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.
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