Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit
These are all the original airdates.
2/6/07
"Loophole"
8.13:
1/16/07
"Outsider"
8.12:
1/9/07
"Burned"
8.11: Michael Michele guest stars as Valerie, a woman
who claims to have been raped by her soon-to-be ex-husband Miles, played
by Blair Underwood (I'm so in love with him, by the way). Miles' addiction
to drugs and alcohol was a source of much discord in the family, so the two
separated, and Valerie got custody of their daughter Tessa. Miles has
regular supervised visits with Tessa, and he is angry because of everything
that Valerie has done to try to keep him from his daughter even though there
was no history of abuse in the family. So when Valerie is attacked
in her apartment and tells the SVU that it was Miles and he raped her, they
start investigating by trying to talk to Tessa about whether her father was
in the house that night. Valerie won't let them though, so they talk
to the family court judge about the situation with Miles and Valerie. The
judge is kind of a jerk and says that Valerie was just bitter about Miles'
addictions and used that to get back at him through Tessa.
Liv is angry that no one seems to be taking the possibility
of Miles being abusive as seriously as she is, and Elliot is inclined to
believe that Miles is not abusive. Olivia says Elliot disagrees with
her just because of his family situation (ooooooh), and they have a little
fight. They spend a lot of time fighting in this episode. I mean
a lot. They question Tessa at her school even though Valerie hasn't
given them permission, and Tessa says she didn't tell her father where they
lived and doesn't know anything. Valerie catches them and is mad. Olivia
is convinced that Tessa is protecting Miles, and Elliot thinks she's definitely
protecting someone, but he's still not sure it's Miles.
They bring Miles in to question him, and then Valerie
suddenly recants her rape story! Olivia is more sure than ever that
Miles is dangerous and raped Val even though she recanted, and she and Elliot
get into another fight over it because Elliot is not ready to condemn Miles.
"I'm the longest relationship you've ever had with a man," says Elliot.
"You have no idea what it's like when a couple goes south." *eyebrow raise*
Whoa, Elliot. Dangerous ground here. (And notice that he
says he's the longest relationship she's ever had with a *man*? Hmm.)
Olivia fires back, saying something like, "Eight years in this unit,
I don't have to be married to know when an abusive man is escalating." And
the tension could set the station house on fire. Elliot really hit
a nerve there, I think. Olivia certainly has had her relationship problems,
and I don't think it was fair of Elliot to use that against her here.
Novak wrestles about whether to prosecute Valerie for
filing a false report, and then tells them to pick her up. Elliot and
Olivia are still fighting, but they threaten to arrest Valerie so she'll
let them talk to Tessa again. Wang has a chat with Tessa about her
family's history and her parents' relationship. Tessa maintains that
there was a lot of fighting between Miles and Valerie, but there was no abuse,
and Wang believes her. They find out that Valerie was going to move
away with Tessa, and Olivia thinks Miles got angry about that and raped Valerie.
As for how he found out where they lived, they find a GPS tracker on
the social worker's car, and it has Miles' fingerprints on it. Olivia
is pissed as hell when she arrests Miles for rape, and Elliot lets her cuff
him and everything, saying, "It's just nice to see someone else with an anger
issue." Things are still tense between them.
Miles admits to being in the house, talking to Tessa,
then confronting Valerie about moving. He says she shook her violently
because he was so angry, but he didn't rape her. Elliot still wants
to believe him, and Liv is still as angry as ever. "When did you start
working for the defense?" asks Novak when Elliot kind of defends Miles. "When
you became more interested in an easy close than the truth," replies Elliot.
Whoa, man! You're just picking fights with everybody, aren't
you? Olivia angrily makes a pointed comment about Elliot naturally
wanting to defend a man with "a dying marriage and a history of violence."
Ouch. They both stomp off, and Casey says to Cragen, "I thought
you said they were working it out." Heh.
In an unexpected turn of events, Kathy (Elliot's almost-ex-wife)
calls Olivia, wanting to talk. Huh. They walk in the park and
discuss Dani. Olivia has no idea why Dani went back to her old unit,
and Kathy is relieved to perceive that Olivia didn't like Dani either. Kathy
wants to know how things are going with Elliot. Olivia figures out
that this is about the fact that Elliot is dragging his feet on signing the
divorce papers. Kathy mentions that when she was still with Elliot,
she worried that he liked spending time with Olivia more. HEE! Kathy
seemed just a teensy bit jealous there. She says that Olivia knows
things she never understood about Elliot, and if Liv would encourage Elliot
to sign the papers, he might listen to her. Olivia is unsure about
it. But wow. What a conversation. Everything Kathy said
about Elliot and Olivia is totally true.
