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intertribalReview of SVU Season 9 Finale, "Cold".
The last SVU episode I wrote about was "Paternity", the beyond atrocious mid-season episode, which has a 6.1 out of 10 reviewer rating on tv.com ("fair"). So now we have "Cold". It has a lower rating - 5.4 out of 10 ("mediocre"), which shows just how little I comprehend Law & Order: SVU fans.
The story is cliched enough. This is SVU. One of the detectives, Lake (some guy that was only here for one season as Fin's partner), shoots another cop, apparently unprovoked. Because this is Dick Wolf, Lake was not doing this to satisfy a hidden evil, but to protect himself from being ambushed by a pair of evil rapist cops who got away with raping illegal immigrant children years ago, a case Lake failed to close. Lake shoots the other one by the episode's close, so it's pretty clear this is his final episode - yes, it's the no fail Detective Green Cop Cleanser.
More importantly, in the attempt to nail the surviving evil rapist cop on rape charges, ADA Casey Novak breaks some rule, and because it happened in twenty seconds, I missed it, so I can't say whether she deserved to be fired for it or not. At any rate she is forced to resign. So yes, Casey is now gone. This is what has everyone in an uproar.
What really surprised me, though, was Fin asking for a transfer out of the squad at the end. His contract has not been confirmed ended, so maybe he's just going to be in Baltimore or wherever for a season, but what's really gold is why he asked for the transfer. As Lake's partner he gave Lake the benefit of the doubt; Stabler, however, was extremely quick to assume that Lake was a traitor to all cops and probably in league with Satan. When Lake escapes, Stabler accuses Fin of tipping off Lake, and essentially also being a traitor to all cops and probably in league with Satan. This justifies spying on Fin's phone records. Olivia tells Stabler to apologize to Fin. After some macho posturing, Stabler mutters some half-baked not-really-an-apology garble, and Fin says - here it comes - that it doesn't matter because Stabler will always be the same rat-bastard, and he's asking for a transfer.
I wanted to die of happiness. For the moment I was not upset that my two favorite characters on SVU are leaving (don't care about Lake). For the moment I just wanted to jump into the television and shake Fin's hand. Watching the SVU fans whine about this development made me all the more giddy. Of course people are upset that Casey's leaving, for good reason - they also think that Fin's comment to Stabler was completely out of left field, but I disagree. I think Fin's tired of taking crap, like me. He's never shown any blatant dislike for Stabler but they've never been shown to get along either, and after all, Fin is played by this guy, who you know, would really hate G.I. Joe/He-Man Stabler in real life. I do think it was odd that the squad was shown to be supporting each other so little, because usually SVU is depicted as the Little Miss Perfect of the franchise, with the unshakable camaraderie in the face of adversity, etc., but I suppose I'm not really surprised. After all, the squad is run with a toxic power structure - the Captain is flimsy and fickle, exerts no real authority, and favors Olivia and Stabler, who bully everyone else despite being less talented and less stable than Fin and Munch, who are treated, I suppose because one is old and Jewish and the other "looks like a pimp", like red-headed stepchildren. Huang, the gay Asian, is ignored or derided by Olivia and Stabler if he says something they don't agree with, and Casey is overworked by the squad and forced to come up with legal magic in order to make up for the Wunderkin's sloppy detective work - when she sometimes fails, because the justice system still works, thank God, the Wunderkin yell at her to do her job, although they can't do theirs. That does not a good working environment make, so I'm not surprised Fin had some things to say to Stabler before he leaves.
Quite frankly, the fans - Olivia and Stabler fans, all - don't deserve Casey, Fin, or Lake, and maybe they and Dick Wolf will learn two things from this incident: a) their show needs its neglected supporting cast to stand on its feet, so let's give the other characters some love and make the next season entirely about Munch, who remains the most interesting character; and b) it is beyond dumb that their cast has evolved so little since its inception. It's L&O, not E&O (Elliot & Olivia). I maintain that those two are shallow, so stereotypical you could make American Girl dolls out of them, hysterical (in the sense of the psychological disorder, not comedic value), predictable because they have not changed at all for nine seasons, unrealistically sentimental because they have all that supposed psychosexual tension (CI fans who object to hinting about Goren & Eames clearly have not seen any SVU) and yet are still partners, and are practically never called out on when they bully and beat up suspects, decide who did it in the first five minutes only to be proven completely wrong just in time for various innocent people to have their lives ruined or ended, interfere in other people's personal lives, break laws, and generally act like the kind of cops people would commit civil disobedience to get off the force. I should start making a list of all the things these two have done that no cop in any precinct should have any right to do, but hardly ever get punished for, because apparently these two get to enjoy the Blue Code of Silence.
Fin's right. Stabler is a rat-bastard. What's more, Olivia is an idiot crybaby.
So am I upset that Casey and Fin are gone, Munch has been reduced to one line per episode, and Huang is nowhere to be seen? I miss them, yes. But I'm also excited for SVU to crash and burn next season. My personal recommendation is to can Criminal Intent's current attorney, who has made no impression on me, as well as I'm-a-waste-of-carbon Falacci, and replace them with Casey and Fin. Come on, Dick Wolf - if your whole game on CI is contrasting street smarts with book smarts (?), pair Logan with Fin. I would pay $ to see it, and Criminal Intent's weakest links would be gone. Casey would appreciate the ease with which a Criminal Intent attorney can bark at the detectives that they need to get more evidence, and the efficiency and legality with which the detectives get said evidence; Fin would no doubt enjoy the harsh but egalitarian fist with which Captain Ross disciplines the detectives. That way, if Goren and Eames need to leave the show for whatever reason (like to get married), Criminal Intent won't die.
