After last week's episode that focused mostly on Benson's solving of the case, we switch back to Stabler and a situation where a baby goes missing and the hunt to find the kidnapper.
Interestingly enough, I don't remember if there was any discussion about what happened after Elliot got thrown through a window--you would think there would be something!! However, still, we had a tale that twisted just like the great episodes we've come to expect.
The disturbing situation of a child being taken is bad enough, but when the mother committed suicide, viewers were left almost breathless with little clue as to what would happen next. The situation got more muddled when we had a gambling addicted, alcoholic would-be father wanting the child when it was found.
Stabler's handling and undying drive to find the child once again proved beyond a doubt that, no matter if he's had domestic issues and violent tendencies, this is a great man that will stop at nothing to do what is right. When the story evolved into finally finding the REAL father of the missing baby, things got pretty ugly pretty quickly. In a miracle "haystack", they found the baby, and the shift of attention then went to why and who committed the crime.
The story finally ended with the father of the baby, a wifebeater named "Patty" Kendall, confessed to taking the baby after Stabler and Casey conned him about a sonogram with fingerprints of his that were at the crime scene.
We were left with yet another cliffhanger when Olivia broke the news to Stabler that she had tested her DNA and that she had a brother. Where this goes now is anyone's guess, but the problem I have with this is that at the end of the last episode, we had Elliott visiting his wife and trying to make things right--we never had any discussion and obviously no closure to that; and now we have this little twist about Olivia.
The problem about this is that SVU weaves in and out of being a procedural drama and then tries to examine its characters more closely, but we never get too much of each. While this retains interest to a certain degree, it can also be annoying if you prefer one over the other. I will agree that this season has been very entertaining, but it's been very short on the "subjective" side of how things are progressing in the character's minds; they played on the Stabler-Danni relationship and then re-established the chemistry with Olivia and Elliott when she returned from the undercover work, but since then it's been very flat. So, I certainly hope that before the season wraps up we can delve our ways back into the lives of these great, deep characters and have a little less focus on all of the details of a specific case they are involved in; I would think most fans of the show would agree--we want more!!
GooseyLabels: Chris Meloni, Chris-Meloni, crime shows, dramas, editorial, Elliott Stabler, Law and Order, Law-and-order, Mariska Hargitay, Mariska-Hargitay, procedurals, Special Victims unit, SVU, television, tv |
