^Forget it, Jake, it's TV-town. Episodic TV is full of situations where characters experience events that should have permanent, life-changing consequences -- they witness horrific tragedy, they get shot and almost die, they endure serious neurological trauma, they break dozens of laws in order to catch the bad guy -- and yet by the following week they're completely back to normal as though it never happened.
L&O has always been the sort of franchise that doesn't really hold together logically if you expect continuity from it. I mean, look at the flagship show. Is it realistic for the same ADA to prosecute two dozen high-profile homicides every year? And if he did, what are the odds that every single one of those homicides would've been committed in the same precinct and investigated by the same two detectives? It just doesn't add up logically. It never has. L&O is a throwback to the '60s/'70s style of series television that was basically an anthology with continuing characters. It's occasionally dabbled in bits of continuity, but that's rarely been a priority.
