Crapping on SVU.
Man, Law And Order: SVU sucked tonight. The episode started out with the detectives nailing Dean Cain for three rapes, and then it all ended up focusing on his spineless, bulmeic, binge-drinking girlfriend who was Dean Cain's only alibi. They convince her to testify, then she drinks herself half to death when Dean Cain calls her from prison to claim he's suicidal. So THAT leaves her in a persistent vegetative state, a la Terri Shaivo, and since Dean Cain married her shortly before the trial, he easily defeats her mother's injunction to keep her alive.
This is mostly thanks to Dean Cain's testimony about a discussion they had months earlier, where they witnessed a car wreck and she confided in him that she wouldn't want to go on living in such a condition. Of course, it turns out that Dean Cain only married her and manipulated her into drinking so he could pull the plug on the girl and use the insurance money for his appeal, but to console the mother, SVU's hot medical examiner gives her the autopsy report that reveals the girl really never had any hope of recovery, and Olivia shows her a newspaper article covering the car wreck Dean Cain mentioned, where the girl told a reporter the same thing she told him, which is far too convenient to be socially relevant.
Notice how the case against the rapist played by guest star Dean Cain sort of fell by the wayside there. I thought at first that the marriage/brain death plot twist might somehow have affected his trial, but his crimes were committed before the marriage, so spousal privelidge didn't apply, and her testimony was completed before she became a vegetable, so I'm assuming he was convicted. Even his manipulating her into that condition was irrelevant, because he didn't really do anything illegal. It was like the whole episode was just set up to play off Terri Shaivo, only with this really ultra-blatant irony where the evil manipulative rapist was right and the caring-yet-distant mother comes to realize she was 100% wrong, complete with documented evidence to spell it out for her. A rare occasion where L&O takes a real-life story and manages to make it much less dramatic and complex as a fictionalization. And why are we still on Terri Shaivo, anyway? "Ripped from the headlines... of seven-month-old newspapers."
Mostly what drives me nuts is that the SVU cast really didn't do much more than serve as plot devices to set everything up. There was literally zero detective work in this episode, short of Olivia posing as a bachelorette in a dating service to bait Dean Cain. And I think most of that was written as some sort of L&O fanservice or something.
On the plus side, the show seems to be putting more emphasis on Mariska Hargitay's cleavage, so I guess if it doesn't improve next week I'll have that to fall back on. And why has Diane Neal's hair been getting blonder ever since she joined the show? When they brought her in to replace Stephanie March, she was a redhead, and tonight I almost thought March had come back, or this was a rerun or something. I don't really care what color her hair is, but if they wanted her blonde they should have started with blonde and run with it. This gradual color change that's been going on for the last year just ticks me off for some reason. I guess as long as she doesn't start slowly changing it back again, it'll be all right.
This is mostly thanks to Dean Cain's testimony about a discussion they had months earlier, where they witnessed a car wreck and she confided in him that she wouldn't want to go on living in such a condition. Of course, it turns out that Dean Cain only married her and manipulated her into drinking so he could pull the plug on the girl and use the insurance money for his appeal, but to console the mother, SVU's hot medical examiner gives her the autopsy report that reveals the girl really never had any hope of recovery, and Olivia shows her a newspaper article covering the car wreck Dean Cain mentioned, where the girl told a reporter the same thing she told him, which is far too convenient to be socially relevant.
Notice how the case against the rapist played by guest star Dean Cain sort of fell by the wayside there. I thought at first that the marriage/brain death plot twist might somehow have affected his trial, but his crimes were committed before the marriage, so spousal privelidge didn't apply, and her testimony was completed before she became a vegetable, so I'm assuming he was convicted. Even his manipulating her into that condition was irrelevant, because he didn't really do anything illegal. It was like the whole episode was just set up to play off Terri Shaivo, only with this really ultra-blatant irony where the evil manipulative rapist was right and the caring-yet-distant mother comes to realize she was 100% wrong, complete with documented evidence to spell it out for her. A rare occasion where L&O takes a real-life story and manages to make it much less dramatic and complex as a fictionalization. And why are we still on Terri Shaivo, anyway? "Ripped from the headlines... of seven-month-old newspapers."
Mostly what drives me nuts is that the SVU cast really didn't do much more than serve as plot devices to set everything up. There was literally zero detective work in this episode, short of Olivia posing as a bachelorette in a dating service to bait Dean Cain. And I think most of that was written as some sort of L&O fanservice or something.
On the plus side, the show seems to be putting more emphasis on Mariska Hargitay's cleavage, so I guess if it doesn't improve next week I'll have that to fall back on. And why has Diane Neal's hair been getting blonder ever since she joined the show? When they brought her in to replace Stephanie March, she was a redhead, and tonight I almost thought March had come back, or this was a rerun or something. I don't really care what color her hair is, but if they wanted her blonde they should have started with blonde and run with it. This gradual color change that's been going on for the last year just ticks me off for some reason. I guess as long as she doesn't start slowly changing it back again, it'll be all right.