to Stabler and it just becomes a cartoon, complete with announcements via giant TV screen panels, kidnappings of mothers and a demand for a chopper, and the threat that if he doesnt get what he wants "I AM GOING TO TAKE AWAY HER LITHIUM!". LIke... what the FUCK would that do ,give her brain zaps?

If he'd actually, literally said MWAH HA HAAAAA at any point I wouldn't have blinked. I laughed my arse off.

please tell me they wrote him off the show by the end of season one

Haaaaaa... no. IN fact in S2 it basically turns into the "Stabler has an evil nemesis" hour.

I said it above, but the show almost was decent for the entire Stabler undercover with Albanians arc. BUT THEN the evil nemesis returned!

It's insanely goofy. And Trayce didn't even include the "young hacker employed by the cops immediately recognizes where the hostage is being held FOR REASONS" insanely funny bit

OMG YOU ARE RIGHT. I almost fell off my chair cackling, that was *chefs kiss*.

"I know those chairs".

Dylan McDermott as a mobster is only slightly more intimidating than David Schwimmer would have been

o t m

Ainsley Seiger is quite good fun in it but the show is absolutely terrible.

I think you probably could run a half-decent spin-off designed to be a sillier NCIS-style action show but the tone, with Stabler’s wife situation, etc, is completely all over the place and the plotting / acting is horrendous.

it bears mentioning that Seiger's character is named JET SLOOTMAEKERS

watched a very wild s11 episode of svu last night on prime video (they used to have every season of svu, criminal intent and main law & order but now only have seasons 10+?) where rosie perez's son is being abused by her boyfriend (played by prezbylewski from the wire) who makes a deal to get a lighter sentence in exchange for setting up a sting operation in which the head of a NAMBLA-style organization gives him a usb drive including the name and address of every pedo in the country. there's this demented courtroom scene where NAMBLA guy gives a rousing civil rights-style defence of pedophilia and the jurors are starting to look swayed (b.d. wong erupts in protest and gets reprimanded by the judge). perez is amazing in it, playing a hothead who almost messes up the sting when she stabs prez in the shoulder. apparently she suffered a herniated disc during the filming of the episode which lead to 2 surgeries (and a lawsuit with the L&O producers) :(

Munch retired again last night which probably means I've now watched the entire set. but I'll keep an eye out for the start of season 16 in case they skipped any.