Bail is set really high for Miles, and even Novak thinks
that's excessive. Miles gets angrier and angrier at Valerie, who has
unrecanted her recant. There's still a whole lot of tension between
Elliot and Olivia, and he says he's discovered Valerie's boyfriend (that
she neglected to mention). But before they can further investigate
that angle, they find out that Miles barely made bail and then doused Valerie
with gasoline on the street near the courthouse and set her on fire! Her
burns are very severe, and she is likely to die. She tells them Miles
did it and took Tessa. Casey and Cragen are upset, Elliot and Olivia
go after Miles, and Elliot tells Olivia she was right and says this might
be partially his fault. Olivia tells him it's not his fault, and things
are better between them. Miles has Tessa and a large knife, and Tessa
doesn't want to leave her father, but Miles lets Elliot drag Tessa out of
harm's way. Miles menaces Finn with a knife on purpose, not because
he wants to kill anyone, but because he wants them to shoot him to death.
Olivia shoots him with plastic bullets so he's incapacitated, but not
killed. Oops, sorry Miles.
Valerie is barely hanging onto life, and still maintains
that Miles raped her. Elliot signs the divorce papers and gives them
to Kathy. She is appreciative. How sad for Elliot. Valerie's
lawyer boyfriend shows up to the station, and Olivia finds out from him that
he's the one that had sex with Valerie the night of the supposed rape, so
Miles attacked Valerie but did not rape her, just like he said. She
calls Elliot and tells him the truth. He comes to see her, and they
sit on her building steps drinking coffee. CUTE. He tells her
he signed the papers. "Are we okay?" asks Olivia quietly. Elliot
says he just needs space to disagree with her, like having a different opinion
won't mean the end of their relationship. "Like you said, you are the
longest relationship I've ever had with a man," says Olivia. She smiles.
"Who else would put up with me?" And then they go get something to
eat together. Awwwww. Such an adorable ending to an episode with
more E/O fighting than I can remember in a long time. So, it was frustrating
in the middle, but it ended well. A decent episode overall.
1/2/07
"Scheherezade"
8.10: The episode begins with Elliot's twins being confirmed
in the Catholic church. He and Kathy and all the kids are there, and
it's clear that his two older daughters are still bitter about Elliot and
Kathy separating. Elliot's priest then subtly tips him off to a dying
man who might have something to "confess." Elliot decides to check it
out. Elliot and Olivia seem to work together smoothly to figure out
this dying guy Tierney's story (played by special guest star Brian Dennehy).
Liv kind of has a connection to the Tierney guy because she reminds
him of his daughter. Something happened between him and his daughter
to cause her to never want to see or speak to him again, and Liv thinks he
molested her. He's appalled by that suggestion and tells Olivia he doesn't
know what her father did to her, but she should get some professional help.
Oh, if he only knew. Anyway. They discover that Tierney
is one of a team of two majorly wanted bank robbers from decades earlier.
Tierney makes an offhand comment in Elliot's presence that Olivia is
pretty, and Elliot gets fed up with the waiting around for Tierney to crack
and confess whatever it is besides bank robbing. They think that Tierney
had an affair with a young woman named Suzanne that resulted in his daughter,
and then Tierney and his wife raised the other woman's baby as their own.
Ouch. Liv has to stay glued to Tierney in case he says anything
important. He helps them find the keys to a bunker underground that
has the bank robbing money and the body of his bank robbing partner in it.
It comes out that Sheila, his daughter, was really the daughter of Jack,
his partner. Jack was having the affair with Suzanne. Jack killed
Suzanne and called Tierney to help get rid of the body, and Jack was also
gonna kill the baby, so Tierney killed him and took the baby. He forged
the birth certificate so it said he was her father. Tierney, who is
really close to death, wants Liv to arrest him for murder and kidnapping.
