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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Tunnel Blind (2024)
Great season premiere, but didn't pick up where left off
I enjoyed the season premiere, but I really wanted to see how Olivia and Elliott dealt with being on the hit list. I hope that will be addressed soon in the season.
Watching "Hal" try to flee over the fence brought some comic relief, in spite of his creepiness.
I also got a laugh out the parents of the missing Maddie, who said they left San Francisco to escape the crime there. Really??? So they move to NYC instead?
Finally, Churlish appears to have gone the way of Chuck Cunningham; she wasn't in the episode and wasn't even mentioned. Is she gone for good? I know her character wasn't popular with many viewers, but I felt her character needed to be developed more.
In all, a pretty good episode.
Falcon Crest: Madness Descending (1990)
Frank Agretti deserved a more heroic exit
This episode made absolutely no sense: Genele throws Frank Agretti - a man who demonstrated such personal and moral strength in the prior seasons - out of his own home? Then he goes to the police with the remains of his wife with the story of what happened, which he tells like some lunatic?
The last you see of Rod Taylor, as Frank Agretti, is of him being arrested and taken away. Frank Agretti is clearly a moral man who tried to initiate peace between the Channings/Giobertis and the Agrettis; who reconciled with his estranged son and grandson; who helped rescue Lance and Melissa from the shaft; who helped rescue young Michael when he fell into the well; and who jumped in to save Angela from Richard's plot to have her declared mentally incompetent. And THIS is how they end his character on Falcon Crest?
At the very least, they could have written Frank out by sending him back to the emerald mine in Peru; or they could have had him gear up for a fight with Genele that might lead to his demise. His character should certainly have gone away with dignity.
But, as most viewers knew by this point. Falcon Crest was on its last legs; and the writers were clearly throwing paint at the wall to see what would stick.
Falcon Crest: The Price of Freedom (1989)
The series goes into free fall once this last season begins
With the start of the 9th and final season, it's clear the writers were throwing paint at the wall to see what would stick. The Ortega's and the Agretti's are completely written out, and gone from the Tuscany Valley as fast as they arrived in the last season: we still don't know whether Tommy and Kelly survived the fall into the water; or whether Gabriel's condition continues to improve; what became of the rumor between Maggie and Tommy, and its impact on Maggie's newspaper, the Tuscany Herald. Also Nick and Ben Agretti are gone without explanation; no word about whether Nick was going to continue to challenge Angela for control of Falcon Crest; or the mystery surrounding the death of the guy who forged the Falcon Crest deed.
The season starts on a totally different, fanciful note: Richard has been convicted of all kinds of financial frauds and is starting his prison sentence. It's unbelievable; even in the 1980s, a case like this wouldn't even have begun trial in these short months. And Michael Sharps (Gregory Harrison) is introduced out of nowhere, as one of Richard's co-conspirators. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Even the tempo of this final season is so different from all the prior seasons; one does not feel like he is watching the same show. The writers seemed to be grasping at straws.
I actually had stopped watching Falcon Crest by its 7th season; I began binge watching the series a few months ago, and finally got to this last season, more than 30 years after it aired. It's clear, I didn't miss much. Watching this last season is torture!
Dirty Little Secret (2022)
Started great, then went off the rails
"Dirty Little Secret" starts out good and effectively sets up the plot for how Hart's character, Joanna, became a hoarder, and the effect her disorder has on her children, particularly Lucy (Lizzie Boys). We see Lucy go on a path to discovery of what a normal functioning family looks like, and sees how a boy in her class has come to terms with his mom's recovery from alcoholism, and we develop hope that she will gain inner strength and feel empowered to lead her mother to admitting her problem and get her on the path to redemption. And the storyline does get us to the point where Lucy confronts her mother, and Joanna does show signs of realizing her problem. The viewer has hope that Joanna will be redeemed and Lizzie will prove mature beyond her years.
Then it all goes downhill from there. Everything gets weird and nonsensical. I won't give away the details, but the last 30 minutes was bizarre.
I think the Lifetime network should have a contest of its viewers to see who can write a better ending to this otherwise pretty good movie.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Five Hundredth Episode (2021)
Great episode; glad to see some of the earlier faces of SVU
I won't bore you with the excellent plot for the 500th episode, but it was so nice to see Danny Pino, Dann Florek, Peter Hermann, and also Diane Neal (at least through flashbacks to prior episodes) on SVU again. I just wish we could also have had Munch, Alex Cabot, and Rafael Barba in this episode too!
Silk Stalkings: The Last Kiss Goodnight (1995)
This was where Silk Stalkings jumped the shark.
This was a great episode, and when I watched it when it first aired in 1995, I was on the edge of my seat for most of it.
But as this would be Rob Estes' final appearance as Detective Chris Lorenzo (and the following episode Mitzi Kapture's final appearance), it marked the beginning of the end of my interest in the series.
I was fine with Kapture's and Estes' immediate successors, Tyler Layton and Nick Kokotakis, as we got some introduction to them in earlier episodes. But at the start of the next season, when they were replaced by Janet Gunn and Chris Potter, I just could not relate to them. After a few episodes in season 5, I stopped watching.
Silk Stalkings: Reluctant Witness (1994)
The subplot with Donnie Dog's Dad was hysterical
I watched this episode yesterday, after having seen it almost 30 years ago. It had really great action, but the subplot where Rita acts like Donnie "Dogs" DiBarto's girlfriend as a favor to him for his visiting dad, Gussie, provided a lot of comic relief.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: I Thought You Were on My Side (2021)
Enough with the crossover!
I realize Law & Order: Organized Crime is still new and that Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay played partners on the first 12 seasons of Law & Order: SVU. Those were my among favorite episodes. And while I'm happy Meloni is back, I feel these crossovers between the two shows are damaging SVU. The plots of SVU episodes increasingly are part of larger, organized crime scenarios and far less about the most common, everyday special victim. These crossovers force us to watch both shows, lest we miss important details, or see an unfinished plot. Occasional crossovers are fine, but this is really too much. SVU needs to get back to its roots.