User Reviews

It was great to have Raul/Barba back for a visit. I found the tension between he and Carisi very well done during the actual trial scenes.

That having been said, the final scene was a letdown for me. I found Liv's insinuating that Barba handled the case the way he did bc it was some sort of penance for his own actions before he left unrealistic.

Barba was always written with "flexible" morals when it came to how he played certain cases. Noone on SVU is as morally black and white as Olivia - in fact, she and Barba butted heads over it more than once. He would have handled this case the same, regardless of how he left SVU.

I don't believe Barba as a character is conflicted about what he did at all. I think maybe Liv just wants him to be, which was no idea for their last scene to be wasted on. They deserved a better second parting.

I found this an excellent episode., and don't understand some of the complaints. The Bots of private life interrupted by the Amber Alert. That's life for a detective. Also I like the occasional reminders that these people have learned vegs outside SVU. It's especially appropriate in an episode revolving around a holiday people spend with loved ones.

There are also complaints that we never know if the foster father is guilty. But the biological father states his ex wife says their daughter is saying her dad killed the only man she ever lived bed, which sounds like he was indeed guilty.

I liked the return of Barba also.

All in all an excellent episode.

I watched this only for Raul Esparza as Rafael Barba, having last seen him in S19. While his scenes with Carisi still sizzled with wonderful tension, the rest of this episode was a disaster.

Even from the opening scenes of characters I've no clue about (one of the cops is a lesbian, as L&O realize representation matters, Ice-T has a love interest because... yay? Noah is now much older, etc etc) there's something very off in everyone's performances. They all seem, well, dead behind the eyes. So very Over It, there only to recite lines and move on to the next scene.

Apart from everyone sounding like dead autumn leaves on an cracked sidewalk, the writing is godawful. We bounce around scene to scene, barely latching on to a character before we're whisked away to another. Conveniently, Ice-T gets a phone call that conveniently allows the clearly traumatized war veteran and father to shoot the accused man. The setup could be seen from a mile away.

The court case proceeds as if the murdered man was an established rapist with a long history of grooming girls in his care. And yet in a scene just some minutes prior, Benson clearly states there hadn't been any complaints against him.

Whatever. The court scenes are all too brief and we don't even get to see the verdict, only a dismissive mention of it. If the characters don't care, then why should we?

5 stars for Barba & Carisi.

If you want a far better show, watch Boston Legal.