They find out that Suzanne's husband was wrongfully convicted of her
murder and has been in prison all this time. Tierney is very upset to
hear this and wants to get Mollinax out. Novak can do it, but she needs
Tierney to record a sworn statement stuff. But the pain meds he's on
make his statement inadmissible! I feel really bad for Novak all the
time. She's always running into these legal brick walls that she has
no control over and that everyone gets cranky at her about. :( They
convince Sheila to help by authorizing the hospital to wake Tierney up, but
she still won't see him. They get the statement from Tierney, but apparently
Mollinax killed a guy in prison in self-defense, so he would stay in prison
anyway. "Do something, Casey." Poor Casey has to go to Elizabeth
Donnelly (Judith Light) for help. Tierney is dying, and Liv is with
him. Sheila finally comes to see him, but it's too late. He's
dead. But Elliot and Olivia do get Mollinax out of prison. It
was kind of a boring episode, honestly. I wasn't all that excited about
it.
11/28/06
"Choreographed"
8.09: Talk about an episode stuffed full of guest stars...
Two teens find a dying woman in the park at night. They think
she was raped, so SVU is called in, but the woman died before they even
got there. Her name was Danielle, and she was a model. Her husband
(guest star Chris Sarandon) runs a professional dance troupe. When
Elliot is questioning the husband, he accidentally calls the victim Danielle
"Dani" without thinking. *major eyeroll* Move on, Elliot. Puh-lease.
Later, Cragen talks to Elliot about how he feels pursuing the case
"alone." Cragen wonders if he wants a new partner, and Elliot says
they "ran out" of new partners for him. He jokingly suggests that Cragen
should be his new partner, and Cragen jovially replies that "I'm not your
type." Elliot says maybe he might do better with a guy; "women keep
leaving me." Cragen says he may have another chance, and Elliot perks up
a bit and asks if Dani changed her mind. UGH. No, says Cragen.
"Olivia's back." Elliot says nothing and just looks kinda warily
at Cragen, but his expression, while certainly not one of happiness, was
more one of subtly disconcerted surprise. Not exactly the reaction
I was hoping for. Elliot picks up a homeless guy they suspect may have
been involved in Danielle's death (and it turns out that she wasn't raped,
she was poisoned; so why this case didn't immediately get kicked over to
Homicide I don't know...), and while he is questioning the guy, Olivia walks
in and joins him. It was a tense reunion at best. When they determine
that the homeless guy was not her killer, they talk later. Olivia asks
how he liked working with Dani, and Elliot says something grumpy. He
says, "How'd you like working alone?" "Didn't," she replies matter-of-factly.
Aww, at least that's something, even if Elliot is being a curt asshole.
The tension between them continues as they discover that the husband
was having an affair. Elliot unconsciously calls the vic Dani again,
and I think Olivia was kind of annoyed. Elliot must have sensed it
because he asks her, "something bothering you?" "No," she says. And
that's that. They catch Chris Sarandon with his mistress Naomi (other
guest star Catherine Bell), a member of the dance troupe who is already married
to Glen (yet another guest star Bob Saget) who is a tech whiz and sort of
a control freak. Freakin' Bernadette Peters guest stars as Chris Sarandon's
attorney. Too many guest stars. It's interesting to note the
reactions of Melinda and Munch when they see that Olivia is back. They
are happy to see her and don't act like it's any big deal that she's back,
like they knew she couldn't stay away forever. Olivia brings up Elliot's
personal life, something pertaining to his wife, and he's all uncomfortable.
He's being almost...cold. Oh, funny! Olivia gets hit on
TWICE in this episode. Once by the female technical director of the
dance troupe, and another time by a clerk whose help they needed to get records
of who bought the poison. All I have to say is that Olivia must have,
like, the best pheromones evar. Anyway, in the station house, Elliot
offers Olivia a soda, and she says she doesn't drink soda anymore. Elliot
reacts somewhat petulantly, "any other major changes you wanna tell me about?"
