I never watched LA, but I agree with what you said about the other shows...
It is so sad that Jerry Orbach passed.
Law & Order:SVU-Has It Gone Down The Crapper?
- Thread starter Knight Templar
- Start date
I never watched LA, but I agree with what you said about the other shows...
It is so sad that Jerry Orbach passed.
I stopped watching the show ages ago.
Knight Templar
Commodore
I agree.
Some of the stuff that Stabler and Benson have pulled over the years was in Vic Mackey territory.
Of course, that doesn't trump Detective Danny Reagan on "Blue Bloods". He routinely assaults people in his custody. Of course, given you're the Police Commissioners oldest son (and grandson of another PC) then you could probably get away with some stuff.
Spoiler about the season finale (next week):
Dann Florek says it's the bloodiest cliffhanger they've ever done. He hinted that not everyone makes it out alive. Now we know that Fin and Benson survive, because Ice-T and Mariska are signed for season 14. And there's no way they kill off Rollins or Amaro, since they just got here. So that leaves Munch and Cragen...and if they kill off Cragen I'll be some kind of pissed. 
More spoilers:
Does anyone know if there have been any confirmed departures from the show? AFAIK, the only characters who are definitely returning are Fin and Benson since their actors have signed contracts for next year. And I highly doubt they'll let the newbies (Amaro and Rollins) go, they're the future of the show.
Richard Belzer may or may not be back. Munch didn't appear in the finale, nobody even mentioned his name...
- None of the main cast members were killed off.
- However: A dead hooker - slit throat - was placed in Cragen's bed, and there's blood on his hands.
- This dead hooker was a key witness in the war between two rival escorts/pimps.
- Implication is that the ex-SVU detective, Cassidy, did it. Cassidy was working for one of the pimps, albeit undercover - though he didn't say who he was working for. He would know how to get into Cragen's apartment and plant the body there.
- I highly doubt the intent was to frame Cragen for the hooker's death; her throat was slit, but unless somebody discovers the murder weapon (which we never saw), there'd be no way to prove Cragen did it. As for how the blood got on his hands: probably was put there by whoever put the girl's body in the bed. I mean, we all know Cragen is not a murderer, and if he HAD done it, there'd be blood all over him and the bed, not just his hands. It was probably just to send a message, like the horse head in The Godfather.
- However: A dead hooker - slit throat - was placed in Cragen's bed, and there's blood on his hands.
- This dead hooker was a key witness in the war between two rival escorts/pimps.
- Implication is that the ex-SVU detective, Cassidy, did it. Cassidy was working for one of the pimps, albeit undercover - though he didn't say who he was working for. He would know how to get into Cragen's apartment and plant the body there.
- I highly doubt the intent was to frame Cragen for the hooker's death; her throat was slit, but unless somebody discovers the murder weapon (which we never saw), there'd be no way to prove Cragen did it. As for how the blood got on his hands: probably was put there by whoever put the girl's body in the bed. I mean, we all know Cragen is not a murderer, and if he HAD done it, there'd be blood all over him and the bed, not just his hands. It was probably just to send a message, like the horse head in The Godfather.
Does anyone know if there have been any confirmed departures from the show? AFAIK, the only characters who are definitely returning are Fin and Benson since their actors have signed contracts for next year. And I highly doubt they'll let the newbies (Amaro and Rollins) go, they're the future of the show.
Richard Belzer may or may not be back. Munch didn't appear in the finale, nobody even mentioned his name...
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Knight Templar
Commodore
This show has been around for 14 years. I don't think it has a future.
^ It's always been the highest rated of any L&O show. I don't know how it's fared now that it's the only L&O-verse show out there, but it has been renewed for a 14th season, so obviously it does have some kind of future.
Your first point really isn't true; in terms of overall viewership, SVU peaked at averaging about 14.8 million viewers per episode in Season 4, while Vanilla beat those numbers from Season 10 through Season 14.
Nowadays? SVU's ratings are abysmal. Season 13 averaged fewer viewers than the terrible numbers that got Los Angeles canceled -- I believe the season averaged something like 6.8 million viewers, with an 18 - 49 rating of 1.9.
So what did everyone think of the season finale? I grew very weary, very fast, of the "powerful political connections" angle, but other than that, it was OK. I hope none of the characters leave.
It feels like all of the writers from Seasons 6 - 12 were locked in a cellar, and they asked to write just one scene, the new writers acquiesced, and then that happened.
Honestly, that final scene read like a setup to write out Cragen in the Season 14 premiere. Hargitay was supposed to move to a part-time role after the first half of Season 13, but it was decided to keep Benson as a lead after reactions to Amaro and Rollins were rather cool. There have been so many subplots about the administration threatening to yank Cragen's command that this really feels like the payoff -- Cragen is fired (or, more likely, retires), Benson becomes the new unit captain.
I'm not familiar with actual NYPD policy, but...
