"Law and Order: SVU"

 The secret superpower of SVU is its characters. We saw this once again in "Confess Your Sins to Be Free."

A little boy sees his father kill his mother, conceives a deep hatred for both parents, then grows up to be a rapist/priest.

Another priest--"bound by the rules of the confessional"--crazily tries to "protect" the rapist from justice while also interrupting any new rape attempts.

An angry husband blames his wife for having been assaulted. (Fin says, "She knew you'd behave this way, the shouting, the tantrum. Why don't you surprise her by being an adult?")

The character who haunts me is Aidan Quinn, who seems to want to make restitution, as part of a Twelve-Step Program. But, like Pete Davidson or Amy Schumer, Quinn becomes intoxicated by his own self-deprecation: He enjoys making people laugh in AA meetings. When the law comes after him, we learn whether he is actually, sincerely interested in atoning for how he has behaved.

The writer was Dick Wolf, and I loved his little grace notes in the script. Aidan says he is learning to respect boundaries, but then he blithely ignores Mariska when she says, "I need to work now." Fin becomes irritated by a witness, so he says, "You've made some people mad. You might want to watch your back." And he walks away. Wolf also has fun with the nutty world of Catholics: The script includes references to a bar called "Art Thou Mad?" and references to Dynwen, "the patron saint of lovers."

Wolf has said he likes complexity and gray areas -- and so the Aidan Quinn character seems like a perfect Wolf invention. I hope we'll see him again next year.