"What about you?" says Olivia, pointing out the fact that he wears
jeans to work now instead of a suit. "Just trying to stay comfortable,"
grumbles Elliot, and the conversation ends there. When Naomi gets deathly
ill, they discover that her nerd control freak husband Glen put a chip in
her shoulder to keep track of her movements, but he did it with an unsanitary
needle and gave her an infection that made her septic. They put it
together that jealous, angry Glen poisoned Danielle because Naomi was having
an affair with Danielle's husband. Bad Bob Saget. Seriously,
what bug has been up Casey's ass for the last several episodes? She's
been really cranky. This ep, she yells at Elliot and Olivia for coercing
a confession out of Glen that she may not be able to use in court. I
mean, she really lets them have it. She snaps, "Are you rusty, this
your first case back?" at Olivia. Chill, Novak. Gosh. The
infection has aggravated a pre-existing liver condition that means that if
Naomi doesn't get a liver transplant, she'll die. Glen is a match,
and they have to do some legal maneuvering to allow him to donate, but they
get it. She'll live, and he'll go back to prison. On the way
out of the hospital, it looks like the frost is starting to thaw, and Elliot
and Olivia discover that they have the exact same blood type. Aww.
(At this juncture, I want to say that I think the reason Elliot was
being so standoffish to Liv was because it hurt him when she went away, and
he didn't want to make himself vulnerable if she was just going to go away
again. Poor boy.) They get into the elevator, both quiet, and
all of a sudden Elliot casually declares, "I'd give you a kidney." "Not if
I gave you one first," Olivia says without missing a beat. And Ellen
knows that they are back. They are a pair once more. And God
is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.
11/21/06
"Cage"
8.08: Good God, Elle Fanning is creepy. She
plays a little girl named Eden that they find after a van they were in crashes
into the river. She and a boy named Mark were handcuffed to the seats
in the van when it crashed and a woman named Alma uncuffed them before leaving
them. Dani forms a kind of bond with Eden, but Mark won't talk to anyone.
They can't find Alma, and Dani tries to get more information out of
her. Cragen and Elliot observe through the two-way mirror and Cragen
asks Elliot if he sees a future for Dani here at SVU. Elliot, after
a brief hesitation, casually says, "Sure." "Don't want your old partner
back?" "Since when is that up to me?" Cragen was definitely fishing
for info that would help him find a way to work Olivia back in or not, and
it didn't seem like Elliot didn't want her back. I think he was just
conflicted, but he would like to have Olivia back. When Huang tries
to get Mark to communicate with him, Mark angrily explodes and attacks Huang.
He babbles in French (because he was adopted from Haiti), and when
Elliot pulls him off Huang, Mark stabs Elliot in the chest with a pen! Ouch.
Dani pulls the pen out, and it's not life threatening, but it's bleeding
a whole lot. Dani is supposed to meet Munch and Fin to inspect a house
where Alma was, but she never shows. She's at the hospital with Elliot.
She can't believe he stayed so calm after being stabbed with a pen,
and she's not sure she could have stayed that calm if it was her. Then
she gets around to saying something about "just because you know what's
right doesn't mean you do it," and there is this heavy moment of silence.
Elliot reaches out and holds her hand, and she seems to be in pain
when she hesitantly says, "Elliot--I--" and then is interrupted by Elliot's
ex, Kathy, and his daughter. There is a slightly awkward intro to
Dani, and Elliot introduces Kathy as his wife! Um, ex-wife, hello
Elliot? He just says "my wife Kathy" and I'm all, huh? Is their
divorce not final yet? Anyway, his daughter asks him what happened
to Olivia, and he says she's been away on assignment. Dani quietly
leaves, but watches Elliot with his family for a bit with a stricken look
on her face. I think she's upset more about herself than Elliot at
all. Dani checks on Eden again, and Cragen reprimands Dani for not
doing what he told her to. They find that Alma was an ex-social worker,
and when they find Alma, she tells them that she was trying to help. The
adoptive parents of Mark and Eden didn't want them anymore, and she was
taking them. They find a body, and it's Eden's older sister Rosemary,
having been suffocated to death during a re-birthing session forced on her
by her adoptive parents, Bud and Rita. Eden also used to live with
Bud and Rita, but she says she was very bad, so they sent her away. Rose
wasn't as bad, so they just put her in a cage. They go to Bud and
Rita's place and find a boy in a cage in the barn, put there the same way
Rose had been. Bud and Rita are arrested, but they insist that everything
they did was because they love their kids. The kids are wildly undisciplined,
and the cage is the only way. They were trying to help Rose when they
re-birthed her, and they didn't mean to kill her. Eden is the only
witness to the abuse that Bud and Rita deny, and Dani takes her home to stay
with her until she's done testifying. Then she'll go back into the
system. Eden has this creepy attachment to Dani, and in the middle
of the night, Eden sets the couch on fire, nearly setting the whole apartment
ablaze. While Dani struggles to put out the fire, Eden is screaming,
"I wanna die!" She says she did it so they would both die and then
they would be together and Dani would never leave her. Creepy, scary,
horrifying child. Casey does her best to prosecute Bud and Rita, but
they only end up being convicted of criminally negligent homicide, and they
will only get two years max. Dani takes the Eden thing really hard
and blames herself. Elliot tries to comfort her (and gets a little
too close to her for me), but she says she can't do this, meaning the job.
