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Law and Order: SVU

 With its new showrunner, SVU has made some odd choices. Benson has been sometimes uncharacteristically mean; when she shouted at Churlish for having planned an undercover operation, she seemed unaware that anyone smart, in Churlish's position, would have handled the bartender the way Churlish did. 


Benson also seemed weirdly unempathetic when dealing with Velasco; yes, it makes sense to put a killer behind bars, but a sentient human being might say to Velaso, "Hey, I understand where you were coming from." There was a slightly sadistic edge in Benson's exchanges with Velasco; this doesn't feel like Benson.

(I did love one suggestion in "Bend the Law." Velasco helped a killer to go uncorrected; the killer then killed again. By saying to Betty Buckley's character, "I'll sort of help you in your own quest to evade legal scrutiny," Benson is acting just the way Velasco has acted.)

I have to give credit to the showrunner, David Graziano, for how he has handled Muncy. This character seemed insufferable for a year; she badly injured a New Yorker during one mission, and she erupted on the stand even after Carisi had coached her to hold her temper. Last week, Muncy had a monster trapped in a basement. As viewers, we were all encouraged to wish for violence; after all, the monster had wrapped wire around a man's testicles and starved him to death in a woodsy hole. 

But--like Rollins, her obvious antecedent--Muncy is learning from past mistakes. She recalls the mess of 2022 and restrains herself. She takes the monster in for questioning; she doesn't fire a gun.

I really liked this twist; I thought it was handled well. I'm not ready to give up on Graziano.
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