The initial mystery, a kidnapped child leading to an unscrupulous adoption lawyer and a murder-kidnapping from a dozen years ago, is a great idea for an SVU episode. My problem with it lies in the three groups of people all competing for custody of the kidnapped child. I found it not only unbelievable, but also unlikeable, that each of these people (the adoptive parents who were unaware of the kidnapping, the biological father who was unaware the child was ever born, and the biological maternal grandparents) would, within 24 hours of finding out the child's story, would so immediately turn into selfish, possessive narcissists.
The adoptive parents are the most understandably protective of their custody, but they irrationally turn angry at Capt. Cragen for, essentially, solving a kidnapping, simply because they're the beneficiaries of that kidnapping. I don't get it; a woman was murdered, and her child stolen and sold to them, and they think the police should have just said "no harm, no foul"? The biological father, without knowing anything other than that the kid has lived in a good home his whole life, wants to jump in and take full custody, for no other reason than he "would have been there" had he known? And the grandparents, just because they've bought and kept some gifts for a child they only met as a newborn, think they're owed some kind of instant gratification when the child is found, and (again) get irrationally angry at the police when they don't get it?
Sorry, I know these competing interests are written to create a conflict for dramatic purposes, but the fact that each of these people are written with such one-dimensional attitudes is so distracting and irritating that it makes the second half of the episode almost unwatchable. That being said, Dann Florek gives a great performance, as he always did anytime he was the focus of an episode. But this episode falls into the trap that so often affected L&O episodes from any of the series: one-dimensional guest characters whose only motivation seems to be to create enough conflict to stretch the story long enough to fill an hour of television. You'd see it with original L&O, anytime a judge would reach for an absurd reason to throw out evidence of a slam-dunk guilty verdict, and you see it here.
The adoptive parents are the most understandably protective of their custody, but they irrationally turn angry at Capt. Cragen for, essentially, solving a kidnapping, simply because they're the beneficiaries of that kidnapping. I don't get it; a woman was murdered, and her child stolen and sold to them, and they think the police should have just said "no harm, no foul"? The biological father, without knowing anything other than that the kid has lived in a good home his whole life, wants to jump in and take full custody, for no other reason than he "would have been there" had he known? And the grandparents, just because they've bought and kept some gifts for a child they only met as a newborn, think they're owed some kind of instant gratification when the child is found, and (again) get irrationally angry at the police when they don't get it?
Sorry, I know these competing interests are written to create a conflict for dramatic purposes, but the fact that each of these people are written with such one-dimensional attitudes is so distracting and irritating that it makes the second half of the episode almost unwatchable. That being said, Dann Florek gives a great performance, as he always did anytime he was the focus of an episode. But this episode falls into the trap that so often affected L&O episodes from any of the series: one-dimensional guest characters whose only motivation seems to be to create enough conflict to stretch the story long enough to fill an hour of television. You'd see it with original L&O, anytime a judge would reach for an absurd reason to throw out evidence of a slam-dunk guilty verdict, and you see it here.