How can Elliot still do this job, she wonders, and Elliot says because
he has to. "We don't make a difference," she says despairingly. "Dani,
you can do this." "Are you asking me to stay?" "Dani, I can't.
You have to be here for yourself." She knows she just can't
do this. "Bye, Elliot." And she walks away. I knew from
very early on that she would burn out. She consistently got too emotionally
involved in the cases, and you just can't make it in SVU if you do that.
It's not a bad thing; I would probably be the same way if I worked
SVU. It just means Dani isn't cut out for it. Next Week: Yay,
Olivia is back for real! I wonder if there will be any tension
between her and Elliot because he got along so well with Dani, his "new"
"temporary" partner.
11/14/06
"Underbelly"
8.07: I honestly don't know what they were trying
to do with this episode. I don't. The perp they were after was
a pimp named Victor who liked to peddle underage girls for sex and then
beat them to death when they disobeyed him or tried to keep money from him.
Dani and Elliot did most of the investigating and questioning. Dani
gets way too emotionally involved in each case, and I've noticed it every
single episode. If I didn't already know that she wasn't permanent,
I'd guess that she would burn out pretty quickly anyway. You just
can't get as invested as she does and work in Special Victims. Uh
uh. Now for the things I don't understand. Three young girls
were murdered, and they all had the same tattoo. This leads to a discussion
of tattoos, and apparently Dani has one in some mysterious and secret place
that she won't show Elliot even though he wants to see it. Ugh. In
the middle of the episode, Olivia walks into the station house and notices
Dani sitting at her old desk. Olivia looks...I don't know, uncomfortable?
Slightly bothered? Anyway, she asks Dani where Det. Stabler
is, and Dani says he's questioning someone. Olivia asks who Dani is,
and she introduces herself as Elliot's partner. Olivia goes to see
Cragen and doesn't introduce herself to Dani. There's a slightly awkward
conversation between Cragen and Liv in which he tells her that he doesn't
have a spot for her. Not yet, anyway. Olivia looks through the
window and watches Elliot (who is out of interrogation) interacting with
Dani. She has a strange look on her face that I can't really describe.
It's sort of like sadness, I guess. Anyway, she tells Cragen
that it's okay that he doesn't have room for her because she's not ready
to come back. Before she leaves, she tells Cragen not to tell Elliot
she was there. "You're gonna leave without seeing Elliot?" Cragen
asks, quite surprised. Olivia says yeah, he's busy. I don't
know what's going on in her head. Is she afraid she's been replaced?
I am distressed. Later in the investigation, Dani is questioning
one of the underage pros alone, and she notices Elliot looking at her through
the window. Outside, she blows up at him, angry that he doesn't trust
her with a witness. "I'm not your precious Olivia," she says, but
don't spy on me. Hmm. It turns out Elliot wasn't spying, he
just wanted to alert Dani that Sister Peg was there to lend her assistance.
After Novak gets Victor the pimp's bail set reeaaalllly high, she
and Elliot and Dani go out for a drink. There was a funny little
exchange where Elliot commends the job Dani has been doing, and Casey says
Dani should take the compliment because Elliot never says anything nice about
her. I laughed. Was amusing. Casey has to talk to some
Homicide ADA, so she leaves. Elliot offers to drive Dani home, and
they get to his car...and suddenly they're kissing. His pager goes
off (and so does hers, I think), and they turn them off and continue making
out! WTF?! Elliot's phone rings, and he answers it finally and
hears that Victor beat up Sister Peg (poor Sister Peg!) and took the girl.
