Special Victims (9/23)

My admiration for "SVU" only grows.

This past week, we had a two-hour marathon, and it gave us so much. It gave us "The Good Wife"'s Ben Rappaport as a smarmy Cuomo-esque politician. It gave us the greasy guy from "Billions" as a greasy guy a bit further uptown.

We had the theater world's Maddie Corman as a quietly calculating mom-in-peril.

Let's recap. There is a human-trafficking ring; Ben Rappaport is caught, but imagines he can just silence the witnesses. Several people die "in suspicious circumstances." Ben Rappaport evades serious consequences by turning in his lawyer, and the lawyer seems to evade consequences by offering to turn in "an ex-president" (surely a reference to Donald Trump).

To make the case against Trump, or Trump's people, Olivia's team needs to locate one teen victim. But the victim's father won't cooperate; he is an unpleasant man who repeatedly undermines his wife (a nice, classic SVU detail). A savvy cop recognizes the hole in the marriage--and he wins over the wife by mocking the husband. The wife then has a secret meeting with SVU and spills all that she knows.

Another item I admired in this script: Kat's departure has dramatic weight, but it's also a chance for us all to think about Olivia Benson and her legacy. Kat leaves after observing that the police are no smarter than they were at the start of the Black Lives Matter protests. This is followed by a new head honcho advising Olivia to focus on "the *real* rapes, not those murky acquaintance rapes you like...."

Can't wait for Thursday.....

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