It's a winning solution.
The last SVU episode I wrote about was "Paternity", the beyond atrocious mid-season episode, which has a 6.1 out of 10 reviewer rating on tv.com ("fair"). So now we have "Cold". It has a lower rating - 5.4 out of 10 ("mediocre"), which shows just how little I comprehend Law & Order: SVU fans.
The story is cliched enough. This is SVU. One of the detectives, Lake (some guy that was only here for one season as Fin's partner), shoots another cop, apparently unprovoked. Because this is Dick Wolf, Lake was not doing this to satisfy a hidden evil, but to protect himself from being ambushed by a pair of evil rapist cops who got away with raping illegal immigrant children years ago, a case Lake failed to close. Lake shoots the other one by the episode's close, so it's pretty clear this is his final episode - yes, it's the no fail Detective Green Cop Cleanser.
More importantly, in the attempt to nail the surviving evil rapist cop on rape charges, ADA Casey Novak breaks some rule, and because it happened in twenty seconds, I missed it, so I can't say whether she deserved to be fired for it or not. At any rate she is forced to resign. So yes, Casey is now gone. This is what has everyone in an uproar.
What really surprised me, though, was Fin asking for a transfer out of the squad at the end. His contract has not been confirmed ended, so maybe he's just going to be in Baltimore or wherever for a season, but what's really gold is why he asked for the transfer. As Lake's partner he gave Lake the benefit of the doubt; Stabler, however, was extremely quick to assume that Lake was a traitor to all cops and probably in league with Satan. When Lake escapes, Stabler accuses Fin of tipping off Lake, and essentially also being a traitor to all cops and probably in league with Satan. This justifies spying on Fin's phone records. Olivia tells Stabler to apologize to Fin. After some macho posturing, Stabler mutters some half-baked not-really-an-apology garble, and Fin says - here it comes - that it doesn't matter because Stabler will always be the same rat-bastard, and he's asking for a transfer.
I wanted to die of happiness. For the moment I was not upset that my two favorite characters on SVU are leaving (don't care about Lake). For the moment I just wanted to jump into the television and shake Fin's hand. Watching the SVU fans whine about this development made me all the more giddy. Of course people are upset that Casey's leaving, for good reason - they also think that Fin's comment to Stabler was completely out of left field, but I disagree. I think Fin's tired of taking crap, like me. He's never shown any blatant dislike for Stabler but they've never been shown to get along either, and after all, Fin is played by this guy, who you know, would really hate G.I. Joe/He-Man Stabler in real life. I do think it was odd that the squad was shown to be supporting each other so little, because usually SVU is depicted as the Little Miss Perfect of the franchise, with the unshakable camaraderie in the face of adversity, etc., but I suppose I'm not really surprised. After all, the squad is run with a toxic power structure - the Captain is flimsy and fickle, exerts no real authority, and favors Olivia and Stabler, who bully everyone else despite being less talented and less stable than Fin and Munch, who are treated, I suppose because one is old and Jewish and the other "looks like a pimp", like red-headed stepchildren. Huang, the gay Asian, is ignored or derided by Olivia and Stabler if he says something they don't agree with, and Casey is overworked by the squad and forced to come up with legal magic in order to make up for the Wunderkin's sloppy detective work - when she sometimes fails, because the justice system still works, thank God, the Wunderkin yell at her to do her job, although they can't do theirs. That does not a good working environment make, so I'm not surprised Fin had some things to say to Stabler before he leaves.
Quite frankly, the fans - Olivia and Stabler fans, all - don't deserve Casey, Fin, or Lake, and maybe they and Dick Wolf will learn two things from this incident: a) their show needs its neglected supporting cast to stand on its feet, so let's give the other characters some love and make the next season entirely about Munch, who remains the most interesting character; and b) it is beyond dumb that their cast has evolved so little since its inception. It's L&O, not E&O (Elliot & Olivia). I maintain that those two are shallow, so stereotypical you could make American Girl dolls out of them, hysterical (in the sense of the psychological disorder, not comedic value), predictable because they have not changed at all for nine seasons, unrealistically sentimental because they have all that supposed psychosexual tension (CI fans who object to hinting about Goren & Eames clearly have not seen any SVU) and yet are still partners, and are practically never called out on when they bully and beat up suspects, decide who did it in the first five minutes only to be proven completely wrong just in time for various innocent people to have their lives ruined or ended, interfere in other people's personal lives, break laws, and generally act like the kind of cops people would commit civil disobedience to get off the force. I should start making a list of all the things these two have done that no cop in any precinct should have any right to do, but hardly ever get punished for, because apparently these two get to enjoy the Blue Code of Silence.
Fin's right. Stabler is a rat-bastard. What's more, Olivia is an idiot crybaby.
So am I upset that Casey and Fin are gone, Munch has been reduced to one line per episode, and Huang is nowhere to be seen? I miss them, yes. But I'm also excited for SVU to crash and burn next season. My personal recommendation is to can Criminal Intent's current attorney, who has made no impression on me, as well as I'm-a-waste-of-carbon Falacci, and replace them with Casey and Fin. Come on, Dick Wolf - if your whole game on CI is contrasting street smarts with book smarts (?), pair Logan with Fin. I would pay $ to see it, and Criminal Intent's weakest links would be gone. Casey would appreciate the ease with which a Criminal Intent attorney can bark at the detectives that they need to get more evidence, and the efficiency and legality with which the detectives get said evidence; Fin would no doubt enjoy the harsh but egalitarian fist with which Captain Ross disciplines the detectives. That way, if Goren and Eames need to leave the show for whatever reason (like to get married), Criminal Intent won't die.
It's a winning solution.
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