So no more making out. They close out the rest of the case, get
Victor, and wrap things up without saying a word about the impromptu smooching.
At the end, Elliot again offers to drive her home, touching her back.
She walks away from him, saying, "I need to be alone." And the
episode ends. And Ellen stares at the TV. HUH??? What the
heck was that? What was all the kissing about? And why isn't
Olivia back for real? What the hell is going on in Elliot's head that
he would do that?! Next week: Elle Fanning guest stars in a "Children
of the Corn"-esque role.
10/31/06
"Infiltrated"
8.06: Wow. So, I went from feeling pretty
darn good to feeling fairly ill in the span of an hour. The episode
itself was really good. Novak is trying to put a rapist away, and
Elliot testifies in court. However, the defense decides to call Olivia
to the stand since she was part of the investigation (obviously this was
from before she went undercover), and if Olivia doesn't testify, the case
will probably be thrown out and the guy will go free. Novak is desperate
(and I mean desperate) to find Olivia and get her into court. But
the feds won't budge. Poor Novak. Olivia, meanwhile is protesting
with the environmental group she's been with all this time, and when she tries
to stop an officer beating a protester (nonviolently, I might add), he cracks
her on the head with his nightstick. She wakes up in the hospital alongside
another protester who asks her who Elliot is! She mumbled about Elliot
all night, and Olivia says he's nobody. The girls says "he doesn't
sound like nobody to me," and mimics Olivia moaning his name. AHHHHHH!
How cute is that! Then she's falsely arrested for assaulting
an officer. Oh man, you could tell she wanted to blow her cover so
bad. Those cops were idiots, and I know she just wanted to kick their
asses. Then an exec for a pharmaceutical company that Olivia's group
has been known to protest is murdered, and the local police and the FBI suspect
Olivia's group might be involved. The feds tell Liv to subtly investigate
within her group, but if it leads beyond her group, she has to stop and let
them handle it. So, of course it's a sex crime, and of course the investigation
leads outside her group, but she doesn't stop. She calls the station
house in NYC to get some info from her buds, and she's about to talk to Elliot
when her environmentalist friends walk up and she has to hang up on him!
Sad! But it's the same girl who was in the hospital with her,
and she jokes that Persephone (Olivia) must have been talking to Elliot,
"her dream guy." HEEEEE! So Olivia does some breaking and entering,
some smooth operating, some sneaking around, and some crime scene analysis
and ends up totally solving the case. It turns out that the local police
guy made her for a cop a while ago, and the feds are pulling her out because
they arrested the people they wanted to arrest. So Olivia is free!
But she doesn't go home yet because she and her FBI handler dude are
trying to find a missing girl related to the murder. Elliot, back in
NY, is upset and worried because Olivia hung up on him and he has no idea
if she's safe or what's going on. So adorable. Novak is still
freaking out because the rape victim threatens to kill herself is her rapist
goes free, so Novak reallllly needs Liv. Novak gets Huang to go through
his FBI channels to get Olivia a message, which she doesn't get until days
later after they find the girl because the FBI guy is a moron... He
says something about her old partner finding her this irritating (but he
said half jokingly), and she says "we're best friends." And Ellen just
about died. It's so true. They are best friends. I don't
know if I've ever explained this before, but now seems a good a time as any
to do it. I would totally be happy if Elliot and Olivia ever became
romantic, but I can still squee over them being best friends and loving each
other as best friends. I just think that the pair of them, whatever
the nature of their relationship, are too adorable for words. They
don't have to be a couple, but they are a pair, and that's what I
love. Anyway, so after she gets the message, she hightails it back
home to New York and arrives in court to testify and put the guy away. Needless
to say, Novak is very, very happy to see her. :) And so am I. BUT...In
Two Weeks: here comes the part where Ellen feels ill. Olivia is back,
but where does that leave Dani and Elliot? I don't remember very much
about the promo except that at the end, they show Elliot and Dani...kissing.
May I please vomit now? As much as I am dying to know how Olivia
would react to that, I still don't want to see it, ever. BLEURGH.
10/17/06
"Confrontation"
8.05: So, they're after this rapist that rapes
the same women repeatedly because he's trying to get them pregnant. Creep-y.
