**SPOILERS*** Caught this in syndication. About halfway through it just felt so tiresome and predictable. When it was over I looked at my wife and said, "was that a writer's strike show?" Unfortunately, it was not. I don't know what happened here...normally the writing on SVU is sharp, the storytelling is inventive and you get invested in the characters. Not this time out. This is lazy, by the numbers storytelling.
***PLOT SYNOPSIS AND SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT*** The set-up is a standard issue child abduction. Van pulls up, grabs the pretty little blond girl, drives away. When the van is found, a homeless guy has taken up residence. When they throw open the back doors, the van is ENTIRELY empty and perfectly showroom clean except for one very neat and tidy pool of blood. This homeless guy was laying on the bare floor of the van? The guys who ditched the van pressure washed the inside of the thing? Then, the mother of the missing girl pushes her head over Meloni's shoulder and in an incredibly stilted line read says something like "oh, my baby...my poor baby".
From then on I was like, "what, now?" That pool of blood was definitely the little girl's...but it also indicated she was suffering from... Leukemia! Gasp! But not really all that big a deal...she'd need to get into treatment, but it wasn't all that life threatening in the short term or anything.
Huh? There's a ransom demand. Dad, a bank branch manager, pulls together the money. The girl is found...rather easily...after a failed ransom payoff.
She's in the hospital, needs some fluids, we'll get her started on chemo...and she should be fine! The whole leukemia thing drops by the wayside...completely forgotten for the rest of the episode.
Why is this an SVU case? She wasn't sexually molested...no indication of abuse...does SVU really need to be called in on this one? Obviously, they didn't have anything better to do...
When being interviewed from her hospital bed, the little girl happens to tell Stabler the kidnapper made her a very special drink. It's the special and entirely unique drink her OLDER BROTHER used to make for her at home when they were growing up.
What now? Older brother? Oh, yeah...mom fills us in. She and dad completely forgot to mention their other kid...a 23 year old drug addicted older brother who is constantly in need of money and would probably try something like kidnapping his little sister. Maybe they should have mentioned that earlier...ooops! Oh, please.
And if that's not hokey enough. When Stabler runs down to Dad's bank to question him about his on-going connection to the previously unmentioned son, that's when the son just HAPPENS to show up with a machine gun to pull a bank robbery! I mean, he must have parked right behind Stabler! Of all the banks in all the towns in all the world...let's go rob dad's place! Stabler talks the kid into freeing the hostages. Stabler disarms and hands over his main weapon to the kid but (quite easily) slips the gun from his ankle holster to M.E. Warner. Warner had accompanied Stabler to the bank (and, for the life of me, I can't remember why...).
The kid, of course, accidentally shoots dad in the course of the robbery gone wrong.
Tamara Tunie gets to do the pen tube tracheotomy/collapsed lung fill that was first used on M*A*S*H and has been used at least fifty times since in primetime. She did a great job with it...it's just such a hacky overdone thing to have someone do! "Find me a knife...and a tube...like a pen tube!" You mean like Father Mulchahy did on that episode of M*A*S*H with his Tom Mix pocketknife? Okay, it's been done to death, but sure! Jam a plastic tube through dad's ribcage and he's fine...but he's going to need a hospital here shortly.
The kid, despondent over shooting his dad, decides he's going to commit suicide by cop. As a surprise to absolutely no one within a six block radius, Warner shoots him in the leg with Stabler's gun just before SWAT Swiss Cheeses him in a hail of lead.
The Sargent and Mom have somehow managed to appear outside of the bank within 20 minutes of the start of the robbery attempt. Liv, for some reason, is nowhere to be found outside of the first 10 minutes of this episode.
More bad dialog, strained lesson learned...or something...oh, man...it was painful.
I think this episode was written and shot that week right before Thanksgiving where half the staff is already gone on vacation and everybody who's left is just marking time waiting to get out of there for the long weekend.
Mariska was definitely already out the door. I think Ice and Belzer were already on Vacay.
Like I say...I love SVU...but this one was BAD!
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