Skip to main content

My Mariska Diary

 We wrapped this season with an enjoyable and trashy four-part melodrama.


A young sociopath builds an online network called "Shadowerk," where you can recruit a kind of Taskrabbit guy to murder your enemy. (It's an interesting plot to choose, because Jeffrey Toobin has recently written about how the internet has made events like January 6 "easier to plan." Toobin asks, if Timothy McVeigh had had internet access, what might have happened beyond Oklahoma City? ....McVeigh is named in the final "SVU" episodes of this season.)

Olivia's victory over the sociopath is inevitable, but the process involves a fun, surprising interlude where Benson's team watches spy-cam footage of a dumpy little office in Ohio. The Ohio office workers complain about low toner, bad coffee, a requirement to stay after hours. These discussions recall some of the little dramas within Olivia's own office: This has been a year of tense conversations about SVU dress code, seating arrangements, and the effort to make meetings with Terry Serpico's character as short as possible. ("Knock if I'm not out within five minutes.") I like how David Graziano's personal obsession with office politics becomes a little grace note in the season finale.

The other delightful thing: Benson has been sitting on an unopened Christmas present from Noah's "extra family." The present has been gathering dust for five months. I love fictional treatments of gift-giving--this is basically all that happens within James Marshall's "George and Martha" stories--and so I enjoy the moment when Stabler accuses Benson of "normalitis." Stabler says, "If you weren't weirdly intimidated by that conservative couple in Westchester, you would just open their present." (And so a Christmas present becomes a statement with regard to Benson's reservations about her own love life! Interesting!)

The actual present is a shitty ornament from CVS: "Live Laugh Love." But one E has become detached, so the object says: "Liv Laugh Love." I believe that anyone who hands out this junk as a gift must be deeply, deeply angry--but maybe we'll investigate that question next year. I just like that Graziano is swinging for the fences.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...
3 comments
Read more

Joshie

  When I was growing up, a class birthday involved Hostess cupcakes. Often, the cupcakes would come in a shoebox, so you could taste a leathery residue (during the party). Times change. You can't bring a treat into a public school, in 2024, because heaven knows what kind of allergies might lurk, in unseen corners, in the classroom. But Joshua's teacher will allow: a dance party, a pajama day, or a guest reader. I chose to bring a story for Joshua's birthday (observed), but I didn't think through the role that anxiety might play in this interaction. We talk, in this house, quite a bit about anxiety; one game-changer, for J, has been a daily list of activities, so that he knows exactly what to expect. He gets a look of profound satisfaction when he sees the agenda; it doesn't really matter what the specific events happen to be. It's just about knowing, "I can anticipate X, Y, and Z." Joshua struggled with his celebration. He wore his nervousness on his f...
2 comments
Read more

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...
Post a Comment
Read more