They catch the guy eventually, and he's a real sicko. The
best part about this episode was a bit of a conversation between Elliot
and Dani in which they discuss rapes that result in pregnancies. Elliot
mentions that Olivia was a child of rape, and in the context of the discussion
and the way that he said it, it pretty much implied that if Olivia's mother
had terminated her pregnancy, Olivia wouldn't have existed, and Elliot
is grateful that that didn't happen. Yay! :) That's basically
it, except that Casey Novak seems to really not get along with Dani's gung-ho,
cavalier attitude toward law enforcement. She gets really cranky with
Dani very easily, and when Dani asked her what her problem was (and why
she was mad about some evidenciary thing Dani messed up or bypassed), she
said "you are my problem." Poor Casey. Maybe she just misses
Olivia like the rest of us. IN TWO WEEKS: We get to see what Olivia's
been doing all this time! And her hair is long! Cut your hair,
Mariska Hargitay!
10/10/06
"Uncle"
8.04: A young mother and her ten-year-old daughter
are brutally tortured and murdered in this Cragen-free (sad) episode. Elliot
and Dani arrest an elderly homeless man who is suspected of being involved.
The man seems to be severely demented, and it turns out that he
is actually Munch's uncle who is off his medication, and not the killer.
They follow the evidence to the real killer, only to have the charges
against him dropped because a key piece of evidence was thrown out by the
judge. Munch's uncle (Jerry Lewis, by the way) also makes an outburst
in court, accusing the judge of being corrupt for not throwing the killer
in prison immediately. Casey was really cranky this ep. It was
pretty funny, actually. When she says that the killer was released,
Munch says, "Don't tell me this had something to do with my uncle's outburst
in court." Casey's reply, with a slight smirk: "No, but that was
special." And when Dani hears that the evidence was thrown out,
she asks Casey how she could let that happen. "Well, I guess I just
suck," was Casey's snarky reply. Very amusing. :) In the end,
justice was served, although not in the preferable way. Munch's uncle,
due to an improper dosage of his medication, went manic and pushed the killer
guy in front of a subway train, killing him. It was a pretty good
episode, and Snark!Casey was very entertaining, but I was dismayed by the
fact that there were zero mentions of Olivia. I suppose this is only
the first time this is going to happen, so I should get used to it. And
I like Dani, I do, but I want Olivia Benson back. Soon.
10/3/06
"Recall"
8.03: This episode was less about the rape case
against a high profile attorney (who turned out to be a serial rapist that
no one knew about) than it was about getting to know Elliot's new (and
"temporary") partner, Dani Beck. She is extremely gung-ho to collar
the perp, even if it means cutting corners or making bad judgment calls.
She also had to learn that all perps are not the same, just as all
victims are not the same. It was interesting to watch Beck learn how
to get to the emotional level of the victim. She's something of a loose
cannon, but she's not so "over-zealous" that she can't improve. There
was one conversation of interest early on in the ep when she and Elliot
are in the car and she asks Elliot what happened to his old partner. He
says that Olivia was put on an undercover assignment. Beck asks how
long they were together, and he pauses as though reflecting, then says
"seven years." Even though Elliot generally does not express himself
emotionally (excluding all the times when he expresses his anger at a perp
or a case), you can pretty much tell when Elliot is feeling particularly
emotional. The way that he paused before answering about how long
he and Olivia were partners tells me that he is still unhappy about her
being gone, and also he's concerned about how long she'll be gone. I
think Elliot is afraid that by the time she finishes her assignment, it
will have been too long, and she won't be his partner anymore. Poor
Elliot. But this is just me speculating. :)
9/26/06
"Clock"
8.02: Since Olivia is officially gone on undercover
assignment now, there really isn't that much to say. The case was
kind of strange, with this girl who had a medical condition that made her
age much more slowly than normal. It was an okay episode. I
missed Olivia, and Elliot did too. He wasn't all that comfortable
with the idea of a new partner, and he wanted to know when Olivia would be
back. Cragen didn't know, of course. We all know that she'll
be back in seven episodes. Poor Elliot. We met the new partner
at the very end. I must say, I was surprised. Connie Nielsen
is not playing it at all the way I expected her to. She's much rougher
around the edges, a much stronger personality than I expected. I can
sense right now that I might like her. She will never replace Olivia,
though. No one can replace Olivia.
