Liars and Saints

  Kelli Giddish has spoken to the press about her career strategy; she explicitly asks Dick Wolf for "troubling storylines." She does not want Amanda Rollins to seem like a superhero. It's moments of vulnerability--involving addictions, involving difficult family members--that make a character interesting. The most recent SVU feels like a bit of "retconning." For a while, Kelli Giddish was written off the show--presumably because she was asking for too much money. (It's a notable bit of irony that SVU, a series that purports to have a feminist basis, would handle a female cast member in this way. I notice that Ice-T is allowed to stick around--despite his inconvenient salary requirements.) Now, a writer has decided that the career trajectory of Amanda Rollins is a sign of her fundamental instability. It's (allegedly) a part of the grand plan to have Amanda fumbling with job questions. This shows that she doesn't know herself--she is always on the run...

  Famously, on the set of "SVU," Kelli Giddish asked for more and more opportunities to show her character at war with herself. She didn't want Rollins to seem indomitable; she knew that interesting characters are flawed characters. This was a smart move; it led to the "Rollins and gambling" subplot, which showed off Rollins's special talent for undercover work. "Prima Nocta"--the return of Rollins--raises intriguing questions. When Rollins left SVU, she was scarred by too much violence; somewhat implausibly, she trained herself to be a profiling expert (overnight), and she was hired by Fordham. Was she running *to* Fordham, or was she just running *away* from SVU? Now, assisting her friend Olivia, Rollins rediscovers her appetite for danger. She assumes a false persona to entrap a local law-breaking custodian. In the process, she goes "off-book" and terrifies her husband. She is creative and just a bit exasperating; she is the Rollins we...

  "SVU" had a great deal of work to accomplish this past week, and mostly, the writers did their job well. (One writer was Julie Martin; I can't remember the other.) A rookie might think that the Rollisi wedding would be the climax of the hour--but, wisely, Martin understood that this isn't *really* why people care about Amanda Rollins. People care because of the Amanda/Olivia bond. So we had the wedding right away--and we were left to wonder what the *actual* fireworks might be. (We wondered for a half hour.) The craftiness makes me think of "Ozymandias," from "Breaking Bad." If you murder Uncle Hank in minute five, how do you manage the rest of the episode? Another grace note I admired: Olivia is engulfed in ominous music during the "upstate Christmas-house segments," and the horror-film score clashes nicely with the reindeer and the Santas. But, mostly, the upstate Christmas-house parts are *not* terrifying: Noah's new friends are ...

  Recently, the NYT put a spotlight on three long-running shows: "The Simpsons," "SVU," and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." (Since "Curb" sometimes takes a few seasons off, people tend to forget it has been around since the President was Clinton. And yet....) Of these shows, "SVU" obviously has the number-one spot in my heart, and I just have to say I'm so sad about the departure of Rollins. Although Kelli Giddish was less flashy than some of her co-stars, I thought she was consistently plausible. I also thought there was real chemistry between Giddish and Hargitay--for example, it was interesting to see the two dancing around Rollins's tricky love life, or sort-of-avoiding the Aidan Quinn subject--and I think it's risky to excise all of this from the new season (or new seasons). Finally, I loved the grace notes in the writing. Rollins, a Georgia native, did not always have the enlightened views of her colleagues; Rollins also strug...