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Law and Order: SVU

 One thing I like about David Graziano is that he is really trying--not always gracefully--to make Olivia Benson into a human being. 


Is she a superhero? She has extracted a child from a box in the ground. She has used the jaws of life to pull her dear (pregnant) friend from a crushed, burning car. Just recently, on a slow day, she stopped her boss from murdering his neighbor; the murder was actually seconds away from happening, when Olivia intervened.


"Probability of Doom" asks--subtly--how much Olivia can withstand. She has been struggling this season, seeing antagonism in neutral strangers' faces, snapping at her colleagues. A new therapist suggests that she might want to revisit an old case, to answer some questions that she is asking herself--but the apparently straightforward act ("Google the phone number!") becomes overwhelming.

All this plays out against a backdrop of indescribable horror. A pregnant woman reveals that her pedophile husband has been stabbed to death. Then, other pedophile corpses begin washing up. Interviews transpire. It emerges that the daughter of one rapist/pedophile has been using a special app to uncover the identities of other monsters; she then murders the men in question, as a way of protecting children. (In the interrogation room, she almost smiles. "I killed them, and I liked it.")

Unusually, the writers focus on the decaying bodies of the victims. We see the rot. One squad member has to step away, to vomit. Velasco wonders if the new M.E.--played by Tony Award winner Frank Wood--might be a kind of subhuman ghoul. (He is certainly quite pale.) Olivia retreats to a bar--to seek "anesthesia," in the form of a glass of "box wine."

This show is still better than it needs to be. It's the tiny details. My spouse actually sobbed at the ending.

I'm looking forward to "The Third Man Syndrome."
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