Can a cop go straight from Detective to a higher rank like Lieutenant without becoming a Sergeant first? I always thought that it was like the military, in that you would have to progress up through every rank and not 'skip' any.
As for Benson: I'm sure the writers could come up with an excuse to place her at a higher rank. I think she'd do all right in running the squad, but would probably not want to be stuck behind a desk all the time. This is why, for example, Jack Webb ignored Joe Friday's promotion to Lieutenant (which happened at the end of the original Dragnet series) when Dragnet '67 started: the reasoning was that few lieutenants get out into the field.
Can a cop go straight from Detective to a higher rank like Lieutenant without becoming a Sergeant first? I always thought that it was like the military, in that you would have to progress up through every rank and not 'skip' any.
As for Benson: I'm sure the writers could come up with an excuse to place her at a higher rank. I think she'd do all right in running the squad, but would probably not want to be stuck behind a desk all the time. This is why, for example, Jack Webb ignored Joe Friday's promotion to Lieutenant (which happened at the end of the original Dragnet series) when Dragnet '67 started: the reasoning was that few lieutenants get out into the field.
I stopped watching ever since they put Munch and Fin in the crapper and tried to go with that Chester Lake crap. The revolving door of cast and same old stories was just totally uncompelling anymore. Every time I think of it, it just makes me want to watch Homicide.
They really should have put this one to bed on a high note at least a few years ago, if not sooner. Now it is just going to fizzle on as they keep swapping detectives and DAs in hopes of the next big pairing. Sigh.
They really should have put this one to bed on a high note at least a few years ago, if not sooner. Now it is just going to fizzle on as they keep swapping detectives and DAs in hopes of the next big pairing. Sigh.
More word from Warren Leight: He says that the 14th season premiere may be a two-parter. Also, the (surviving) guest stars from this season finale, up to and including Dean Winters, will all be back. In fact, some of the deleted scenes from said finale might actually be part of said premiere.
So I doubt we've seen the last of Cragen...
Linky
So I doubt we've seen the last of Cragen...
Linky
Jumping in late, but I wanted to say that if SVU went down the crapper, it happened back in season 2, with Neal Baer's takeover. Now he's gone and they replaced him with Warren Leight, who managed to send Criminal Intent down the crapper.
If they get Rene Balcer to take over SVU, maybe I'll start watching it. Until then, I have my TOS and CI DVDs. And UK's been pretty good too.
If they get Rene Balcer to take over SVU, maybe I'll start watching it. Until then, I have my TOS and CI DVDs. And UK's been pretty good too.
SVU returned to top form this season. Except for a couple of episodes, I was very impressed with this season. Not having Benson and Stabler rehash the same old things were great. Kelli Giddish was the only good thing about Chase, so I'm glad she gets a chance to shine here. Danny Pino was weird to watch on SVU at first, but the more I watched, the more I forgot his Cold Case character. Hell, I even forgot B.D. Wong wasn't a regular until he showed back up. My favorite episode was probably Father Dearest. That one was just about as sick and twisted as you can get on network TV.
This year was a step up, especially with the subtraction of Stabler. That dynamic had long lost its appeal for me.
Danny Pino was actually the weak part of the season for me. Though I enjoyed that by the end of the season, the job has warn him down from his fresh faced smile from the beginning of the season, the whole "My wife is cheating on me" story was not well written.
Although her own gambling storyline seemed really shoehorned in there, Giddish really works well with the cast and I look forward to her growth.
Danny Pino was actually the weak part of the season for me. Though I enjoyed that by the end of the season, the job has warn him down from his fresh faced smile from the beginning of the season, the whole "My wife is cheating on me" story was not well written.
Although her own gambling storyline seemed really shoehorned in there, Giddish really works well with the cast and I look forward to her growth.
Anything you think about should make you want to watch Homicide. It's simply one of the best shows in all of creation.
Yeah. There was this unique flavor to the 1st season that the show lost in subsequent seasons. I especially love all of Munch's scenes in that 1st season.
He also forgot Conviction. But then, the producers seem to be counting on that. I can't think of any other TV series that ever used a regular actor from one series to play a new, totally different regular character on a spin-off series. And that happened twice with Conviction actresses. Milena Govich went on the play Nina Cassidy in the awful 17th season of Law & Order. Julianne Nicholson became Mike Logan's partner on Criminal Intent.
Personally, I've always been more of a fan of lawyers than cops. Jack McCoy & Michael Cutter were what got me addicted to the original Law & Order. And Conviction & Trial by Jury were my favorite spin-offs.
If so, they've succeeded, as I hated Conviction. (I don't even consider it a Law & Order show, in the strictest sense - sure, it takes place in that universe, but then again, so does Homicide.)
Oh, that happens all the time in the L&O universe. IIRC, at least three of the regulars on Trial By Jury were 'repeat offenders'. So were almost the entire cast of SVU, plus a few from CI as well.
Ice-T played a drug dealer on the original at one point, right?
