The SVU provides help and protection for a longtime domestic violence victim, but when she winds up at the defendant's table in court, Rollins surprises Carisi with a formidable opponent at ... Read allThe SVU provides help and protection for a longtime domestic violence victim, but when she winds up at the defendant's table in court, Rollins surprises Carisi with a formidable opponent at trial.The SVU provides help and protection for a longtime domestic violence victim, but when she winds up at the defendant's table in court, Rollins surprises Carisi with a formidable opponent at trial.
Photos
- Sergeant Odafin 'Fin' Tutuola
- (as Ice T)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaForlini's, as the title of the episode references, was an Italian restaurant in Manhattan located on 93 Baxter Street, which served as an occasional filming location for SVU and various other shows. It closed its doors for good on April 1, 2022 after 79 years. Including this episode, Forlini's was used as a shooting location (according to scene cards) in several other episodes. These include: Padre Sandunguero (2015) (S16E12), Know It All (2017) (S18E15), and In Loco Parentis (2018) (S19E15).
- GoofsWhen you plug a cell phone to a charger, even if the phone is at 1%, you don't have to wait for it to charge to use it, you can use it right away while plugged in.
- Quotes
Rafael Barba: Hello, Liv.
Olivia Benson: Hello.
Rafael Barba: You and I spent a lot of time in this place. It's a shame they're closing, huh?
Olivia Benson: Everything comes to an end. Um... I wanted to thank you, for representing Delia.
Rafael Barba: Rollins asked for the favor. How many lawyers you call first?
Olivia Benson: Three. You think you can get an acquittal?
Rafael Barba: I'll do my best. Cabernet?
Olivia Benson: I can't stay.
Rafael Barba: It's possible, to sit with someone, and have a drink, and not say a single word to each other. I miss you, Liv.
Olivia Benson: I gotta go.
For several seasons, SVU had been nothing but pandering. In every episode, not only are the victims 100% perfect in their victimhood, but there's never an ounce of doubt.
Detectives are supposed to investigate crimes, with a combination of objective fact-collecting and skepticism about everyone until the investigation runs its course. That's not what SVU does anymore. Now, everyone is an advocate, meaning the victim is always right no matter what the story or where the evidence leads. And the dangerous fantasy SVU reinforces -- aside from always making the cops crusaders who never get it wrong or harm anyone -- is that these assumptions are shown to be true by the end.
Think about that for moment. It's the court system that's supposed to decide guilt or innocence. But St. Benson and crew week after wake intuitively know who is guilty and who is innocent, and in their dogged pursuit of the aggressors, become judge and jury. I mean, the courtroom scenes are just going through the motions for a foregone conclusion.
Which is why this episode is so maddening because it actually comes close to real drama. We have a familiar set up. A woman claiming years of domestic violence kills her husband. The episode correctly points out she not only put herself in harm's way by going to see her allegedly abusive husband -- who apparently beat on her for years -- without a working phone in the middle of the night, but could have simply left. Literally done any number of things instead of attack him. Instead, she picks up a knife and kills him. By the way, he makes no threat, physically or otherwise.
Now, the cheap, irrational, and just plain antithetical to jurisprudence response from the usual SVU soap box is, oh, yeah, she was justified. After all, if someone is victim, they get to have their pound of flesh, and it doesn't matter if they do it outside of the law. But as Carisi presses the case, it becomes clearer and clearer that no immediate threat existed, and that when you choose to kill someone who is not actually threatening or attacking you, that's called murder.
I mean, the same crowd who would applaud the "victim" here would likely castigate a police officer if she shot a perp who was making no threats nor was attacking her while brandishing no weapon and the police officer could simply have withdrawn. If that happened, there would rightly be protests in the streets that cops can't just blow someone away because they think they're a threat, no matter how much bad blood there may have been between them in the past.
But in SVU land, the victim not only has the right to do so, they must in order to preserve the moral sanctity of being the victim.
It's madness. Worse, it's immoral.
And this episode until the last 10 minutes works hard to make that case. But then it chickens out and turns to that old SVU standby deus ex machina of mental defect. Of course, the person is a victim of years of physical abuse that rendered them incapable of knowing right from wrong, thereby completely dodging the moral question the episode set up. So long as they're "triggered," all transgressions must be forgiven.
What a crock. What a bad message to send that it's now fine to kill people because you think they're going to do something and not because they actually tried. History has shown repeatedly what a bad idea that is, no matter how morally superior the person believes themselves to be.
- bkkaz
- Sep 16, 2022